Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has issued a serious warning about the future of websites, drawing attention to the rapid change in the structure of access to information on the internet. According to Prince, user habits shifting from search engines to AI-based chatbots are leaving web publishers facing an existential crisis.
Artificial intelligence could lead to the end of websites
AI-powered chatbots have begun to become the first source users turn to when looking for information. The flow of information provided by systems such as ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini surpasses the results offered by traditional search engines.
Users find it sufficient to reach the result directly, without having to question the accuracy of the answers they receive from these platforms. This situation largely prevents users from turning to external sources.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince drew attention to the rapid decline in internet traffic in a statement he made to Axios. According to the data, Google was sending one visitor to every two pages it crawled about ten years ago.
Six months ago, this rate dropped to one in six pages. Today, Google sends only one visitor to every 18 pages it crawls. The fact that this decline in the last six months alone is equal to the total change seen in the previous decade shows how fast the transformation is happening.
The rates are even more striking for chatbots. Six months ago, OpenAI systems were directing one visit for every 250 page scans. Currently, this rate has dropped to one in 1,500 pages.
This trend directly affects web publishers’ advertising and content revenues. Users’ desire to access information directly eliminates the need to click through pages. For publishers, this situation poses a serious threat in terms of both traffic and sustainability.
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