Cloudflare data has exposed significant shifts in web economics as zero-click searches become more prevalent. According to Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s co-founder and CEO, the ratio of content scraped to visitors sent has increased dramatically over recent months.

“Ten years ago, for every two pages that Google would crawl, they would send content creators one visitor,” Prince said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Six months ago, the rate was six pages scraped for every one visitor. Now it’s 15 scrapes for every one visitor.”

Prince attributed this change not to decreased search volume or increased scraping, but to answers appearing directly on search result pages rather than directing users to content creators’ sites.

The data indicates even higher scraping-to-visitor ratios for AI companies. “Six months ago, OpenAI was at 250 scrapes to one visitor. Today, it’s almost 1500 scrapes to one visitor,” Prince reported.

According to him, this trend creates economic challenges for content creators who monetize through advertising or subscriptions, as fewer visitors translate to reduced revenue opportunities.

Outlook for Content Creators

Rather than relying on legal remedies, Prince suggested technological approaches to address these challenges. He also emphasized that original content remains essential: “The fuel that runs these AI engines is original content. That content has to get created in order for these AI engines to work.”

Despite current disruptions, Prince expressed optimism about certain content categories. “If content is just randomly strung together, quick-hitting, headline-first content, I think that is going away. But original content that is actually highly valuable is going to be more valuable in the future.”

He suggested that exclusive, specialized information will remain monetizable: “For that content creator that is doing the hard work to generate that content, I think AI companies are going to value that content. They’re going to be willing to do deals for that content, but it has to be something where there is exclusivity.”