Comment Re:Time for site devs (Score 3, Insightful) 82
In past times there was a symbiotic relationship. Presumably you put things on the web so that they might be seen. Whatever resources search crawlers consumed, you got visibility in exchange. Even with stuff like Google books, if really invested a lot in the content letting google run ads while people read a chapter of your book, still ultimately translated into some book sales or profile raising citations etc.
The AI model stuff breaks a lot of this. Even if the agent does cite/link you as part of its RAG/MCP process for most users the synthesized response is all they are after so they are not encouraged to visit your site at all. Oddly model collapse and hulicinations might help here, if people become convinced they have to check the agents work all the time because it is so unreliable. Never mind that makes the agent useless in the first place. That has never stopped software people from piling more layers on before.