This editorial appeared in the July 10th, 2025, issue of the Topline newsletter.
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Ever watched a seed-stage startup torch fifteen million dollars on social handles that don’t even carry its name? Cluely just did, spinning up ten thousand TikTok accounts that repost its shorts around the clock. The stunt looks reckless until you notice how fast Google’s old growth engine is burning down.
Eighteen months ago, first place in Google meant first dibs on clicks. Instead, Google’s new AI summaries now sit above the normal search results and grab roughly a third of the clicks that used to go to the top website. In the past year alone, Ahrefs data indicates the share of people clicking on helpful articles has dropped from 5.6 % to 3.1 %. And even when someone does reach your page, Google’s AI Mode hides where they came from, so the visit shows up in your reports as “Direct” with no source listed.
In short, the channel that once justified its own line item now looks like a black box with the lid welded shut.
On the supply side, the web is revolting. In June, Cloudflare—reverse proxy for one-fifth of the public internet—launched Pay Per Crawl, blocking AI bots by default and letting publishers charge fractions of a cent for every URL an LLM fetches. More than one million domains enabled the block in the first week.
Discovery is collapsing on one flank, measurement on the next, and the data pipe itself now comes with a meter.
First, clicks disappear. AI modules cannibalize organic traffic long before the search engine results page loads, taking predictable pipeline with them.
Second, attribution breaks. Referrer-free AI links dump visits into the direct bucket, erasing evidence that search helped at all and gutting budget credibility overnight.
Third, the crawl gets monetized. Pay-per-fetch policies hand publishers leverage they haven’t seen since 2007, forcing brands to pick a data-rights stance—or have one imposed.
Translation: traffic isn’t free, performance SEO isn’t cleanly trackable, and organic reach no longer guarantees visibility.
Enter Cluely’s swarm.
Startup darling Cluely, just spent a big portion of its recent $15 million venture round to launch a “swarm” of 10,000 TikTok accounts that endlessly repost its short videos and bypass search altogether.
The marketing math is blunt. One studio shoot yields dozens of snackable video clips, and ten thousand micro-megaphones repost those clips with different personalities, time zones, and angles.
In practice, that equation produced 24 million cumulative views in thirty days and a 38 percent week-over-week bump in branded searches—without buying a single Google ad. Provocative hooks such as “cheat with AI on everything” spark comment-section warfare, juicing watch time and earned mentions.
If Google hides your links, TikTok will happily surface your arguments. For B2B leaders, the lesson is sharp: a well-managed UGC hive forms a parallel distribution rail, independent of the referrer string and infinitely remixable.
Cluely isn’t the only tech company taking bold marketing bets.
Cloudflare turned what looked like a technical robots-tag tweak into a populist rally for creator compensation, grabbing front-page ink in The Wall Street Journal and airtime on CNBC. By framing “Pay Per Crawl” as a moral stand, the company sold more bot-management subscriptions and rewrote the Overton window: suddenly even mid-market SaaS outfits ask whether open-by-default is naïve.
This “policy stance” playbook is lifted almost verbatim from modern political campaign strategy. Political strategists learned long ago that the fastest way to dominate an attention cycle is to articulate a sharp, emotionally charged position that forces every other actor—press, opponents, voters—to respond, even if they disagree.
In 2016 Donald Trump turned maximalist positions on immigration and trade into an estimated $2 billion in free media coverage, dwarfing every rival’s paid spend and forcing news outlets—and his opponents—to address his agenda on his terms. At the opposite end of the spectrum, New York City democratic-socialist Zohran Mamdani rode an uncompromising “freeze the rent” demand to a viral TikTok campaign that racked up tens of millions of views, dominated local headlines, and compelled real-estate-friendly politicians—including incumbent mayor Eric Adams—to respond publicly to his proposal.
Both examples reveal the same underlying mechanics: stake out a clear, emotionally resonant position, repeat it relentlessly in language built for social video, and let the press amplify the resulting conflict because conflict drives clicks and shares.
When Cloudflare declares “Content Independence Day,” blocking AI scrapers unless they pay, it is executing that exact maneuver—turning a technical header tweak into a moral fight for creator rights and, in the process, forcing every stakeholder to take a side. The tactic is straight out of modern campaigning: frame the debate so sharply that silence becomes impossible and every rebuttal, whether hostile or supportive, only widens the spotlight.
Winning in the AI-search epoch hinges on brand visibility that transcends clicks. Marketers must now treat SEO as a reputational asset—measured by branded-search lift, LLM citations, and short-video share-of-voice—while reserving hard conversion targets for lower-funnel real estate.
That visibility gains force only if a creator flywheel turns in the background. A disciplined roster of a few dozen customer-creators, fueled with prompts and product access, can atomize every webinar, demo, or AMA into a perpetual stream of short-form clips that drown out algorithmic chance through sheer volume.
Combine owned UGC distribution with a clear policy stance and you get a moat in a referrer-free world. One feeds reach, the other secures leverage, and together they counter the triple gut punch of disappearing clicks, invisible attribution, and monetized crawls.
The next couple of quarters will decide whether you own your narrative or beg algorithms for crumbs. Stand up a creator hive, stake a policy flag, and teach finance to love brand KPIs. Because when a seed-stage company floods TikTok with ten thousand loudspeakers, it isn’t chasing vanity metrics—it’s buying insulation from a search ecosystem that no longer cares about your link.
The lesson for go-to-market leaders? Act now—because in an AI-filtered marketplace, only the brands bold enough to seize attention will be remembered.