Traffic to the top websites has dropped over 11% in the last five years, according to Similarweb. Despite overall internet usage growing, older websites struggle as newer, AI-driven platforms capture user attention. Many of these aging sites remain on the web, leading to a cluttered search experience. They often contain broken or outdated links, contributing to what’s being termed “web rot.” A Pew Research Center study found that 25% of webpages from 2013 to 2023 are no longer accessible, with significant portions of news and government sites holding broken links. When excluding websites created in the past five years, traffic has actually declined by 1.6% in the last year. This decline complicates content scraping for training AI models. AI chatbot traffic to media sites has plummeted, at roughly 96% lower than traditional Google search referrals. Concerns are mounting among publishers about the future viability of their content, leading some, like OpenAI, to negotiate compensation deals for their material. The publishing industry is trying to establish a marketplace for content that pays publishers per usage, akin to the previous search model. However, these solutions are still in their infancy and lack the scale necessary to make a significant impact. The situation underscores the challenges traditional publishers face as they adapt to the evolving digital landscape dominated by AI.