Did Your Traffic Drop? + Rocket Joins Hosting.com

I dunno about you, but I’m laboring on Labor Day. 🤣 As I usually do. If you’re here in the US, I do hope you enjoy your holiday today, whether you’re laboring… or not.

In today’s issue, I want to talk about dropping web traffic. Specifically, due to AI summaries on search engines. It is a thing a lot of people are seeing across the board. the question is…. what do you do about it? We’ll discuss.

We also need to talk about the big shakeup in the hosting world that happened last week and hits close to home…. Rocket.net joining forces with hosting.com.

Rocket is my primary hosting partner. And when I get a whiff of an acquisition, bad things come up. I’ve seen this kind of thing end up badly way too many times.

So, we have to talk about what this could mean.

OK, let’s get started….

How To Respond To Dropping Traffic Due To AI Summaries

There’s probably a pretty good chance that your site’s traffic has been dropping. I know mine has. And we all know that search algorithms change all the time. But…

A MAJOR driver of this has been increased usage of AI. And in context of search specifically, the AI summaries.

I use AI all the time. And I use AI summaries at the top of the search results pretty frequently, too. I know I’m not alone. And what I do less of… is clicking on search results.

This is a trend. The Guardian had a story about how AI summaries are causing a “devastating” drop in audiences. Reports of as much as a 56% drop in click-through rates for desktop and 48% on mobile.

Now, what would make this “devastating”? I know I sure as hell am not devastated by it. 😇 But, publishers and businesses that rely 100% on organic search traffic to survive are going to be hurting.

So, what do you do about it?

Complaining isn’t going to help. This trend is happening whether you like it or not. So, the only thing you CAN control is how you respond.

And frankly, I think this is a good wake-up call for site owners on how to become more self-sufficient and sustainable.

But, let’s talk about how you can respond to all this.

#1 – Diversify Your Channels

If all you do is produce written content and post it to a blog, AI can chew and summarize that all day long. But, things like email newsletters, podcasts, online communities, social media and videos are all different channels. Search is one channel… all those others are separate.

Think about multiple touchpoints and different formats. Not just written articles.

#2 – Creating Content That Can’t Be Summarized

AI summaries are fine for the “cliff notes” version. But there’s no depth there. If you also put out blog posts that have no depth, then you’re just noise.

So, you should be looking to go deeper with your content. Create multi-modal content, deeper analysis, experience-based perspective. It is OK to post less often and instead make the stuff you do publish really count.

#3 – Be Personable

Forming that relationship with your audience transcends all AI. People only use AI summaries when they have no idea who anybody is. It is impersonal by nature. But, when people get to KNOW you, LIKE you and TRUST you…. they will come back over and over again.

AI can’t duplicate you.

So, write naturally. Make videos so people can see you. Write personal, relatable and helpful emails for your best subscribers.

#4 – Build Recurring Revenue Model

If my income was directly proportional to my organic traffic coming in from Google, I’d be screwed. But, it isn’t. In fact, while my traffic has declined over the last couple years, my income has actually tripled.

This is because my core offer – Concierge services – is a productized service on a monthly subscription plan. Not only that… by embracing the service side of things so strongly, I work with less people but I work with them over time and fairly closely.

When you have those kinds of relationships with clients, I care a lot less about how much traffic I’m getting.

Because it is about relationships with real people.

#5 – Use AI Yourself

AI isn’t just something we have to deal with. It is one hell of a useful tool. So, if it is going to benefit searchers, you should be using it to your own benefit as well.

Use AI to improve content workflows. Use it to speed things up. Use AI as a magnifier for yourself so that you up your own game.

Concierge Client Update

New Additions to The Toolkit

I have officially added two new tools to the Concierge Toolkit, available to clients:

First up…. WS Form. I mentioned this one a couple of issues ago. This is a very advanced and powerful forms plugin that can do pretty much anything you can throw at it. It has tons of add-ons for specific situations as well. While I am (and will remain) a happy user of Fluent Forms, the truth is that there are some situations where Fluent Forms can’t do what you need to do and custom coding would be required. But, where Fluent Forms can’t, WSForm probably can. And that’s why I had to pick up an agency license and add it to the Toolkit.

Next up… Fluent Affiliate. Yes, this one is early because it isn’t due to actually officially launch to the public until tomorrow. 😎 But, I’ve already got it and it is available to clients from this point forward.

Fluent Affiliate is, as you may guess, a tool to allow you to run your own affiliate program. It comes with the fast user interface typical of the “Fluent” tools, as well as the gorgeous integrations. And I’m prodding them along to soon add a non-monetary referral tracking option which we could use as a newsletter referral system (in conjunction with something like Fluent Forms). Newsletter referral platforms are usually pretty stupidly expensive, so if we could do it “in house” using these tools, it would be a very powerful combo.

AffiliateWP has been the usual “go to” for clients who need an affiliate program, but it is a bloated Awesome Motive mess. So, I always used it reluctantly. With Fluent Affiliate officially out, I now have my new go-to tool for clients needing an affiliate program.

During their launch period, you will be able to buy Fluent Affiliate and get your own lifetime license. They ONLY do that during launch windows. But, again, if you’re a client, there’s no need to buy your own license unless you want to. 😇

WordPress News & Updates

Wordcamp US Was Last Week. I wasn’t there, but it looks like the event went off well without any of the “spicy” noise from Mullenweg. 😇 Speaking of Mullenweg, you can catch his keynote here…. as well as full live streams of all sessions on their Youtube channel. It was also announced that next year’s WordCamp US will take place in Phoenix. In August. Can you say…. hot? 🥵 But, its a dry heat, they say. 🤣

More trademark noise? It looks like the Simple Cloudflare Turnstile plugin received notice of trademark violation from WordPress.org because it has the name “Cloudflare Turnstile” in it. He may need to rename it. I dunno… sometimes trademarks are stupid. 🤷‍♂️ On a related noted, the USPTO has rejected the WordPress Foundation’s bid to trademark the phrases “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress”. It might not be over, though, since the rejection appears to be based on some technicalities which might be fixable. I think it such phrases should not be trademarked, but we’ll see what happens.

Helpful 404 Pages. Katie Keith, from Barn2 Plugins, posted on X how they’ve re-done their 404 error pages to act more as signposts. The idea was to accomodate how AI bots end up hallucinating and sending people into URLs which don’t exist. But, this is indeed an interesting idea. To make the 404 page not actually look like an error, but more like a customized landing page. I may implement this, too.

WordCamp US 2025. People from across the world of WordPress are descending on Portland, OR this week for WordCamp US. I’m sure there will be some news that comes out of it. Hopefully nothing as dramatic as last year. 🤣 I myself am not there, but we’ll see about next year.

Fluent Forms 6.1 Release. Fluent Forms got a nice update last week, introducing a brand new Report module. Basically, the report module is like putting analytics on your forms, enabling you to easily view all kinds of insights on the performance of your forms. Pretty cool!

Fluent Booking Updated. The team also released FluentBooking 1.9, enabling coupon codes to book events as well as UTM tracking. Personally, I usually just integrate FluentBooking into Woocommerce for paid sessions, but this is indeed handy if you’re selling paid sessions with FluentBooking directly. See the full announcement post.

Pie Calendar Update. Pie Calendar, which is my preference for running an event calendar on your website, has just launched their 1.3.8 update which introduces new event views. You can now list events with images, a new list upcoming view, and more. Check out the full announcement here.

OttoKit Free Plan Is Upgraded. Ottokit (formerly SureTriggers) had it’s free plan upgraded to include more. Now, the free plan can do 20 workflows, 1 workspace, 1 WordPress connection. It also includes some new core apps, including FTP, file extract, file convert, etc. Honestly, Ottokit looks to have matured incredibly. Might be worth checking out as an alternative to the likes of Zapier and Make.com.

Top WordPress Host Support Compared. Craylor has done a great Youtube video comparing the support of the top WordPress hosts, such as BigScoots, Rocket, Kinsta, WP Engine, WordPress.com, etc. Very well done video! Looks like BigScoots, Rocket and Kinsta came out on top.

Rocket.Net Joins Hosting.com. Should We Worry?

As you probably know, my primary hosting partner for Concierge is Rocket.net. Because I will use only the best for my clients. Might sound cheesy, but it is also out of self-interest because using a quality host like this also means less hassle for me as the person managing all these sites.

So, it clearly got my attention when I saw the announcement last week that Rocket.net was joining up with hosting.com.

Like… bruh. They got acquired? Is this the beginning of the end of what makes Rocket so great?

I dunno about you, but when a tool I love gets acquired, my first instinct is…. “uh oh”. I’ve watched it happen too many times.

But, when I looked into this, it doesn’t look like this is an acquisition. They’re calling it a “strategic partnership”. Rocket’s CEO, Ben Gabler, will be moving in to the role as Chief Product Officer for hosting.com and will be working to roll out the Rocket.net platform to the hosting.com ecosystem.

As mentioned in an earlier issue, Jessica Frick is now the general manager for Rocket. And, she’s great and I have no doubt will do great things with Rocket.

Now, I wasn’t the only one with concerns here. To Ben’s credit, he started an AMA in the Admin Bar Facebook group. And there were a LOT of doubts expressed.

One commenter says “How long will Rocket operate independently before it just becomes Hosting (dot) com?”

And Kyle (the founder of The Admin Bar) even said: “TL;DR, another one bites the dust — Rocket sold to Hosting.com”.

But, Ben is adamant. Rocket is NOT being folded into hosting.com and will remain an independent brand. This is about making Rocket even better, not making it a shadow of itself. As he said. “It will NOT be integrated in to hosting.com, period. If I wanted to just kill my baby and retire on a beach, I had 10+ opportunities to do so.”

Hosting.com, for it’s part, is a hosting conglomerate and formerly known as A2 Hosting. World Hosting Group acquired A2 and rebranded it into hosting.com. WHG has acquired many different hosts in different regions of the world as part of it’s expansion, bringing it all under the centralized hosting.com brand. Rocket.net now becomes the “managed hosting for WordPress” arm of hosting.com. On the hosting.com page for this, they clearly refer to this as a partnership, not an acquisition.

So, I choose to take Ben at his word. If something changes, I will be upfront with you about it. It would be hard not to be nervous about it, though, were it not for my trust in Ben Gabler.

I’ve seen too many good things messed up once shareholders and private equity get involved. People with the best of intentions can lose control of their “baby” in these situations. I can only hope that the terms of this deal prohibit that from happening.

As I said on that thread in the Admin Bar…

🤞

I cross my fingers and hope Ben is right. Color me…. cautiously optimistic. 😇 As long as Rocket doesn’t water down what has made it work so well, I can see how great things could come now with the added capital resources they will now have to perfect the Rocket platform further.

I, for one, have certain things I REALLY think need to. be built into the Rocket platform. And I’ve been waiting patiently. Maybe we can get faster action on those things now.