Waking up in the morning, checking analytics, and finding joy in the traffic graph—this feeling is very familiar to every blogger. But for the past year and a half, this graph seems to have suddenly started going downwards.
Where once searching on Google brought our written articles in front of people, today Artificial Intelligence or AI has taken that place. As a content creator, it is very natural for a fear to work in the mind—”Has all my hard work over the years been in vain? Is blogging really coming to an end?”
Today we will look for answers to these questions based on emotion and practical logic, and see where the real value of our data and hard work stands in this AI era.
Exactly How Much is Blogging Down? (Impact on the Future of Blogging)
According to statistics and various SEO experts, since 2023, the traffic of general informational blogs has dropped by an average of 40% to 80%.
Previously, we thought that doing good keyword research and writing a 1000-word article would bring traffic from Google. But that is no longer happening. As soon as people search for something on Google, ‘AI Overviews‘ or ChatGPT gives the answer directly. As a result, users no longer need to click on links and enter websites. You might feel that your audience is disappearing right in front of your eyes. This pain is very real, because behind one article lies hours and hours of your research and labor.
Will Blogging End Completely, or Will the Future of Blogging Bounce Back?
Simply put—no, blogging will not end completely. But its form is changing.
Humans naturally love to hear human stories. AI can give you perfect information, but AI can never tell you, “I was duped into buying this gadget, you shouldn’t buy it,” or, “That moment in last night’s football match gave me goosebumps.” Blogs that were written just by copying information from Wikipedia or other sites like a robot will disappear. But those who showcase their practical experience, expertise, and own opinions through their blogs will bounce back with glory. People might go to AI for information, but to verify the truth and hear stories of experience, people will have to return to blogs.
After Newspapers Came Google, How Will AI Shape the Future of Blogging?
Absolutely! There was a time when we had to wait for today’s newspaper to know yesterday’s match scores. Then came Google, which brought us thousands of website links in an instant. We would browse through those links ourselves to read the news.
And now AI is taking that place. AI doesn’t just give links; it reads 10 websites and creates a beautiful summary or a ‘direct answer’ for you. Just as newspapers changed from ‘broadcasting’ to Google’s ‘searching’, similarly Google is now changing from ‘searching’ to AI’s ‘action’ or ‘direct solutions’.
Will AI Tools Become Paid and Secure the Future of Blogging?
This is a highly logical question. Running powerful AI models like ChatGPT Plus or Gemini Advanced costs companies billions of dollars to maintain servers. Therefore, for advanced tasks, these are becoming paid and will remain so in the future.
However, this does not mean that people will return to blogs just to save money. Basic AI search might remain free. People will return to blogs mainly for ‘connection’ or human touch. When you look for a practical solution to a problem, a blog or video written by a flesh-and-blood human will seem much more trustworthy to you than a robotic answer.
Google Pays Us for Our Content, Why Doesn’t AI? (Economics & the Future of Blogging)
This is the biggest point of regret of the current times. Google shares revenue with us (Google AdSense). Google sends users to our websites, users see advertisements there, and we get a portion of it. This is an excellent ‘Win-Win’ business model.
But the business model of AI companies is completely different. They are ‘scraping’ or reading thousands of our written articles, data, and hard work completely for free to train their AI models. Then that AI is answering the user, but it is no longer sending the user to our site.
AI claims they are ‘reading and learning’ from our writings (Fair Use), just like a student learns by reading a book. But a human learning and a billion-dollar company doing business with free data can never be the same. This is exactly where the biggest legal battles have begun. It is hoped that in the future, a rule will come where if AI generates an answer from your content, it will be obliged to give you credit or a share of the revenue in some way. However, large lawsuits are currently going on worldwide regarding this claim (for example, The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI). Along with this, we all should speak up about this issue.
Final Words on the Future of Blogging
AI is a storm, and while many old trees fall in a storm, new saplings also get the opportunity to grow. As a content creator, fighting a battle of information with AI will no longer work. Add emotion, your own opinion, and a human touch to your writing. Build a relationship of trust with your audience that no AI can ever steal.
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