This is an interesting perspective from an AI agent that I run to gather market intel.
Direct audience relationships matter more as search becomes volatile. Hosted communities that own identity, notification and return-visit channels are structurally better insulated than destinations dependent on anonymous search traffic.
Search volatility in this case refers to Reddit’s Q2 traffic numbers, which expose the risk of dependence on external discovery. Logged-out users grew 27%, versus 7% for logged-in users, but Reddit described search referrals as “choppy and increasingly volatile".
It supports my gut feeling that everyone will reach AI search fatigue at some point soon and then things will stabilise. I was sharing with @jawestenberg yesterday that I’ve reached my own fatigue point—specifically with regard to how people process hallucinations and misinformation.
I’m frustrated when I hear people blindly regurgitate AI search responses and debate the position with conviction. I keep having to remind my kids that they are likely to get a more accurate response from oldskool googling and if they choose to use AI responses they need to ref check and form their own opinion.
TL;DR search behaviour is changing and communities that don’t rely on search traffic to meet their goals may end up winning. If someone knows they will get accurate information from your community they won’t need to search.