Why Your Blog Traffic & Search Visibility Collapsed and What To Do About It

Antoinette Walton

February 2025

Get the TL;DR

The mess no one wants to talk about


. . . is that Sundar Pichai killed Google and what we're left with is a pile of crap. But that's a topic for anther day. The thing about crap though, is that it's fertilizer, and we're seeing some interesting things arise from the stinky pile that is search collapse in the mid 2020s.


If you relied on high volume search traffic brought in from top of funnel content and that strategy is now FUBAR, this article is for you. If you're trying to improve your organic traffic, this article is for you. If you want to create a brand foundation that's sustainable and not subject to the whims and dalliances of the fickle algorithms, this article is for you. If you're here to tell me about my car's extended warranty, please go away.


The precipitous cliff that no one asked to go over but we were forced to anyway


Let’s not pretend it was a slow decline. Blog traffic didn’t gently slope downward and give us all time to adjust. It fell through the floor like a cartoon piano — swiftly and with much dissonant fanfare. One minute you were riding high on “What is X?” and “5 Ways to Y” content; the next, your analytics looked like a murder scene.


Was it a Google update? (somewhat)

Was it algorithmic shenanigans? (sort of)


But mostly, it was something much bigger.

TL;DR


AI stepped in and started doing top of funnel (TOFU) content (the bread and butter of many a brand's Google search rankings) for free.


At least, that's the story regarding quick, undifferentiated and often informational TOFU answers to search queries. They're now AI Overviews at the top of the search engine results page (SERPs).


Now, Google/SEO/Search isn't dead. It mutated. And all those TOFU blog posts you published to capture search intent turned out to be window dressing. At the time they were created, it made sense to publish them. Now it doesn't. So stop doing that. More on what to do instead later in this article.


What AI took away wasn’t meaningful demand—it was the stuff that was never valuable to begin with. The filler 🤮 The fluff 🙄The glossaries written for robots 🤦 The parade of “ultimate guides” that said nothing new 🤬


The real kick in the head is that most of what we were calling traffic was really noise. It gave us high-volume, low-intent visits from people who wanted an answer, not a brand. And AI gives them that answer in two seconds, no click required.


So yes, the traffic is gone. But what if it was never yours to begin with? Those types of informational queries did not come with commercial intent.


If you built for clicks, you have my permission to panic. Then you need to dust yourself off and get to work. The ones who build for people will be fine. In fact, they're starting to see stronger signals. Fewer visitors, sure, but more of the right ones. The ones show up with commercial intent, read, stay, and convert.

What collapsed and what remains

Not all traffic is good traffic.


The stuff that tanked was mostly the low-intent, top-of-funnel, “just curious” kind. The skimmers. The “what is XYZ” crowd. The folks who hit your blog, got their quick answer, and ghosted like a bad Tinder date (not sure there's any other kind 🤔).


Those clicks looked great in a dashboard. But they didn’t stick. They didn’t convert. And they didn’t buy anything.


That’s what collapsed. But what didn’t collapse is way more important.


The people who are still coming are different. They’re landing on:


  • service pages
  • product categories
  • about pages
  • pricing and solutions pages
  • competitor/product comparison pages


You know—the stuff that matters for sales. Pages where people make decisions. Pages where revenue lives. 

The trade-off: Fewer people, better signal


AI overviews have stripped out the casual drive-bys and left you with the ones who care. And for marketers who’ve spent years pretending traffic is the be all, end all of success, that is majorly inconvenient.


Since the internet got hella commercialized in the early 2010s, a lot of brands were measuring activity, not impact. When the vanity clicks dried up, so did the illusion of progress. If your content wasn’t built to help someone decide, then yes, it looks like a collapse. But if it was built to serve a buyer, it’s very much still standing.

Did AI Overviews steal your traffic?

No. They did something more brutal and efficient:
They answered all the questions your content never needed to answer in the first place.


Definitions, generic how-tos, pointless "what is inbound marketing?" type articles. Gonzo. Not because the content was bad, but because it was unnecessary.


People didn’t want your brand’s take.
They wanted a fast answer. And now they get one from AI. No click. No scroll. No soup session for you.


AI just formalized what many marketers already knew deep down but would never admit to a client:

Informational traffic ≠ commercial intent.  Looks good on a chart. Rarely moves a buyer.

What's happening with traffic now is a reset.


The remaining clicks are coming from people who want something AI can't do:


  • nuance
  • experience
  • specificity
  • context
  • empathy


In short: AI answers questions. You help people make decisions.


That’s the new line. Cross it, and you disappear into the chatbot abyss. Stay on the right side, and you stay in the game.


But I've been watching (with some degree of schadenfreude) the industry panic in all the wrong directions over the last year or so. Both publishing more and publishing nothing are kneejerk reactions with the same result. Spoiler: it’s not pretty.

Why Just Blog More Is the Wrong Reaction And So Is Doing Nothing


Predictably, the reaction from to search collapse from most marketing teams was to panic. But panic doesn’t breed strategy. It breeds two extremes — both of them bad.



Reaction #1: “We need more content. Now.”

Cue the AI slop content treadmill.


More blogs. More topical clusters. More faceless, SEO-ified fluff.


If traffic’s down, we just need volume, right?

Nope.


That strategy made sense when Google rewarded surface-level topical coverage. Now? AI's already eaten the surface.


You're not competing with other blogs anymore. You’re competing with instant answers.


If your content doesn’t do more than restate obvious facts, AI wins. Every time.


So piling on more content won’t fix your visibility problem. It just produces more things no one reads.

Reaction #2: “Content doesn’t work anymore. Shut it down.”

Just as bad. Maybe worse.


This is the retreat move:


Cut the blog. Cancel the freelancer.
Halt all thought leadership because “SEO is dead.”


But content still works—just not the kind you were used to.


What died wasn’t content.


What died was your assumption that publishing = traffic.


Cutting all content after the traffic dip is like blaming the mirror for your haircut.

The real issue with fixing blog traffic collapse?

Neither team in the above reactions asked the right question.


Both extremes are chasing comfort instead of clarity.
They’re reacting to volume loss instead of asking,

“What role does content actually play in our buyer’s journey now?”

And here’s the answer:


  • It helps you get chosen. Not found.
  • It makes people trust you. Not discover you.
  • It gets amplified by others. Not just crawled by bots.


If you’re not creating content that builds belief and drives decisions, you’re just decorating your CMS.

What AI Trusts ≠ What Buyers Need


Let’s fix a popular misunderstanding: this isn’t about getting cited by AI tools. My unpopular opinion is that the entire AI visibility circus is mostly smoke and mirrors. The only people trying to sell you dashboards for that are the ones who can’t sell outcomes.


Coming back from defeat in the search collapse war is about building content and credibility that gets people to click, trust, and act. And the truth is your blog isn’t enough anymore.


AI systems (and smart buyers) want reinforcement. They want to see that you don’t exist in a vacuum.

So yes, validation still matters. Not to please AI, but because it’s how trust works now:


  • You're quoted in the places your buyer reads.
  • You're mentioned by people they already trust.
  • You’re consistent across every touchpoint.
  • You don’t just show up. You’re backed up.


Third-party credibility helps your buyer believe you. In this new era of search, when someone does click, they’re not browsing. They’re evaluating, and they’re going to look for confirmation that you’re legit.


The goal now isn’t about rankings or AI visibility. It's reinforcement and optimizing for buyer trust at the moment of attention.

Content for the Clicks That Still Matter

Since AI answers took away the low-intent, “just curious” traffic, what’s left is intent-heavy, mid-to-bottom-funnel traffic.


It’s a goldmine if you treat it properly.


These clicks are coming from people who:


  • are narrowing down options
  • want to understand your offer
  • are weighing risk
  • are deciding who they trust


They may want to be entertained. But mostly, they want to be convinced.

So the play now isn’t more content—it’s better, clearer, commercially-aligned content:


  • Pages that clearly show what you do and for whom
  • Content that answers evaluation-stage questions with depth
  • Use cases, examples, pricing logic, and proof—not slogans.
  • Copy that doesn’t pander to the algorithm, but speaks to the buyer.


You’re not writing for clicks anymore.

You’re writing for the

person behind the click.

And that person has intent.
They want to know:


  • Why you?
  • Why now?
  • Can I trust you to solve my problem?


AI can't summarize these things and they can't effectively be answered in TOFU content.

It's something only your mid and bottom of funnel content—done right—can answer.


So focus on what’s still working, and double down on content that earns a second click, not just the first.


This is the part of search AI can’t kill and this is where the money still is.


Publish & Pray is Dead

For years, content teams were conditioned to believe one thing:


If you publish enough, traffic will follow. Thing is, that never really worked that well, unless all you needed was traffic and not outcomes.  And now, with AI absorbing half the queries that used to send you clicks, that model is fully cooked.


You can’t just hit publish and wait for Google to do your job anymore.


Search won’t save you. Social won’t save you.

Even your email list won’t save you if the content isn’t built to travel.


This is where most teams stall out:

They’re still pouring energy into production, but zero into amplification.



So here’s the fix: start thinking like a distributor, not just a creator.


Long Live Distribution

You don’t need more content. You need more people seeing the right content in more places.


That can mean:


  • Turning blog posts into LinkedIn carousels
  • Seeding key content into communities where your audience already lives
  • Pitching journalists and podcast hosts with ideas pulled from your best material
  • Building relationships with newsletters in your niche
  • Surfacing content to your sales team so it gets in front of decision-makers
  • Keeping your best pieces alive with updates, syndication, and re-shares


Another upside: the more your content gets referenced, shared, cited, or linked, the more credible it becomes—to buyers and to search systems.


Distribution isn’t just about reach anymore. It’s a trust signal that compounds over time.


When you finally do create a standout piece of content—one that lands with people—you don’t need to guess if it worked, because you’ll see it move. People will talk about it. Click it. Share it. Forward it.


The funeral is over.

Let’s stop mourning blog traffic like it was something sacred. Most of it was terrible to read and even worse to write. Unqualified. Unmotivated. Unlikely to convert.


AI overviews didn't kill the good stuff. It killed the illusion that volume equals value.

What’s left is leaner and better:


  • Buyers with intent
  • Readers who engage
  • Clicks that carry consequence


It may seem like a tragedy, but it's really a return to form. Content is back to doing what it should’ve been doing all along:


  • Informing real decisions
  • Building trust with humans
  • Showing up when it matters


So no, you don’t need to track AI visibility and there's really no viable way to do that regardless. But you do need to track impact.


Not: “Did we publish three blogs this week?”
But:

“Did anything we made help someone choose us?”

Not: “Did an AI mention our brand?”
But:

“Are we showing up when someone’s about to buy?”

Marketing is about communication. It's about teeing up sales and being chosen by the right people. The teams that get that will build smarter content, distribute it with intent, and win more of the clicks that still matter.