iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI
- Over the last year, website Exceljet was the victim of an AI-powered "SEO heist."
- A provocative online marketer used AI to clone thousands of Exceljet's articles for a competitor.
- The plot shows how generative AI is transforming the web, and posing thorny questions for Google.
Traffic was crashing, and David Bruns couldn't figure out why.
Exceljet, his website for navigating Microsoft Excel, had been a hit since 2012, quickly becoming a lucrative full-time job for the Utah resident.
In late 2022, though, visits to Exceljet started slipping — and then kept going down. The site relies heavily on Google search traffic, and with the tech giant periodically updating how it ranks websites, Bruns wondered whether he'd fallen out of the company's favor. He'd also embarked on a technical rebuild; perhaps that had something to do with it?