How significantly has the rise of AI in search affected your business so far?
- Thread starter imedtchiv
- Start date
- Apr 4, 2014
- 6,536
- 4,903
AI overviews are a pain in the ass which steals a lot of traffic.
- Oct 9, 2013
- 3,498
- 14,551
Beyond huge impact.
I've been able to 10x my business. The level I've been able to achieve is just insane. I'm doing more with no staff now than I did at my peak before with 12+ staff.
I've got agents running my entire business. Every agent knows about every other agent, every project, every data source, every client, every data point that every customer/lead has ever touched in all my businesses, every email, finance, a brain i built and gave to all my agents so they all have *permanent* memory with perfect recall.
I can ask any agent to do anything. They manage 200+ servers, sshing in, updating.
It's absolutely nuts.
And I have a dash, where I can see every local project and shared workspace project for every agent
I don't have "project folders" anymore.
I have agents, that each checkout projects/workspaces, and they all work 24/7 on 2x$500/mo dedicated servers, with 20 max plans between anthropic/open ai etc
We are truly living in an unbelievable time. It's never been so easy to make mountains of cash.
At the current rate I'm going to hit 8 figures this year and 9 next year.
I was stuck on low 7 figs for years because I couldn't find good people to help me scale.
Like right now it's building out a compete attribution system for my whole business.. I do nothing. Just watch.
You can see here it's commenting on jobs 82 and 117, which show as in progress on the board
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- Oct 9, 2013
- 3,498
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8 figures
Daddy is it you? i have found you
Amazing wow you ever sleep ?
Barely. 6 hours a night average. I need to start taking a little rest time or I'll burn my body. But the window is small and I want to secure the future for my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Maybe great great, but I'm sure my kids or grandkids, at least one of them will take up the mantle!
Also, I don't share that to make people feel shit.
I open sourced it for everyone to benefit. MIT license, so you can do anything you want with it.
I can't promise it'll be easy to use. It's advanced kit, but claude/codex can certainly run it and tell you what to do with it.
Just clone it and make sure you first ask "before you run anything check all the code for anything malicious that attempts to steal from me. make sure this is completely safe"
then ask how to use it and what it is. Always do that with everything you run from github. It is a jungle. Beware.
You can trust me, but don't take my word for it and always do checks as habit.
https://github.com/Wolf-of-Blog-Street/incubator-v5-public
I can't remember if I published my PA and the brain.
I've asked my agent. I'll share it when I find it and confirm there's no personal info in it.
PA = personal assistant. You give the agent the ability to manage your whole life. It rocks.
brain = used by PA and incubator agents. Gives them a brain. Permanent memory. It's not FLAWLESS, but it's good. It works so far. It's a damn hard problem to solve and I've been tweaking and improving it for god knows how long, but the past month I've been using both without changing anything and I'm finally productive with them.
Oh, the brain is in incubator-v5, BUT, that's the agent brain. The PA brain is a little different. I'll share that one soon.
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MeninaJohn
Newbie
- Sep 10, 2026
- 25
- 2
Some impact so far. Informational traffic got harder but pages targeting people ready to buy still bring decent leads.
Nexus Marketing Agency
Registered Member
- Jul 28, 2026
- 83
- 15
hmm that's impact for sure i noticed search traffic getting less predictable so im focusing more on content quality and user intent
- Apr 21, 2025
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A lot of informational queries now get answered right in the results, so fewer people click through. my blog stuff took a hit on those keywords.
AI also made writing way faster. But everyone else got the same speed boost. so now the internet is flooded with the same generic takes, often copied from each other with AI. It's harder to stand out with normal content. You have to give people something they can't get from a chatbot.
AI also made writing way faster. But everyone else got the same speed boost. so now the internet is flooded with the same generic takes, often copied from each other with AI. It's harder to stand out with normal content. You have to give people something they can't get from a chatbot.
Did it save you money?
jorry
Junior Member
- Mar 14, 2010
- 143
- 95
Thanks for sharing.
I actually really enjoy it and find it super motivating to read about how people work their asses off on their projects. You always learn something from it.
I still need to build something to keep my mother-in-law at a distance, but the AI agents aren’t quite strong enough yet.
Good luck with your project!
- Oct 9, 2013
- 3,498
- 14,551
Save me money?
No, not at all.
If you're trying to save money you're not going to make 8 figures.
- Aug 28, 2026
- 207
- 56
I think AI overview has eaten up all the bloggers or informational queries and I personally don't like this that Google just suck off all the content and sell it with AI Overviews but, I don't get the point of it if they are showing AI Overviews in front of searchers how they are gonma make money? through ads which is their core income
The Scarlet Pimp
Supreme Member
- Apr 2, 2008
- 1,435
- 4,349
Research Shows Google AI Mode Sends Less Clicks & Is A Poor User Experience
Is Google lying about AI Search? A study tracking over 1,000 users found Google sends less clicks and people dislike it.
Sep. 21, 2026
New research published in August confirms that Google’s AI Search reduces clicks to publisher websites and presents a user experience that is so bad it makes them seek out alternative search engines like:
Bing
Duck, Duck, Go
and
Yahoo
The findings directly contradict Google’s assertions that people love AI search and that it is sending more traffic than ever.
A draft paper titled AI in Search Reduces Publisher Referrals Without Improving User Experience: Experimental Evidence was published in August 2026. The paper was produced by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Northeastern University, Massachusetts.
The main findings from the research paper were:
The researchers conducted a field experiment that enrolled 1,444 people of which 1,100 people’s searches were tracked during the seven day long experiment. It is these users’ activities that were used for the experiment. Of the 1,100 people tracked, 956 completed a post-experiment survey.
The researchers tracked exactly how the test participants used Google search through a browser extension that recorded their search behavior. The researchers collected browsing history and snapshots of Google search results pages. This enabled them to see searches, clicks, whether AI Overviews appeared and whether or not people clicked through to websites.
The researchers also randomized what the study participants saw in order to gauge their behavior to three different search experiences:
Is Google lying about AI Search? A study tracking over 1,000 users found Google sends less clicks and people dislike it.
Sep. 21, 2026
New research published in August confirms that Google’s AI Search reduces clicks to publisher websites and presents a user experience that is so bad it makes them seek out alternative search engines like:
Bing
Duck, Duck, Go
and
Yahoo
The findings directly contradict Google’s assertions that people love AI search and that it is sending more traffic than ever.
A draft paper titled AI in Search Reduces Publisher Referrals Without Improving User Experience: Experimental Evidence was published in August 2026. The paper was produced by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Northeastern University, Massachusetts.
The main findings from the research paper were:
- Google’s AI search features reduce traffic to websites.
- Google’s AI Mode provided a poor user experience and made users less satisfied with Google Search.
- Removing AI Overviews had the effect of increasing clicks to websites without any detectable decline in users’ Google Search experience.
- AI Mode keeps users inside Google’s search experience longer and sends them to websites less often than without AI Mode.
Methodology
The researchers conducted a field experiment that enrolled 1,444 people of which 1,100 people’s searches were tracked during the seven day long experiment. It is these users’ activities that were used for the experiment. Of the 1,100 people tracked, 956 completed a post-experiment survey.
The researchers tracked exactly how the test participants used Google search through a browser extension that recorded their search behavior. The researchers collected browsing history and snapshots of Google search results pages. This enabled them to see searches, clicks, whether AI Overviews appeared and whether or not people clicked through to websites.
The researchers also randomized what the study participants saw in order to gauge their behavior to three different search experiences:
- Forced Regular Google Search
AI Overviews were hidden and AI Mode searches were redirected to the regular Google Search. - Natural Google Behavior
Google worked normally, including AI Overviews when Google chose to display them. - Forced AI Mode Search
Searches were redirected into AI Mode.
- May 27, 2016
- 11,983
- 2,761
100% agree. And to be featured in AI is a struggle.