“Traffic-destroying Nightmare” – The SEO industrial complex and its complicity – Why the crisis is self-inflicted
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Published on: September 15, 2025 / Updated on: September 15, 2025 – Author: Konrad Wolfenstein
“Traffic-destroying Nightmare” – The SEO industrial complex and its complicity – Why the crisis is self-inflicted – Image: Xpert.Digital
Secret documents reveal Google's plan: How the company deliberately lured publishers into a trap
### The Great Website Clear-Out: Why Millions of Clicks Disappear After Google's AI Update ### It's Not Only Google's Fault: How the SEO Industry Brought Its Own Downfall ### Your internet experience will change forever – and who is to blame is more complicated than you think ###
The traffic nightmare is here: Why the content industry is partly responsible for the current Google crisis
An earthquake is shaking the digital world, and its name is Google AI Overviews. Since the introduction of AI-powered answers in Google Search, website operators, publishers, and media companies around the world have been experiencing a "traffic-destroying nightmare." With dramatic drops in click rates of up to 55 percent, a business model that was based on organic search traffic for decades is being shaken to its foundations. At the center of the storm is Google, which uses a perfidious strategy to exploit publishers' content to keep users on its own platform – without fair compensation and often against the declared wishes of the creators.
But while the outrage over Google's actions is loud and justified, simply assigning blame falls short. This crisis has deeper roots and is, to a significant extent, self-inflicted. For years, a toxic "SEO industrial complex" of semi-professional agencies and self-proclaimed experts fostered an ecosystem that prioritized quantity over quality. The web was flooded with superficial, search-engine-optimized content whose sole purpose was to generate clicks. Google is now using this self-created quality crisis as the perfect pretext to reshape the system in its favor. This analysis sheds light on the toxic symbiosis between Google and the content industry, reveals the SEO industry's complicity, and explains why the demise of the old internet is an inevitable consequence of years of misguided development.
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Google's AI revolution and the end of the traditional internet
The discussion surrounding Google's introduction of AI overviews and their impact on website operators has reached a new level in recent months. What was initially touted as a technical innovation is increasingly revealing itself as a fundamental system change that is redefining the internet's business model.
The shocking truth behind the numbers
Since the introduction of Google's AI overview in Germany on March 26, 2025, websites have experienced dramatic drops in organic traffic. Initial studies show an average drop in clicks of 17.8 percent, with the click-through rate falling by 14 percent. These figures reflect a global trend that has already become apparent in the US, with losses of up to 55 percent between April 2022 and April 2025.
The situation is particularly dramatic for large media companies. Traffic from Google to the 500 largest news sites fell by around 64 million visits between February 2024 and February 2025. At the same time, visitor numbers from AI-based recommendations increased by only about 5.5 million, which far from offsets the enormous losses. Publishers like HuffPost and the Washington Post suffered declines of over 50 percent.
The impact is so severe that it's now being called a "traffic-destroying nightmare" for online publishers. Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng had to lay off approximately 21 percent of her workforce in May 2025, citing "extreme traffic declines beyond our control" as the reason for the layoffs.
The perfidious system behind Google's strategy
What's particularly worrying is the systematic way Google has maneuvered publishers into a deadlock. Internal documents leaked during a US antitrust investigation reveal that Google deliberately prevented publishers from giving them granular control over the use of their content in AI features. Instead, publishers were given a choice: either allow their content to be used for AI products or disappear from Google Search entirely.
A Google vice president confirmed in court that the company can train AI models with web content, even if publishers have explicitly objected to its use for AI training. This practice occurs under the guise of "search," allowing Google to circumvent publishers' opt-out requests.
France has already responded by imposing a €250 million fine on Google for violating EU copyright laws by scraping online news content for training Gemini. But such fines don't seem to impress Google, as the company remains firmly on course.
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The SEO industrial complex and its complicity
What is often overlooked in the discussion about Google's practices is the role of the SEO industry itself. Over the years, a toxic ecosystem has developed in which SEO agencies, web designers, and self-proclaimed experts with questionable expertise have flooded the market. An analysis of 1,653 SEO providers revealed that 88 percent hadn't even properly optimized their own websites for mobile devices.
The problem begins with the lack of professionalization in the industry. Many traditional print agencies and web designers jumped on the SEO bandwagon without the necessary expertise. They sold SEO as a byproduct or integrated it into standard packages without understanding the complexity of the discipline.
These semi-experts not only flooded the market with substandard services, but also contributed to the emergence of a content culture that emphasized quantity over quality. LinkedIn and other platforms are now overflowing with superficial SEO tips and repetitive nonsense posts from self-proclaimed experts.
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The quality crisis in content marketing
However, the problems go deeper than just poor SEO. The entire content marketing ecosystem is suffering from a systemic quality crisis. Companies are producing massive amounts of content without a clear strategy or sufficient resources. The focus is often on quickly producing cheap content rather than developing valuable, user-centric information.
Andreas Quinkert, a content quality expert, sums it up: "The greatest enemy of quality is haste." In the fast-paced online marketing business, time is considered a rare commodity, which is directly reflected in the poor quality of much content. Companies believe they can finance premium quality out of the coffee fund, even though content competition has become too fierce for that.
This development has contributed to the internet being flooded with superficial, SEO-optimized content that achieved rankings but offered little real value to users. Google is now exploiting this very weakness, arguing that AI overviews provide a better user experience than clicking on these low-quality websites.
LinkedIn as a symptom of the problem
A particularly vivid example of the quality problems can be found on LinkedIn. The platform, originally conceived as a professional network, has been increasingly taken over by content marketing experts and SEO gurus who regurgitate the same superficial topics daily. An analysis shows that organic business content has shrunk to just two percent, while sponsored content has risen to 28 percent.
The criticism from LinkedIn users is clear: too many posts that go beyond the professional context and convey irrelevant information. SEO experts publicly criticize absurd claims made by their colleagues, such as the recommendation to abandon website SEO entirely and focus solely on YouTube and LinkedIn.
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This development demonstrates how the SEO industry has discredited itself. Instead of offering sound, strategic advice, the market has been flooded with superficial tricks and short-term tactics. Many agencies sell SEO as a panacea without understanding or implementing the long-term strategic aspects.
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Generative Engine Optimization: How publishers secure their visibility without traffic – Why Hubspot is a wake-up call for content strategies
The toxic relationship between Google and content creators
What is often portrayed in public discourse as a one-sided blame-shifting of Google is in fact the result of a years-long toxic relationship between all parties involved. Google, major media companies, B2C channels, and their SEO consultants have profited from each other without considering the long-term consequences.
For years, publishers and websites became dependent on Google traffic without developing alternative channels or direct relationships with their users. At the same time, they optimized their content primarily for search engines rather than human readers. This strategy worked until Google changed the rules.
The case of Hubspot illustrates this problem perfectly. The company, long celebrated as an SEO role model, lost approximately 75 percent of its SEO traffic between 2024 and 2025. From 2.8 million visitors per month, the number dropped to 800,000. Hubspot had scaled a "content game" for years, publishing a large number of how-to articles—13,000 URLs on its blog alone. However, when Google began to favor AI-generated answers, this system, designed for mass audiences, collapsed.
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The new power relations on the Internet
Google has fundamentally shifted the balance of power on the internet with the introduction of AI overviews. Whereas website operators could previously hope to generate traffic and thus revenue through good content, Google now keeps users on its own platform. While the AI answers sometimes include source information, studies show that only eight percent of users actually click on these links.
This development leads to a paradoxical effect: AI systems depend on high-quality, up-to-date content, but at the same time, they undermine the business models of those who create that content. If content creators can no longer monetize, the quality and quantity of new content declines, which ultimately also impacts the AI systems.
Google argues that AI overviews have led to a ten percent increase in search queries. This is a clear win for the company, as more search queries also mean more advertising opportunities. Advertising revenue remains stable, while the costs of content creation are shifted onto others.
Legal resistance and its limits
The legal response to Google's practices is already underway on several levels. The Independent Publishers Alliance has filed a complaint with the EU Commission, accusing Google of abusing its market power and causing publishers significant traffic, readership, and revenue losses. The allegation is that AI summaries are created using publishers' materials without adequately involving the publishers.
At the same time, the European Commission is intensively investigating the impact of Google's AI overviews. The focus is on copyright infringement, antitrust abuse, and the protection of media diversity. It is examining whether Google is violating the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the European Media Freedom Act.
But legal remedies are reaching their limits. Google can argue that the content is being used as part of its "search function," which is difficult to challenge under existing laws. Furthermore, the regulatory processes are lengthy, while Google is continually expanding its AI integration.
The future of the Internet without traffic-based business models
These developments indicate that traffic-based business models may have reached their end. Dennis Ballwieser, editor-in-chief of the "Apotheken-Umschau" (pharmacy magazine), has already declared that reach-oriented business models are dead. This assessment is supported by current data.
Successful content providers will have to rely on alternative strategies in the future. These include building direct relationships with users through newsletters and apps, developing paid content models, and licensing content to AI companies. Some publishers are already experimenting with Google's new "Offerwall" feature, which enables direct payments from users.
For SEO managers, this means a complete reorientation of their strategies. Instead of focusing on pure visibility, they must focus on brand mentions in AI responses. The goal is no longer the click, but the brand mention in AI overviews. Companies must learn that they can receive less traffic but greater visibility in AI systems.
The role of AI visibility in the new era
A new area is already emerging: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). SEO experts like David Konitzny argue that a good SEO strategy continues to form the foundation for AI visibility. Keyword clustering, website structure, and content depth also contribute to AI visibility, either in the form of brand mentions or as sources.
However, this creates new conflicts of interest. While SEO managers are in favor of AI crawlers capturing as much content as possible, CEOs are often skeptical, as AI ultimately "steals" the content, and the traffic decline is directly related to this. Some companies are already blocking GPT bots, which further increases the complexity of the situation.
Why the crisis is self-inflicted
The current crisis isn't Google's fault alone, but the result of years of poor decisions in the content and SEO industry. Too many players relied on short-term tactics instead of sustainable strategies. Website operators became dependent on a single traffic channel without diversifying.
The SEO industry contributed to the devaluation of its own discipline by spreading half-baked knowledge and superficial methods. Content marketing was often misused as a cheap means of generating traffic rather than creating real value for users. These developments provided Google with the perfect pretext to reshape the system in its favor.
At the same time, publishers and website operators failed to develop alternative business models in a timely manner. They remained in the comfort zone of free Google traffic without recognizing the risks of this dependence. When Google then changed the rules, they were defenseless.
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The outlook: An Internet in transition
The future of the internet will look different from what we've known for the past two decades. The old model of "free" content, financed by advertising and Google traffic, is no longer viable. It's being replaced by new forms of monetization and user relationships.
Companies that want to survive must rethink quickly. This means investing in their own channels, more direct user relationships, and new ways of creating value. SEO won't disappear, but its role will fundamentally change. Instead of traffic generation, optimization for AI visibility will be the focus in the future.
For the SEO industry itself, this means a long-overdue professionalization. The era of superficial tricks and quick fixes is over. What's needed are strategic consultants who can support companies in their transition to the new digital reality.
Current developments are painful, but they are forcing the industry to undergo a necessary realignment. Those who recognize the signs of the times and act in a timely manner have a chance of success in the new digital landscape. Those who cling to the old models, on the other hand, will be overwhelmed by the developments.
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