Are we adapting to a broken internet or helping break it?

About the episode

The internet used to make a simple promise: create something valuable, get discovered, and earn the visit. That promise is disappearing as Google answers questions on the results page, social platforms suppress outbound links, and AI tools summarize sources without sending them traffic. Rand Fishkin, CEO and cofounder of SparkToro, joins Rachel Truair to ask whether adapting to this zero-click era also helps cement it. Rand explains why attribution rewards the platforms that capture demand rather than the channels that create it, what marketers should measure instead, and why falling traffic may push the industry back toward brand, creativity, and work people genuinely remember.

The question underneath it all: when every rational marketing decision sends us deeper into closed platforms, are we surviving a broken internet – or helping break it?

From the conversation

• How Google Ads can take credit for demand created by a podcast, PR, content, or an event – and why that distorts the next budget decision
• Why zero-click search has accelerated since 2024 as Google, social networks, and AI tools increasingly answer without sending traffic
• What replaces traffic and attribution: finding where an audience pays attention, creating for that environment, and measuring lift and incrementality
• Why the zero-click era may revive brand building, creative risk, and the kinds of marketing that dashboards struggle to prove
• Why websites remain essential even as visits decline, and why Rand now believes “don’t build your home on rented land” is outdated advice