Online business and marketing lessons from what's working out there, researched and handed to you every Thursday.
The thing eating your blog traffic isn't a competitor
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There’s a version of the plan that sounds really good. You write blog posts. They rank on Google. People find you, some of them buy. It’s called content marketing, it’s been the go-to advice for ten years, and if you’ve been told to “just start a blog,” this is basically what they meant. Thing is, the math changed. SparkToro published research earlier this year using Similarweb data, and one number really got my attention. 68% of Google searches in 2026 end without anyone clicking through to a website. Two of every three. Someone types something into Google, reads what Google shows them, and closes the tab. No website gets the visit. Two years ago it was 60%. Now it's 68%. And then there’s AI Overviews, which now show up on more than 20% of all searches. When they do, click-through rates drop by nearly 60%. So here’s what’s actually happening. Someone searches “how to remove red wine stains from a white carpet.” Google answers it in the AI Overview. They read the answer, maybe nod, close the tab. Your blog post, which ranked on page one and took you four hours to write, got zero clicks. I’m not saying blogging is worthless. It’s not. But that version where you write for Google and just sit around hoping people come, that way is getting tougher way quicker than what most of the tips you are reading actually tell you. Thing is, Google was never the actual target. Your audience was. And getting to your audience in 2026 is faster if you show up where they already are, like Threads, YouTube, Pinterest, or TikTok, (and yes, even ChatGPT search now), rather than putting out posts and hoping Google decides to point someone to you. If you’re just starting out, before you spend six months writing posts for a search engine that may or may not deliver them, spend some time thinking about where your first hundred readers are actually going to come from. It probably isn’t a Google search. Talk soon, Minosh P.S. Also, if you're starting a blog anyway, this stops you from making the mistakes most beginners make in month one before they even realize it. |
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Online business and marketing lessons from what's working out there, researched and handed to you every Thursday.
Most of us were told the same thing at the start. Don’t go too niche, you’ll cut down your market. Sell to more people and you’ll get more sales. Sounds logical. But real life is starting to look different, maybe a lot. Shopify surveyed 18,000 shoppers across nine countries for its holiday report, and 65% said they’re likely to use AI for at least one shopping task this season. That’s not Google, not scrolling Amazon for an hour. They just describe what they need to ChatGPT or whatever they...
There’s a salt works in Malden, West Virginia. Population about 3,000 and surrounded by the Appalachian Mountains, sitting on top of an ancient ocean buried underground for hundreds of millions of years. A sister and brother revived their family’s salt business there in 2013. Everything is done by hand, brine pumped up from 350 feet below, dried in sun houses, raked, packaged, shipped right from the farm. A staff of fewer than a dozen people. Their salt ships to high-end restaurants in Tokyo...
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