Many content marketers today might not remember the early days of the web – the days before LinkedIn (founded in 2003) or, even farther back, Google (established in 1998). But we are in some ways reliving a bit of that experience today, as generative AI features such as Google’s AI Overviews and AI-powered search tools such as Perplexity.ai increasingly upend the ways in which people look for information.

During the first five years after the World Wide Web became available to the public in 1993, Google didn’t exist. But a couple of million websites had already sprung up during that time, offering businesses a new way to connect with potential customers. So how did pre-Google organisations spread the word about their online presence and the products and services they offered? They often relied on printed newsletters and physical brand publications, direct mail, in-person events and PR targeting newspapers, magazines and trade journals.

As AI tools today put a damper on clicking search-generated links, those old-school strategies are getting new attention from content-creating professionals in search of an audience.

“I think that we need to think carefully about what the media world looked like in the first decade of the web,” a CEO of a local nonprofit news organisation said in a survey for the Columbia Journalism Review’s ‘Journalism Zero’ report, published in May 2025. “We were building digital audiences but we did not really have social media yet per se.”

The CEO continued: “That’s a very illuminating decade because that is essentially what we’re going back to right now, where the social platforms, they’re just not our friends at all. We’ve already reached that post-social era, if not the post-search era. And so in this post-platform era, we have to look at that first decade.”

And that’s exactly what many content marketers and other publishers are now doing.

“We need to exchange the current playbook for a future-proof content marketing strategy that works no matter what Google ate for lunch that day,” said Ali Orlando Wert, director of content marketing and brand at Databox, during a talk at Content Marketing World 2024.

Wert advised content marketers to rethink their content and SEO strategies in light of the fact that “high search volume does NOT equate to high-value traffic”. There’s little reason to chase SEO leadership for broad, top-of-funnel content, she said. Instead, marketers need to put more energy into longer, in-depth content, especially for mid-funnel and bottom of the funnel, and focus more on user intent than on high-volume keywords. They should also expand their thinking beyond the usual channels and consider strategies such as direct mail, virtual and in-person events, industry partnerships and referral programmes.

A survey by The Verge and Vox Media found that US consumers are losing trust in Google and other big tech platforms, with ‘more people flocking to AI chatbots, niche communities and platforms like TikTok’.

And whatever communities they seek, interesting, engaging and interactive content is critical. Another key takeaway from the survey: “The future of community building is in going back to the basics. Brands and platforms that can foster these personal, human-scale interactions are going to be the winners.”

“Direct audience engagement is key to surviving Google Zero,” notes Digital Content Next. It described how some publishers are working to build direct audience relationships through strategies ranging from texting campaigns and hyperlocal content to email newsletters, virtual events and real-world breakfast gatherings.

The changes we’re seeing today in online content marketing have been supercharged by GenAI chatbots and relatively new features such as Google’s AI Overviews. But the overall trend has been a long time coming, driven by everything from privacy laws and the expanding use of ad blockers to the decline of third-party cookies and the rise of dark social. As Rand Fishkin, SEO OG and cofounder of the  software company SparkToro, writes, all of these things combined mean that – in some ways – ‘marketing is going back to the 20th century’:

“Digital marketing in 2024 is a lot like marketing in 1964,” he writes. “It is getting the right message that appeals to the right people in the right places and at the right time to the right audience.”