Clicking Into Nowhere: Where Will Web Traffic Go in 2026?
The Google Zero effect is just getting started.
A few weeks in, 2026 is already hitting best of times/worst of times vibes. I just returned from my 20-somethingth CES, and unlike recent years, I thought the energy was great. Lots of interesting products, and real technological progress in the things that matter, like new chips from Intel and AMD, and -- of course -- lots of cool new laptops. (Robots....remain a work in progress.)
But no sooner did I land back in NYC, than the foundations of the media industry continued to crumble. A widely shared article in the Guardian, published just after CES, laid it out with brutal clarity:
“Media companies expect web traffic to their sites from online searches to plummet over the next three years, as AI summaries and chatbots change the way consumers use the internet.”
The Guardian article adds that, “Media executives around the world fear search engine referrals will fall by 43% over three years.” That’s on top of the 50% or more traffic drops some publishers have already seen over the past 12-24 months.
There are a couple of ways writers, editors, publishers, and the rest of the content ecosystem can respond to this crisis. And make no mistake, this is a crisis, and it’s continuing to draw down what resources are left in an already hollowed-out media industry.
I generally take a long view, as I’ve been doing this since before web traffic was a thing. And it looks like I’ll be here after, as well, if the Google Zero train keeps rolling. One thing I’ve come to realize over all that time is that even as the media biz faces crisis after crisis, the core of what we do doesn’t change. It may evolve, but it doesn’t change. And that core mission is to create things -- articles, videos, newsletters, podcasts, etc. -- that either inform, educate, or entertain. Sometimes all three.
The same basic advice I gave people years ago feels truer than ever. The real metric isn’t pageviews or CPMs, or watch time. Those change constantly. Some years it’s raw pageview traffic that’s important. Some years its unique visitors. Or signups. Or some other metric. (AI citations!)
[One aside: As a longtime media industry middle manager, no matter what metric you’re succeeding at, someone higher in the food chain will always insist that it’s actually some *other* metric that’s really important.]
The goal is to create something that a reader/viewer/listener can consume and feel like their time and attention was well-spent. That’s it. That’s the gig.
Did you learn something interesting from this article? Did you have fun watching this video? Did this how-to help solve a problem? Whatever the specific input and output, the one metric that will never change is: Does the audience feel we made good use of their time?
Create something that a reader/viewer/listener can consume and feel like their time and attention was well-spent. That’s it. That’s the gig.
Stick to that as the underlying premise and no matter the platform, no matter the metric, you’ll be ahead of the algorithm-chasing hacks.
Next time, I’ll talk a bit about what I think the post-Google/post-search media landscape looks like, and what might actually work for media creators going forward.
What was cool at CES 2026?
This felt like the first post-Covid year where CES was (mostly) back to normal. Better than normal, even. It’s hard to quantify, but unscientifically, the vibe was “good.” People seemed happy to be there.
There were actual important new tech announcements, not just vaporware hype. That’s especially true for the not-flashy but important world of chips, with major new silicon from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm (plus Nvidia talking about its Blackwell successor chip).
AI was a huge topic, but in many cases, focused around practical examples and the on-device horsepower we’ll need to power them. That’s the real thing to watch for in the next few years -- cloud-based AI apps (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.) are fine for chatbotting, but more and more AI work will need to happen on your device, whether it’s a laptop, smart wearable, or an industrial robot arm.
But there was also room for fun gadgets at CES. I put together a list of some faves for Micro Center News, but here are a few highlights.
Lenovo Legion Rollable prototype
Following up the ThinkBook Rollable from last year, this gaming laptop version takes a standard 16-inch screen and expands it on-demand to an ultrawide display, measuring up to 24-inches diagonally. Ultrawide screens are great for gaming, but take up a ton of room. I’d love to see this in a standalone gaming monitor as well.
Kojima’s Asus line
Hideo Kojima Productions (KJP) designed a line of new Asus gaming products, anchored around a Flow Z13 Windows hybrid. There’s also a headset, mouse, and awesome-looking attache case, all modeled after the visual language of games like Death Stranding. I hear these will be limited edition and are expected to sell out quickly. I also hear we’ll have them in-person at Micro Center stores, so stay tuned.
The return of Dell’s XPS line: Only a year after it was sunsetted, along with other Dell brands, the XPS is back. One of my longtime fave laptop lines, and I’m pleased to see it return.
Razer’s Ava AI companion: It’s a fun, hopefully inexpensive, AI accessory that doesn’t really make sense until you see it in person. Yes, it’s a holographic-ish AI avatar that lives in a bottle on your desk. Like several other AI devices I saw at CES, this has a camera and mic built in -- multi-modal AI is table stakes now.
HP EliteBoard G1a: There’s really nothing about this clever mini-PC that you couldn’t do last year or the year before. It just needed someone to say, “hey, let’s put a motherboard, CPU, RAM, etc. inside a keyboard.” Reminds me of Intel’s Compute Stick devices from about a decade ago.
Read more:See everything my team and I checked out at CES over at Micro Center News
The Cheat Sheet
Read my NYT-reviewed gaming history book here: The Tetris Effect
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