This spring, I started hearing the same thing from multiple clients: paid search was falling off a cliff for a lot of small businesses.
Two things hit at once. First, more buyers are typing into chat assistants instead of a search bar. Second, Google is scrambling to adapt and pushing black-box products that don’t tell you much about what’s working.
If you were coasting on branded keywords and broad match with “good enough” landing pages, you felt it.
Performance Max is the perfect example. It can work. Some of the smartest marketers I know are seeing gains. But it’s a sealed room.
If you don’t run it against a clean control and judge lift at the business level, you’re just moving numbers around a dashboard. The question isn’t “Is my CPA lower inside PMax?” The question is “Did total revenue grow after I turned this on?”
Also watch what it steals. If your brand search and organic drop while platform conversions look great, you didn’t scale. You reshuffled.
AEO/GEO
Meanwhile, websites need a rewrite for how large models actually read. LLMs prefer structure. They digest clear questions and short answers with clean headings. So quit burying your best explanations in a wall of copy.
Pick the 20 questions buyers actually ask before they call you. Put them in Q&A format. Put the short answer first. Link to the deeper detail. Add simple schema where it helps. This isn’t theory. It makes your pages easier for both people and models to quote.
The Rise of Reddit
People are also gaming data sources that feed these models, especially Reddit. If you remember, they struck a deal to license content to OpenAI so they use it heavily.
Of course, people know this now so you’ll see fake threads with planted questions and suspiciously helpful answers. That junk won’t age well.
What does work is showing up as yourself and being useful. If there’s a subreddit where your buyers hang out, answer real questions with real experience. Sign your name. Don’t pitch unless someone asks. If the thread gets replies and saves, you’ll earn attention you didn’t pay for.
The State of Outbound
Outbound is in a strange sweet spot. Tools like Instantly, ZoomInfo, and Apollo now stitch together enrichment and tailored outreach. Some can even hold basic back-and-forth conversations.
It works today, mostly because the volume hasn’t drowned people yet. Use micro-segments and concrete offers. Cap the touch count. When reply rates slip, stop. This window won’t stay open long.
The Long Game
And the long game? You can’t rent trust forever. You need an owned audience that wants to hear from you. Start with a newsletter and a simple private space where you actually talk to people.
Share working notes, publish customer wins, host periodic live Q&A. Invite replies and answer them. Clean your list. Protect deliverability. The bill for rented reach will keep going up. The bill for trust is time and consistency.
Short term, you survive by experimenting through the black boxes and harvesting the wins fast. Long term, you win by becoming the signal your market pays attention to even when the algorithms wobble.
Do both. Build the machine that tests. Build the community that lasts.
Alan