2 years ago, you really only needed to focus on your website to show up in search. But today, social media platforms and forums have taken over traditional rankings AND AI Search.
In this edition:
- đź”— Off-site content is quietly becoming AI search fuel
- 📉 Publishers are planning for a 40%+ search drop, marketers should too
- 🗞️ Stories to not doomscroll
đź”— Off-site content is quietly becoming AI search fuel
One of the biggest shifts in AI search right now has nothing to do with your website. Womp womp womppp.
It’s where AI systems are pulling answers from more often.
A 3-month study analyzing 230,000 prompts and 100M+ AI citations shows that off-website platforms, which most marketers can actually control, are playing a much bigger role in AI visibility than most teams realize.
And some of the biggest winners are not traditional media sites.
What changed in AI citations:
- In mid-September, ChatGPT sharply reduced citations to Reddit and Wikipedia, dropping Reddit from ~60% of responses to ~10%.
- That drop did not happen uniformly across AI engines. Google AI Mode and Perplexity stayed far more stable.
- As Reddit and Wikipedia declined on ChatGPT, LinkedIn, Medium, Forbes, and PRNewswire gained share.
Reddit and Wikipedia are still heavily cited overall, but the dominance gap narrowed. This has created an opportunity that most SEOs haven’t yet taken advantage of.
A separate Semrush dataset from October found LinkedIn is now the #2 most cited AI source, right behind Reddit.
That matters because LinkedIn content is:
- Written by real operators (or at least supposed to be )
- Focused on specific problems and lived experience
- Easy for AI systems to parse as “expert answers”
Posts that clearly answer questions like “How do I fix my pipeline?” or “What breaks cold email?” can surface months later inside AI responses, even without ongoing engagement.
What AI seems to reward off-site:
- First-hand experience
- Narrow topics explained clearly
Off-site content is no longer a “nice to have” for AI Search Optimization.
If you already publish strong blog content, the fastest way to boost AI visibility is to repurpose it:
- Turn blog sections into LinkedIn posts that answer one clear buyer question
- Rework explanations into Medium or LinkedIn articles for niche topics
- Turn your blog into a YouTube script (the hardest part is filming)
The new SEO question is not “how do I rank my site?”
It’s “how do I ‘rank’ my brand?”
📉 Publishers are planning for a 40%+ search drop, marketers should too
Publishers are finally saying search is no longer the “stable channel” it’s been for decades.
A Reuters Institute survey of 280 senior media leaders across 51 countries says publishers expect search traffic to fall more than 40% over the next 3 years as AI answers expand. ChatGPT is a factor, but the biggest hit has been from Google’s AI Overviews taking over the top of SERPs.
Inevitably, they’re worried about a world where commodity content gets summarized, and personality-led formats win attention instead.
Yet the platforms made for “personality-led” content are referring less traffic to publishers, with Facebook down 43% and X down 46% over the last 3 years
They’re shifting spend toward things that are harder to summarize:
- More original investigations, on-the-ground reporting, contextual analysis, human stories
- Less service journalism and evergreen utility pages
- More video and audio, less emphasis on text only
- More attention on distribution outside the website, especially YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram
The revenue model is also changing.
Subscriptions and memberships are still priority #1, but interest in AI platform licensing and payments is rising fast. Interest in platform funding has nearly doubled over 2 years, even though only 20% expect AI deals to become a major revenue source (I have my doubts here too. I think subscriptions will have to be #1).
If you run content for a B2B SaaS brand, this is your warning. “Good enough” content won’t be enough, regardless of how efficient your one-shot AI content process is .
Your content needs to 1) be distinctive enough to 2) allow you to capture an audience, whether that’s through them opting in to becoming a customer, follower, or email subscriber.
🤝 Trade offer
Built this with my bare hands (in 8 minutes, on ChatGPT).
🗞️ Stories to not doomscroll
Google added Gemini-powered suggestions to the Trends Explore page. It now auto-generates related queries, prompts, and more rising searches so users can analyze trends faster with less manual setup.
The Dink doubled daily subscribers with a referral program built on real, brand-funded pickleball gear. Rewards with monetary value beat PDFs, driving referrals that brands were happy to sponsor.
ChatGPT will test clearly labeled ads for free users to expand access while keeping paid tiers ad-free. OpenAI says ads will not influence answers, protect conversation privacy, and remain optional.
Core Web Vitals don’t boost AI visibility once pages meet baseline thresholds. They only matter when performance fails badly enough to damage engagement and trust signals AI systems rely on.
Free subdomain hosting makes SEO harder because spam-filled neighborhoods dilute trust signals. Mueller says new publishers should build community and promotion before chasing search visibility.
Google search ad clicks hit a five-year high as Q4 spend rose 13% while CPCs stayed flat. AI-driven query growth and Amazon’s pullback from Shopping auctions are expanding volume without driving up costs.
Bot traffic inflates sessions while crushing conversion and bounce rate accuracy. Filtering bots reveals far fewer sessions but dramatically stronger conversion performance.
Brand searches signal trust to Google. Sites that grow branded demand see unbranded organic traffic rise alongside it.
Altman said OpenAI “screwed up” GPT-5.2’s writing by focusing on coding and reasoning. He promised future versions will write better than GPT-4.5. Yeah, I noticed…
Google made Gemini 3 the default model for AI Overviews and added direct follow-up into AI Mode. Context carries over, and tests showed users prefer this seamless flow.
Google research shows small on-device AI models can infer intent from user behavior before a search is typed. This points to a future where intent is shaped by actions, not just keywords.
Google launched Personal Intelligence in AI Mode. It lets paid users opt in to connect Gmail and Google Photos so Gemini 3 can deliver more personalized search answers.
AI Overviews are the biggest driver of organic traffic drops right now. But data from 200 mature companies shows that algorithm updates, SERP crowding, competition, and content decay are also major contributors.
🤝 Need content marketing that actually gets paying customers?
I run Stat Digital, a fractional content marketing team for B2B SaaS companies.
We can help you:
- Create content that captures ready-to-buy leads from AI Search and SEO.
- Launch and run newsletters to nurture the thousands of neglected contacts going stale in your CRM (like this one)
Want to uncover your top opportunities to generate new customers from your content? Schedule a free strategy session here.
