Cloudflare CEO: AI Is Killing The Business Model Of The Web, SEO On Safari Has Dropped For The First Time In 22 Years Because..., Are SEOs F**cked?

0:02According to the Cloudflare CEO, AI is killing the business model of the web. okay so what what's the backstory with this one because i think we have so many threads that are related to this um so let's let's let's give some context there's no real backstory it was more so article on uh search engine land i think that was quoting him and there he's pretty much just saying that ai is killing you know the model that we're familiar with and i don't know if ai is actually killing the typical web-based business model. But I would say that technology, not just AI, actually, I would go back. Let's not even say technology.

0:45I would say platforms are killing the traditional business model of the web. Because if you look at all the platform providers out there, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn, everyone's goal these days is to keep people on platform. I think it was YouTube last year that had$24 million in US commerce sales on their platform. 28, you said million. Yeah, 24, 28 million, something like that. Users? No, dollars, dollars of transactions. Okay. In platform commerce. They're not really focusing on it, right? You mean it's new, it's nascent. Yes. You look at Instagram, TikTok, of course they have much more, but the traditional model of the web is you get people, you send them off to your website you you do marketing you get clicks you send them off to your website and then you go from there yeah i think the thing that's really shifted is ai is making it where it's more brand related kind of like television but they're bringing that to the web right with the brand mentions and i think the second one and the second one's bigger than the first one is platforms are trying to keep people on their own platform all the time for every single thing.

1:52In essence, they're copying the Asian model of the all-in-one app. The US apps have not gotten there yet. And I don't think they'll be fully quote unquote all-in-one due to monopolistic laws and rules. But I do believe, you know, Facebook is added commerce there. Why won't they? And you know, you can collect leads on Facebook. Why can't you talk to someone from a company through their WhatsApp application integrated within Instagram? And now all of a sudden you're talking to corporations, you're hiring them and you're communicating, you start cutting out tools like the slacks, the teams, and they start building all this stuff within platform.

2:30So the other thing too, is agents are ultimately going to be making a lot of decisions. So for example, if you want to code an app from scratch, let's say you use Replit or something, ultimately you and I don't want to figure out where am I going to host this? How am I going to deploy this? What am I going to use X, Y, and Z? So the agents are going to be making that call. And so I don't know how that's going to look. Maybe there's agents marketing to agents, but there's going to be, there's going to need to be something there that makes the decisions for you. And we've kind of talked about this already, but we believe that website traffic is going to continue to decline over time.

2:59Not saying you should abandon your website right now. I think you should still have a website no matter what. Um, but it is changing. I mean, just earlier this week, I was just talking to just multiple different meetings. There was, I met with my YPO forum. So that's, let's just call that a CEO group. Right. And, um, I think yesterday I was FaceTiming with, with one of my friends who, you know, and he's like, yeah, I haven't used Google this week. And then earlier when I was talking to that CEO group, most people are, they tend to be defaulting to LLMs more, right? Now, that being said, I was at a co-working place yesterday and I saw like an older dude, you know, with Google pulling up and I saw his behavior.

3:30I'm like, it's just, but behavior is evolving over time. And then this actually brings us over to the fact that Apple said first time ever in 22 years that SEO traffic, more specifically Google traffic on Safari has dropped for the first time in 22 years. They've seen Google traffic drop in 22 years. Correct. First time ever in 22 years. But according to Datos, more people are starting to use Google. And if you look at the numbers Google has released, Google has 13-ish, or let's use annual. They went from, or actually let's use daily. They went from 8-ish billion searches a day, 8.5, to around 13.6 to 13.7 billion searches a day.

4:12I believe it. I think, I just, I don't think they're going to be as dominant as they once were. That's what I believe. I agree with that. And when I say, and I think we're saying the same thing when it comes to dominance, we're not saying Google's declining. We're saying that people are using multiple platforms to get the answer. Yeah, I think I just maybe you can speak from your back. I think you have said that you still continue to use Google quite a bit. For me, I'm defaulting a lot more. I mean, if you look at my home screen, I've had it like this for a while. But my home screen does have Claude on the left side, which I actually never open.

4:45But the one I open the most right now is ChatGPT. um because it's it's getting better i think it's doing a better job at least for me in terms of searching things and finding solutions for me um and there's just i don't know it just keeps getting better and better so i'm getting like humans are lazy we want things done for us yes the big thing that i'm seeing right now is forget how you use google and and traditional search if you look at your patterns right now for search, they're drastically different than two years ago, for sure. And I think that's a big thing that no one talks about because everyone's like Google's dying.

5:23The data we're seeing, if you even look at their earnings and their ad revenue, they're not dying. Like their numbers are actually going up into the right. But the thing that is dying for Google is they're not getting the new type of searches that people are typing in on, let's say, chat GPT as frequently as Google would hope that they would adapt to Google search, right? If you're typing in specific questions related to sleep or whatnot, or trying to get research done, your search queries aren't two, three word question or keywords. They're whole sentences and some of them may be 20, 30 words.

5:54A lot of people are not typing in those queries into Google. That's where they're missing the boat. Yeah. I actually have this graph over here. So we'll pull this up, but this is just from similar web. This is April 2025 versus March of 2025. So you can see the blue over here. The only one that's gone up month on month, 13 % is ChatGPT, obviously, right? But everyone else down here is declining. So Google down 3.18%. YouTube's down 2.13%. Facebook down 3.5%. So anyway, that's not to say ChatGPT is going to be the big winner long term. I don't even have a prediction for that. I just think that these things happen slowly and then all of a sudden.

6:31They're saying Facebook and Instagram's traffic and TikTok is all down? Correct. Yeah. Wikipedia is down 6%. Reddit's down 3.77%. it's interesting sad the only problem i have with that because we look at a lot of similar web data and we find that and it's not just similar web whether similar web sem rush uber says hrefs a lot of their traffic estimations are just off and they're off substantially um because we have so many people that authenticated with google analytics a lot of times we see chat gbt i'm not we see similar web showing traffic declines when we're actually seeing traffic increases um The big thing for me is I look at earnings calls because the earnings calls end up revealing data from the corporation because these are publicly traded companies.

7:14I don't know for certain if Google's traffic is dying or not, but their revenue is going up and the number of people performing searches are going up. That could be the people who are searching are searching more, but they're getting drop-offs. But my hypothesis is if they're getting more daily searches, in theory, their traffic is going up. I do think ChatGPT is growing faster from a percentage-wise though when it comes to traffic. So this is interesting. This is what you just touched upon. So in-platform clicks over here, this is the green line is Google. So it's moving up, right? This person that put this picture, his name's Tylan Enberger.

7:49So he said, query growth is likely happening because Google is making users click on more in-platform links. So increasing pages per visit for google.com is an indicator that users are spending more clicks within Google's search results since most interactions like paging, refining searches or clicking images, change the URL, but keep visitors on Google's domain. Higher numbers suggest Google's capturing more clicks internally rather than users quickly leaving for other sites. Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean Google, based on that chart, it doesn't mean that Google's necessarily getting more traffic or less traffic.

8:21It could be users clicking more with an app, making up for traffic downfalls. I don't know. I think, look, I think Google's still gonna be a fine business long-term. They've got a lot of data. I mean, they have YouTube, they have Android, they have all these things. Who knows if the DOJ is going to break them up? But I've got something interesting for you. And then we can give everyone kind of a practical take on what to do here. But what I've noticed this week. So from the SEO world yesterday, I talked to a couple of people from a big agency. OK, and funny enough, I'm interviewing a couple of them right now.

8:53They were passed over to me. These are SEO directors at these. I was like, how come all of you are looking to leave this agency right now? They're all from the same company. He's like, they're like, oh, ha ha. because we aren't closing any more SEO deals right now. And it's been a while, right? So we can chalk that up to it's a poor economy, but we can also chalk that up to like the fact that they just aren't doing innovative work anymore and they can't charge those prices. The other thing I'll say too is for the first time, yesterday I kind of half-assed the post on LinkedIn, like, hey, we're looking to hire some killer SEOs.

9:21This is the first time ever I've had so many people hit me up. I've had people hit me up from like these well-known companies. I'm just like, why are all these people hitting me up? I'm like, oh, the job market's a little shaky for SEOs right now. Um, and there was a company that actually poached one of our SEOs recently. And, um, I was talking to my, my, my, my guide, I was poached. And then I was like, tell me about the company that you're going to now. And it is, let's just call it a very boring services company. I'm like, what do you think they're going to have you do there? You're going to be optimizing for traditional SEO and they're scared that they're losing all their traffic right now.

9:51And you're going to have to fix that. And I'm like, you should take the job because all you've known is single grain. I want you to spread your wings. You're going to learn. Right. Um, and maybe you end up starting your own thing afterwards, or maybe you come back to us. Like, I don't know, but I think you should take it, right? Just to see what else is out there. And he's going to do that. But there are desperate poaching attempts happening. And on the other side, there's so many, first time ever, I've seen so many SEOs desperate to find like another home because I think they see the floor is very shaky.

10:17Yes. But when I look at search in general, again, I like looking at data. In 2022, Google's revenue grew to$282 billion. It was a 9.78 % increase over the previous year, 2021. When you look at 2023, Google's revenue increased to$307 billion. It was an 8.68 % increase in revenue. You look at 2024, Google's revenue increased to$350 billion with a 13.87 % growth rate. So they're actually starting to increase in growth rate again. And it just goes to show, yes, a lot of things are shaky in digital marketing, but these platforms are doing better than before. It's just that the tension is getting spread to multiple platforms instead of just one platform.

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13:25It basically describes the paradox where successful companies fail by doing everything right because they have to focus on sustaining what they have right now. And they have to almost ignore disruptive innovations because it screws up their business model because they had this cash printing monopoly, right yeah um let's call it what it is and i think it's a great business um and then it's like because they have to decide what to trade off on they could potentially miss the next wave right so you think about kodak they ignored digital photography um blockbuster dismissed netflix right or nokia missed the smart smartphone shift um microsoft missed mobile right and they kind of got into a little trouble there right um the point is google is in that innovators dilemma right now the good thing is they've got a lot of data gemini is a great model they've got a lot of great products, YouTube and all that.

14:08So I think they might try to ride the wave where they, once they see it really start to switch, maybe that's when they turn it on. Um, but I still think that's a long ways away, but I do think we're starting to see the cracks in the model. And I think they're, they have enough smart people. They have a lot of smart people at the company, um, to help them figure out maybe how to land a plane here. But I don't think search just dies overnight, which, which is people like to blow the stuff up. So they do. I think search is going to change and it already has changed. It's a question of who will be the leader.

14:38And I don't think one person is going to be the leader anymore. I think search is going to turn to social media or be very similar to it. It's the search everywhere optimization thing. Yeah. But if you look at social media, Facebook is no longer the dominant player. I understand meta as a company definitely is, but Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, they all are pretty popular. And in certain segments, some are more popular than others. Like I would say there's more political information on X that I see left and right than I would on other platforms. That could just be user behavior.

15:13But in general, I do believe people on X are more vocal about politics than some of the other platforms out there. Now, if you look at search, it has been Google has been the leader for a very, very long time, and they've controlled the majority of the market share when it comes to traditional search. but now people are searching on social media because if you're looking for a handbag a lot of times people just want to see inspirational images of who has the latest handbag on Instagram and which celebrities are wearing because a lot of people copy these celebrities that's not really traditional search although traditional search has deals like Google has deals with TikTok so they're pulling in information they own YouTube of course so they can pull that in but I think the same thing's going to happen with search in which it's going to be you use google for call it 10 or 20 different use cases use chat gpt for three main use cases and then the list goes on and on where you're like oh i'm gonna use perplexity for this and that and next thing you know it's like social media where you have seven or eight platforms and they specialize in different things dude i'm gonna cancel my perplexity right now you just reminded me i never use it i pay 20 bucks a month for this thing dude that adds up that's 240 dollars a year Dude, it's too much money, man.

16:24But I think this is a net positive because in my mind, when marketing gets harder, it's more of an opportunity for people that adapt or people who adapt. And so if you're willing to adapt, you're willing to learn. And this is what this podcast has always been about. We've been doing this for seven, eight years now. And the thing that this podcast forces us to do is to stay up to date. And it forced, like in business, not even just marketing, in business, you've got to be a relentless learner. And the one thing, the one knock I have on the traditional SEO industry is that they complain instead of trying to get better instead of trying to adapt.

16:53This forces them into that and I'm glad it forces them into that. Yeah, and one other note is when you're adapting, you gotta really look at the data. Like when Eric and I go to events and we ask people who use this Facebook, majority of the room doesn't raise their hands for Facebook. You agree with this, right? I experienced that at most conferences. But if I look at Facebook stock, I understand they have WhatsApp, which doesn't really make them that much revenue. It really is mainly Instagram and Facebook. I don't think Oculus generates much revenue either. But in 2022, their growth declined 1.12%.

17:28They're at$116 billion in revenue. In 2023,$134 billion in revenue with 15 % growth. In 2024,$164 billion in revenue with 21 % growth. Even though people are saying like, oh, Facebook is dying, the numbers and the revenue is showing that it's not dying it's still being used and they're making a killing from this cash cow so just because certain people have opinions on what they think is what's working or what's not working the data in most cases will tell you the true story yep well i'll tell you what i just canceled my perplexity account so that's awesome um yeah here's the other thing i'm just like we we had a demo from uh this this demo request from this company it's like oh um can you can we not do the demo and then can you just send us the deck instead and send us the pricing and i was just like sorry we don't do that so you have to sometimes just put your foot down when people try to do this and they try to change the thing on you why won't you do that because one this guy seems like a tire kicker um he works for a big company but then it's we couldn't find any information on him right um is his email address at that big company it's a company in mexico um i'm just looking at it right now but they don't use linkedin a lot in mexico's f-by-f they don't yes um but when they start to ask for all these things up front i'm just like oh you're just trying to change a lot of this stuff in the beginning it's like this is how it's going to be working with you versus when you talk to like you know a couple companies signed recently um they're just they just fall across and they're just very easy about it we just like it's going to be easier going in the beginning and we're only doing a limited amount of pilots right now so that's not to say we won't entertain these in the future but generally right now we just don't want to deal with people like this who try to change too many things in the beginning even if he's trying to change some things in the beginning if you really believe he works for that corporation because he has that company email address and you don't you know he's not working for a competitor you're better off just sending him the deck and the pricing because what's the worst that's going to happen we don't have a deck oh you don't have it okay now i understand exactly yeah if you had a deck i'm assuming yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like that's two seconds but now i'm just like i'm no like i'll come back yeah i agree with you because you have enough leads yeah to go focus on the ones that fit the framework that you're selling right now yeah but eventually have ai help you create a deck anyway that's it for today guys we'll see you tomorrow