So I was thinking about this. My traffic dropped off massively on my sites around the same time. I have tried several things to fix it but nothing has.

I know AI has been around longer than just the last few years. People have been using it online since at least 2012 I would say.

Is there a chance that the traffic I was getting wasn't real but some form of AI the entire time? I mean I know real people were behind some of it but it just seems weird that it suddenly just all disappears.

I remember reading something maybe 10 or so years ago about bots accounting for 50% if not more of web traffic now. I would imagine with AI, it has gotten even worse but I would wager that a lot of the bots were AI this whole time, scraping the internet for information.

23 hours ago, Cozmic said:

I remember reading something maybe 10 or so years ago about bots accounting for 50% if not more of web traffic now. I would imagine with AI, it has gotten even worse but I would wager that a lot of the bots were AI this whole time, scraping the internet for information.

On 6/22/2026 at 10:01 AM, TJW1984 said:

People have been using it online since at least 2012 I would say.

I mean this is entirely possible. I think there was an increase in people using the internet around 2010 because of social media and younger people trying to become streamers and Youtubers. I think a second boost came in 2020 from the pandemic. I think it has since dropped off a bit. Yeah, sure more people are shopping online now but look at the gaming industry post covid. They are having to fired thousands of people because they hired when gaming sales increased from people being stuck at home.

If you had poor bounce rates this could impact traffic by signaling to search engines that your content is not any good.

I am not sure how AI would cause this unless the majority of your traffic was AI and it suddenly stopped.