Creative Chaos
Google Isn't Your Competitor Anymore
Last month I noticed something strange.
A founder published a detailed article.
Good research.
Good writing.
Good SEO.
The kind of article that would have generated traffic for years.
It got almost none.
The content wasn’t the problem.
The distribution channel was.
For the last twenty years, founders built businesses around a simple assumption:
If people have questions, they search.
That assumption is becoming dangerous.
Today, more people are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and whatever launches next week.
The search is happening.
The click often isn’t.
Most founders haven’t adjusted to this yet.
They’re still competing for rankings.
The winners are starting to compete for citations.
That sounds subtle.
It’s not.
A SaaS founder I spoke with recently showed me something interesting.
Their blog traffic was falling.
Yet trial signups were increasing.
At first it made no sense.
Less traffic should mean fewer customers.
When they asked new users how they found the product, a surprising number gave nearly identical answers.
“ChatGPT recommended you.”
Not Google.
Not Reddit.
Not social media.
ChatGPT.
The company had accidentally become part of the AI training and retrieval ecosystem because they had published original research, unique data, and opinionated content that other websites referenced.
The lesson is bigger than one company.
AI systems don’t reward the same content strategies that Google rewarded.
Google often rewarded the best page.
AI often rewards the best source.
Those are not always the same thing.
That’s why I’m seeing a growing gap between companies that summarize information and companies that create information.
The summarizers are struggling.
The creators are getting cited.
Suppose you build software for recruiters.
Most founders would write:
“10 Recruiting Tips For 2026.”
That’s easy to generate.
AI can produce thousands of versions of that article in seconds.
Now imagine instead you analyze 5,000 job descriptions and publish what skills are actually increasing in demand.
Suddenly you’re no longer competing with content.
You’re competing with data.
And data is much harder to replicate.
The same pattern is showing up everywhere.
Founders who publish opinions are outperforming founders who publish explanations.
Founders who publish research are outperforming founders who publish opinions.
Founders who publish tools are outperforming founders who publish research.
Notice the progression.
Every step moves further away from content that can be generated instantly.
Closer to content that can only be created through access, experience, or effort.
I suspect the next generation of distribution won’t belong to the best marketers.
It will belong to the best source creators.
Because AI has made information abundant.
Original information remains scarce.
If I were starting from zero today, I wouldn’t ask:
“How do I rank on Google?”
I’d ask:
“What can I publish that doesn’t exist anywhere else?”
The first question is becoming crowded.
The second is becoming a moat.
— Tom
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Fantastic post, Tom. Thank you for sharing. Can you speak to the demand of the recommended posting schedule for blogging and social media and how that gets reconciled with the fact that genuine opinions and quality data take time to compile? Many sources say to build a following and "get attention" right now requires posting 3-5 times a week (completely unachievable and irresponsible, IMO). Any insights on this?