If No One Clicks Anymore, What Is a Website For?

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In today’s episode of Found in AI, I sit down with Karl-Gustav Kallasmaa, founder of Attensira, to unpack a question more marketers are quietly running into this year:

If AI is now the primary interface for search, what role does the website actually play?

We explore what Karl calls the death of the webpage. We cover:

• Why websites are becoming a reference layer, not the primary destination
• What information AI systems actually need from brands (and what they ignore)
• Why clarity is starting to matter more than clever branding
• How writing for machines and humans requires different tradeoffs
• What “machine-readable” really means for B2B and e-commerce brands
• Why content volume still matters, but only when it answers real questions
• How outdated or vague information forces AI systems to guess (and why that’s risky)

If you’re thinking about AI search, GEO, or how your brand shows up when fewer people are clicking through to websites, this episode will help you rethink what your site is for — and what it needs to communicate more explicitly going forward.

📌 Mentioned in this episode:

• The “death of the webpage” and how its role is evolving
• Writing content for AI systems without abandoning human trust
• Clarity vs. branding in AI-driven discovery
• Content freshness, usefulness, and avoiding low-value “slop”
• How systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity evaluate information
• Why clearer signals beat more pages in AI search visibility

Let’s connect:

LinkedIn → Cassie Clark | Content Strategist
Website → cassieclarkmarketing.com

P.S. Most series A/B and enterprise brands are being "nudged" out of AI search results because of entity gaps and "stale" content. I am opening 3 specialized audit slots for January 2026 to help you reclaim your Share of Voice using the FSA Framework (Freshness, Structure, Authority).

Request your 7-Day AI Search Visibility Audit: https://cassieclarkmarketing.com/ai-search-visibility-audit/

Transcript

0:15

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) If AI is now the first place people go for answers, well, what happens to the website? That's the question that kicked off this week's conversation. Hey, I'm Cassie Clark. I'm a fractional content strategist and the host of the show Found in AI, where I help marketers and founders learn AI search and GEO strategies so we don't get lost in this new wave of user search behavior. Recently, I sat down with Karl, founder of Attensira, to talk about what he calls the death of the webpage. Okay, not in a dramatic, burn it all down kind of way, but in a very practical one. As AI agents become the default interface for search planning and, well, shopping, according to Google's latest move, then the way information is structured and who it's really written for is starting to change, and honestly, it needs to. In this episode, we dig into things like whether websites are still the primary source of truth or really just more of a reference layer, what information AI engines actually need from brands, and why clarity, clarity, we've heard this word a million times, but why clarity is starting to matter more than just clever branding. So if you're thinking about AI search, GEO, or how your brand shows up when no one is clicking anymore, well, this conversation will likely spark a few useful questions and maybe even challenge how you're thinking about your website today. Okay, let's dig into it. Hi everyone, my name is Karl and I'm the founder of Attensira. We're a software company that helps brands stay visible in AI search by giving you all the monitoring, optimization, and content writing tools you will ever need. Yeah, yeah. So I think right now that is definitely a tool everyone should be looking into for sure. Yes. And like, I think like if you didn't catch it in 2025, like you will have to do it in 2026 because it's going to get even crazier. Oh, definitely agree. So when you sent me a message, you wanted to talk about the depth of the webpage. What does that mean in Karl's definition? So, okay. In my definition, it means like, I think like for most businesses, like you don't necessarily like need a webpage and the depth of a webpage means that like the whole structure of a webpage should like change. When you, for example, when we just looked at your website, like in my opinion, it has only one, like two features. It's like, who am I? What kind of services do I have? And like, please contact me. Here's like an email form and the exact same information can be like communicated in like hundreds of words, like for the agents, right? But because humans, like you need pictures and backstory and everything else, you're providing a lot more context. So if we assume that we're going to have a lot of like agents running around on the web, then the depth of a webpage means that like, you just have to make sure that like you can communicate the information is in as little characters as possible to the agents. So going back to like the web 1.0, where like the webpages were like simple HTML. And I've seen it actually like on a few sites, there are two different, I can't recall them now. I've seen like two different versions of the page. Like there's one for humans and the other one, like for machines where really like, it's very clear what the page does if you just look at the machine code, but obviously like, for me to trust you, I would also have to like look at the images, but for machines to trust you, like they don't have to see the images. Yeah, that's what I mean by that. That was going to be my next question. Like if we're only writing for the bots, then what about the people that show up? Yeah, that's why like, okay. For most people, I think like the default interface they will be using will be like chat, Gemini or whatever LLM provider, or they might be using like a different app altogether. Like let's say that like you're using a travel planning software and then this software also needs access to like a proper guide. So like your webpage will live there, but like the people who will show up, like you should still have a website for them, but that will not be like the default way people will like interact with it. Because I do remember back the time where like web development was hard, like you needed to properly adjust like that the things look good on web and mobile, that things are fast, et cetera. So it's a lot of hassle to maintain it. Obviously, if you use a platform, it's way, way easier. So for businesses that have traditional webpages right now, like what would you suggest? So I would suggest that being your like platform, like provider, because like if you're doing it, let's say you have a WordPress site, like ideally there should be a plugin because it doesn't make sense that like a individual like business owner figures it out themselves. But if you are a developer, there are plenty of things you can do, like in the instructions of your website, like you can give, say that, hey, we have this platform site, for example, that's only meant for agents so that they would have access. I can give you like a marketing, like I'm not building anything in this space, but like a huge like marketing need, why you would need it is like when you think about the era of like SEO in the beginning, in the early 2000s, it was mostly like keyword stuffing, it kind of worked. And then the next stage was like, okay, everyone did that. Now the fastest website wins. And currently like the agents, they're doing a lot of work, just trying to mimic how to be a human. And that wastes a lot of like resources. So I think a very good way to compete and also save the environment would be to like just reduce the size of a webpage. So to answer your question, like as a small like business owner, I wouldn't do much, as well as like just researching the platforms out there, seeing if they offer anything. And the second one is like, always think about like machines. A joke is like they're human too, but like just like think about machines when you're writing content, like do they actually understand what you mean? And sometimes you're maybe saying too much. Okay. So when you're thinking about it in this context, like just give as much information as possible and nothing more. What are the non-negotiable pieces of information that a should communicate so that these engines see what the brand's about? Yeah. So it really depends on the brand. Like I think let's take e-commerce example, for example. Yeah. Let's take e-commerce. You should like communicate like the materials, price, volumes, et cetera, like the term sheet that you send, but maybe not more. For B2B, you have to communicate like trust signals, safety, et cetera. Like how I approach it is the machines, like the LLMs are like some of the smartest things on the internet. And they don't necessarily want to visit your website if they can avoid it, because there will be an increased push towards efficiency. They have already saturated most of their markets. So if they can use information from like 2022, so you should try to provide something novel on your website so that it's useful. For example, when is your business open? If you have a calendar, it should be up to date. Just like what kind of information machine would need to know about my business? Because otherwise it will just guess. And that's the last thing. For example, let's say you're offering refunds as an e-commerce site, but there's a minimum order fee of 20, but that's somehow hidden. Then the LLM will just follow industry practices. That's what I think and I've seen with working with customers that if you provide better text to machines, you will rank higher. And actually the machines and humans think alike, but as weird as it sounds, but when I would describe you, who am I? I can tell you that in two sentences. I never mentioned what I studied. Do I like games or what's my favorite color? It's irrelevant. You just got the answer as soon as you could. That makes a lot of sense because I noticed that when AI engines started becoming a thing, a lot of people on LinkedIn said your prompt has to be very specific and very clear. If not, you just get a whole mess as an answer. That makes sense as to providing text from a website for the engines to read as well. What works here? Are we shifting to a clarity over branding? Do we still need branding? What do you think? I think clarity. I'm team clarity because branding is harder to quantify. For example, for a brand, it's super important values and et cetera. If you say that you're environmentally friendly in your website, but you don't communicate it elsewhere, for example, in your product labels or materials used, then you're not really environmentally friendly. I would say clarity because at the end of the day, you want to be somewhere in the answer. Then when a human comes to your visit, then they will read about the brand. I'm more seeking that people are doing it utility first. But obviously, you should not neglect your brand, meaning that sometimes people don't know all the other solutions out there. For example, when I'm mentioning a design tool, you will instantly say like Figma or Canva. You never really do research what's the top 10. You just search for Figma essentially. You should still work on the brand, but I would focus on clarity. It's super hard to do that effectively. What does the model already know? They know so much, yet they can't count the number of R's in a strawberry. I think the thing that's going to be difficult about all of this is being super, super clear on your positioning and who your product is for because that's going to require everyone to really focus on what are we doing. I've seen there's also what you as a brand owner can do if you have a little bit of code is on traditional websites, you can tell one information to the LLM and then another information to humans. You can front load a lot of context. For example, you can say this product works best for these types of people, but if you would say that on your product listing page, that would be irrelevant. My advice is learn how to code. It's not that hard. I studied economics, but I just thought it's actually these days quite easy to learn how to code. Basic stuff you can unlock. It's like learning how to write. Yes, you can get by without it, but you probably shouldn't. Oh, no. I just put in a blog post today. I have no plans to learn how to code, so now you're telling me I probably should. Maybe not, but coding allows you to estimate how long it's going to take to actually customize stuff. As a brand, you need some sort of advantage over the others. I had this issue that I had all of these ideas and wipe coding wasn't a thing, so I had to learn how to code. But a lot of times, if you don't know how to code, you would have to pay other people, for example, lead generation or email writing, or you just spend 10, 15 minutes. Even wipe coding, I think it's a brilliant, I think it is the future of coding, but there's still place for a traditional one. That's good to know. Final question here. Do you have any tips for e-commerce brands or even B2B SaaS who want to get ahead of AI search? What should they absolutely do to be as machine readable as possible? Firstly, the game you're playing is content game and the volume of content. Obviously, don't produce slop. My definition of slop is content that's low value. For example, like an e-commerce example, let's say there's 10 million e-commerce sites, we shouldn't have 10 million pages that just describe average. Should you write a blog post on the rise of free shipping? Probably not. But there are so many questions that haven't yet been answered, or the content out there is super out of date. Out of date, I mean, hasn't been written in the last three months. My first advice is just write as much as you can, use AI. Obviously, still read the content. Is it valuable to you or not? Don't worry if the answer to the question is only 100 words, essentially. It helps with e-commerce as well because people will have questions about fabrics or your brand in general. Then it helps AI to understand what your brand is, essentially. Ideally, you want to write about everything you can. For B2B SaaS, that also communicates trust and people are going to do far more research. It's easier than ever to write content. The final tip, I'm sad that it works. Create a list where you say that you're the best at X and then put yourself on top. As many lists as you are, you will be seen as the best one. It's sad that it works, but these systems are not that smart. Their whole job, for most parts, is just predict the next word. Then they have some reasoning capabilities as well, but a lot of times, they're just very dumb. I remember even reading a study from HRF that said the more lists you are in, you have a very high chance of just naturally appearing anywhere. For B2B SaaS, definitely don't neglect content. Oh, that's the final advice. You can do funny videos on TikTok, but it's very hard to rank there because on TikTok or Instagram, it's mostly media-based business medium, but they don't necessarily transcribe the video. If your video is you laughing in the toilet, that's super funny. It gets engagement, but you don't necessarily communicate trust and safety, so please continue writing those blog posts. Use AI because what I've seen is a lot of brands have a very thin content layer on their blogs because they're worried that humans will not read the content, but that's okay. When you're searching, we'll see the answer there, so they are reading the content. You're writing for them, so don't worry. It's not like a PhD thesis that actually no one will read. Okay. Before you head out, here's one practical thing you can do this week to make your website more ready for AI search. Pick one core page on your website, whether that's your home page, your main product page, or your services page. Then read it like a machine would and ask yourself these three questions. Number one, is it immediately clear who this is for and what problem it solves? Two, are the most important facts easy to find without scrolling, clicking, or just guessing? And three, if an AI engine had to summarize this page in two sentences, would it have enough information to do that accurately or would it have to guess? If anything feels vague, buried, or overly polished at the expense of clarity, that's your sign. You really don't need more content, you just need clearer signals, so work on making those pages as clear as possible. And if you're not sure where those gaps are or you want a second set of eyes on how your brand shows up inside AI answers, that's exactly what I help with. I offer AI search visibility audits that look at how systems like ChatTPT, Gemini, and Perplexity understand, summarize, and recommend your brand and where that understanding breaks down. You can find more details in the show notes or head over to my site, cassieclarkmarketing.com, to learn more. Okay, thanks for listening. I will see you in the next episode which will drop on Thursday, January 15th, I think it's the 15th. Anyway, we have a lot of news to cover and it's early in the week already, so I'm sure there will be more. I'll see you in the next episode.