The advent of ChatGPT will inevitably reduce the traffic of SEO content. “Prioritize original visual content”

Eve Epstein, senior vice president and general manager of Leaf’s home design site Hunker, said the site will now focus on content that reveals writers’ “preferences, opinions, expertise and perspectives.” It is said to narrow down.

These changes are by no means small. Whether it’s Bustle, Leaf, or fellow lifestyle publisher Trusted Media Brands, there hasn’t been a noticeable shift in the share of traffic from search since ChatGPT launched last November. Although it hasn’t shown up yet, referral traffic from search accounts for 25-30% of Bustle’s traffic and 80% of Trusted’s traffic (we don’t know what percentage of Leaf, as we didn’t get a response).

Trusted’s chief content officer, Beth Tomkiw, said that if AI chatbots took over the role that Google Search currently plays, it would be “a bigger and bigger problem that we have to solve.” “I personally hope there will still be places for quality work by real people, even if they’re smaller,” he said. Tomkiw said what this means for Trusted’s editorial policy, but said nothing has changed.

From the publishers’ point of view, the move away from search-driven content isn’t exactly new, it’s just that the pace of change is picking up. Historically, the scale model of publishers chasing clicks to grow their audiences has typically not been effective in driving business success. That’s why publishers have spent the past few years working to build direct relationships with their audiences through subscriptions and newsletters to reduce their reliance on referral traffic from their platforms. be.

Jim Robinson, founder of Clickseed, an SEO and audience development consultancy that supports publishers, said: “For publishers who still focus on pageviews as their primary metric, this is going to be a bit of an issue.

Increase investment in original feature articles

Recognizing the impact that AI chatbots will have on how people search, Bustle is now focused on moving away from relying on SEO-based stories and short news hits to drive traffic. said Emma Rosenblum, the company’s chief content officer.

“A lot of digital media companies were built on a base level of traffic from those service stories, which I think in five years you won’t need anymore. Technologies like AI chatbots are going to do more. They’re getting to do this job much better, faster, and cheaper than people who get paid to write search-based articles,” he said.

“We also don’t want to write articles like this,” he continued, adding, “Any usefulness we’re providing will soon be gone. (Omitted) In the future, we will be investing in areas that cannot be replicated by computers.”

Rosenblum said Bustle is now investing more in original visual content, interviews, profiles and features. Overall, Bustle will produce less content in the future, but more short-form videos to distribute on social media. The chatbot can’t “try on jeans” or create images of jeans for different body types, Bonner said.

According to Melissa Chawning, founder and CEO of audience development and marketing firm Twenty-First Digital, in a time when ChatGPT is in the spotlight, lifestyle publishers are “the most valuable Assets are the photos and visuals within the content.”

Focus on events and newsletters

How does Bustle plan to make up for the expected drop in traffic that comes with these changes?

I emailed Mr. Rosenblum with this question. “At the moment, we have no plans to address the loss of traffic as a matter of urgency… I think there is nothing we can do about it. It’s going to be a losing battle for digital media companies to go after Google. That’s why Bustle is focused on areas like events and newsletters, and those businesses don’t have to rely on external platforms.” For example, the company’s newsletter business has grown to reach 5 million subscribers. That’s a 32% year-on-year growth.

A decrease in traffic means a decrease in ad serving volume.

Bustle’s business could be hit hard, too. But the majority of the company’s revenue comes from direct advertising, and the programmatic share is expected to remain “small,” Rosenblum said. “In this new world, we expect event and newsletter sales to grow significantly, offsetting any decline in programmatic,” he said.

Adoption of AI chatbots unknown at this time

Leaf’s Epstein believes the ChatGPT launch is just an “extension” of the evolution of Google Search and is “neither completely new nor surprising.” Publishers have had to deal with “featured snippets” in the past. The feature, which answers user prompts within a Google search page with excerpts from publisher pages, launched in 2014 (and received a major update in 2020).

But there’s a lot of uncertainty around chatbot adoption at this point, so the time is “not yet ripe” for publishers to “enable a drastic change of course,” said Clicseed’s Robinson. In the meantime, publishers should keep an eye on referral traffic analytics to see if there are any significant shifts in user behavior, he said.

“Even if it means taking ChatGPT out of the picture, it’s a plan. No company wants to give all of its power to Google,” he continued, adding, “We need to be talking about these things ASAP. There is,” he added.