The Death Spiral of the Internet (And How to Stay Visible in the Shadows)

There’s a moment when the air shifts, and though you don’t see the collapse, you can feel it coming. The internet, our endless digital dreamscape of discovery, is in that moment. AI-driven search is tightening its grip, and it’s changing everything. The organic chaos of rising and falling content is suffocating under the weight of algorithms designed to be final answers to half-formed questions.

Mordy Oberstein captures this moment with razor precision: "Users don't see searchGPT or ChatGPT as a portal to 'more.' They don't see it as a vehicle to getting to where they ultimately want to go. It's an end. It's a place to get the information, not a facilitator."

Think about that. Search was once a journey, a map with trails leading deeper into new ideas and insights. But now? The journey stops cold.

According to a Semrush study, navigational queries—the act of seeking and finding new paths through the web—remain a Google stronghold. But informational queries are increasingly satisfied by AI tools without a single click. The result is devastatingly simple:

No clicks, no discovery. No discovery, no chance for visibility.

The numbers back this up. ChatGPT's use as a primary search engine surged from 1% to 8% in just months, while Google’s dominance slipped from 80% to 74%. 

The stakes couldn’t be higher. And here’s where it gets darker: AI doesn't crave better content. It thrives on predictable content, structured, machine-readable, stripped of nuance and wonder. Oberstein lays it bare: "LLMs don't need that better content in the same way a traditional search engine does. They think their regurgitation is the better content."

And here we are. The journey halts at a synthetic wall of second-hand ideas. If we’re not careful, this moment becomes the internet’s graveyard.

Why SEI Matters in This New Reality

But here’s the twist: you don’t fight the machine by mimicking it. You don’t out-optimise an algorithm built to regurgitate. Instead, you become unmissable, a lighthouse cutting through the haze, a beacon of trust, truth, and insight.

It’s not about “winning” search anymore. It’s about dominating influence. The SEI (Search Engine Influence) philosophy rewrites the rulebook:

• You don’t chase keywords—you own the narrative.
• You don’t just rank—you matter to those who find you.

This is where humans outlast the machine. As Leigh Baker of Terminology reminds us: "The essence of compelling content lies in its human elements—personal experiences, emotions, and storytelling—that foster genuine connections with audiences."

Machines can’t grasp gravity. They don’t understand the weight of a story that cuts to the bone. You do.

The Five Rules of Staying Visible in the Shadows

1. Write for Humans, Not for Bots The biggest lie in digital marketing is that better content wins. In truth, better connection wins. Write words that stop people in their tracks, that linger in the mind like echoes. Machines scan, humans feel. Speak to the heart.
2. Be Everywhere They Aren’t The AI-driven world isn’t designed for serendipity. People won’t find you by wandering through search anymore. So, build your presence in places AI doesn’t reach: community groups, podcasts, collaborations, events. Create discovery paths outside the algorithm.
3. Structure to Survive the Machine It’s a necessary evil. Machines still need structure. Use schema markup, FAQs, and machine-readable data, but don’t live or die by them. The goal is not to appease the machine but to support the human experience that keeps you relevant.
4. Offline Presence is Gold Mordy Oberstein spells it out: "If I were a company, I would heavily invest in ensuring I have an offline presence to go with my online presence."
5. Measure What Matters Traffic is a dying metric. AI models are swallowing it whole. Shift your focus to brand mentions, engagement, citations, and direct searches. Influence isn’t about page views—it’s about being the answer people seek before they even search.

The Era of Silent Failure

Failure won’t announce itself with crashing servers or a sudden drop in rankings. It will come quietly. It will look like content nobody reads, websites nobody clicks, and opportunities that slip through your fingers because you believed the game hadn’t changed.

It’s already happening. The machine is reprogramming the rules faster than you can blink.

But here’s the truth no AI can erase: Influence always survives.

The SEI Method isn’t about clinging to the old world of SEO. It’s about adapting to the new reality with purpose. Influence transcends platforms and algorithms. Those who understand that will thrive in the digital silence while others fade into obscurity.

The golden age of the internet may be dying. But you don’t have to die with it.

So, the question isn’t: "How do I get more traffic?" It’s: "How do I stay visible when the machine stops moving?"

That’s a game worth playing.

[This post was inspired by a passionate LinkedIn post from Mordy Oberstein . As always he speaks his truth and delivers it with conviction. Thanks Mordy.]

  Author: Ian Hopkinson 

    Digital Madman, Founder of Terminology and Mad Scientist Digital

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    Websites: Terminology / / Mad Scientist / / Hopkinson Creative