The internet and the web are changing in ways that can be hard to follow. The short version is that using web search is no longer the best way to get the content you actually want.
The rise of AI tools and the way that the internet search business is changing means you’re most likely to get whatever information serves the best interest of advertisers or the companies running the search engines. Which means it’s time to change tactics—the age of the newsletter has returned.
The main way people used to find information or whatever content they were looking for was to engage with a search engine. Search engines like Google, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo! operated pretty much like the web version of a phonebook. They “crawled” the web, taking note of every website they could find, and then tried to match your keywords to the websites that best fit them.
One of the biggest breakthroughs for web search was Google’s PageRank (named for Larry Page, not web pages) which ranked websites based on the number and quality of links that pointed to them from other sites. This really improved the quality of web results, and it’s the main reason that Google is such a giant today.
However, this algorithmic approach to web searches also kicked off SEO or Search Engine Optimization which is a fancy way of saying you’re trying to game the algorithm of a search engine to put your website higher up the search rankings.
Today, this relentless algorithmic arms race has resulted in, for example, the “for you” feed on social media platforms, and the Google Discover feed, where some seemingly mystic machine intelligence decides what websites and articles you’ll probably want to see. Based on a profile built using some potentially privacy-iffy methods we’ve all learned to live with.
As for search engines, well, you don’t just get the ranked results of pages based on your search terms. That’s all pushed way down the page. Instead, you get AI overviews that have effectively stolen the content from websites and present it to you right on the search results page. You’ll see sponsored links, and other feed-like results.
So are these feeds serving your results that are in your best interest, or in the best interest of someone else. Are you the customer, or are you the product being sold to the highest bidder? This is why people are turning to privacy-first search engines or even paying for premium search to ensure they get the best results for them, and not the results a third-party wants them to see.
My former colleague Chris Hoffman, who can always tell which way the wind is blowing, decided to start a Windows newsletter instead of staying in the traditional blogging business. That’s good enough for me when it comes to accepting that things are not as they were on the web.
Newsletters Put You Back in Control
While these are both great strategies to take back some of the control that’s been taken away from you, another rising solution is the humble newsletter.
Of course, we have our own highly-successful How-To Geek Newsletter, which is how thousands of our readers stay informed of what we publish, but many sites are now pushing newsletter subscriptions, and you shouldn’t just dismiss them out of hand.
A newsletter lets a website develop a direct relationship with its visitors and readers. It means that a human being is curating the best content of that site and sending it to your inbox at regular intervals. With a newsletter you can quickly check at a glance if there are relevant stories and either bookmark them or read them.
There’s no doomscrolling, and you won’t end up wasting a bunch of time on content that an algorithm pegged to your very specific profile. Many sites, including ours, have multiple newsletters that focus on specific topics or types of content, so that let’s you refine what you see even more.
The Internet at Human Scale
A newsletter feels more like a conversation with someone, and most newsletters are written and compiled by a person, not a computer. In our case we have dedicated newsletter compilers, and all the stories on this site are written by real people.
This is something that’s going to become a rarity over the next few years, as more AI-generated content floods the web. So it really makes sense to cut out the middleman and establish a relationship with sites that you feel match your vibe the best.
To me, it feels more like the blogosphere of the old open web. Plus, a newsletter really cuts down on the noise, and it’s something I can read at my own pace instead of opening another social media app for the tenth time today, just to see that I once again have no notifications.
How to Make the Switch
So how can you make the switch? The simple part is just signing up for the newsletters you want. This usually involves nothing more than providing your email address and flipping a few toggles to indicate your preferences.
As to which sites to subscribe to—well, that’s your prerogative. If you find yourself on the same website over and over again, well you might as well create an account and sign up for the newsletter.
I like the TechCrunch newsletter, Bloomberg has some great tech-focused newsletters, and as someone who loves cutting-edge science and technology, I can’t leave out The Download by MIT.
Most newsletters have a free tier, but at the same time you might have the option of paying for a subscription, which could come with all sorts of perks, depending on the site. But, that’s usually completely optional, so why not give the newsletter life a try?
