- Author
- Daniel Stanica (founder of Monetize Better and Competico agency)
- Published
- 26 August 2026
- Kind
- Self-published cohort study of 100 blogs, using third-party traffic estimates
- Original
- danielstanica.com/posts/Great-Blogging-Collapse
- Subject
- Writing and the small web
- Themes
- What lasts, How things break
What it is
Daniel Stanica is an SEO and digital-asset adviser who has built and sold content sites. The author picked 100 blogs listed in 2022 as six-figure earners. The post tracks their organic search traffic to 2026 and explains the pattern.
What it says
- The median blog lost 85 percent of organic search traffic. Only 21 of 100 kept growing.
- 55 blogs were gutted, wiped out or dead. 20 lost 99 percent or more, and 12 reached zero.
- Total traffic fell about a third. Three food sites hide the drop; the other 97 fell 63 percent.
- Niche medians: parenting plus 108 percent, DIY plus 2, food minus 44, finance minus 99.
- It argues that survivors offered firsthand experience a machine cannot summarize, which it calls irreplaceability.
- AI Overviews cut clicks to the top result by about 58 percent, citing Ahrefs.
- The post advises building an owned audience, such as email. Search is only an acquisition channel.
What evidence it gives
The evidence is a Google Sheet of 100 blogs with Semrush estimates. Estimates cover April 2022 and April 2026. The author gives named examples with before and after visits. AI citation figures come from other studies the post cites. The post calls it a cohort study, not a representative sample.
Interests and limits
The author sells SEO and AI visibility advice and owned one blog in the dataset. Traffic figures are third-party estimates, not site analytics. The 100 blogs were picked from income-report roundups, so the sample is not random. The post argues causes such as Google updates and AI, but does not test them. One commenter, Jeremy of Living the Dream, corrected an income figure the post cited. The post warns niche medians do not mean any niche was safe.