Designer stunned after discovering insidious reason his business rapidly disappeared: 'Is that what is happening?'

"he told The Cool Down that his ranking on Google Search served as free advertising that helped him secure jobs. In the past, he had received many emails from studios and independent artists who wanted to work with him after discovering his site on Google. But over the last year, he noticed his inbox count had lowered significantly. When he came across the report in July, he pieced together that it was most likely due to Google's AI Overview summaries."

"Scott Wetterschneider was absent-mindedly scrolling through his feed on the social platform X in July when he came across a post that made his stomach drop. It was a Pew Research Center report on how Google's AI Overviews changed how people used the search engine. Wetterschneider immediately checked his inbox and suddenly pieced together a mystery that had been on his mind for months: His content that he had spent the last 10 years working on had been scraped."

Scott Wetterschneider, a virtual toy designer, built a website in 2011 and added helpful how-to content in 2024 to answer common questions for aspiring designers. His Google Search rankings previously generated inquiries and client leads without advertising. A Pew Research report on Google's AI Overviews prompted him to inspect his inbox and confirm that Google had scraped his content to create AI summary results. Those AI Overviews now appear at the top of searches, replacing direct visits to his site and sharply reducing inquiries. The loss of organic traffic has eliminated a source of clients and jeopardized income for niche content creators.

Read at The Cool Down