Go Fish Digital's Former Marketing VP Unpacks the 'Publisher's Dilemma' Reshaping the Web

The decision to block AI crawlers is accelerating a new data arms race. But the real story is the "prisoner's dilemma" that almost every publisher faces as a result: give up content for a sliver of visibility, or hold the line and risk total obscurity. Now, some experts say the stakes of that decision are higher than just business. The biggest risk today is training future AI models on an incomplete, biased, and fragmented version of history.

To unpack this new reality, we spoke with an expert in the mechanics of digital discovery. Chris Long, Co-Founder of SEO and GEO company Nectiv and former VP of Marketing at Go Fish Digital, has built his career on advanced SEO. As a speaker at major industry conferences and a contributor to leading publications, Long offers a uniquely technical and strategic take on the evolving relationship between content creators and the algorithms that define their reach. From his perspective, the fragmentation of the digital ecosystem is creating a dangerous power divide.

"The situation leaves medium-to-small publishers in a prisoner's dilemma. There will always be someone willing to give up their content for free if it means a little extra boost in visibility," Long says. While elite publishers negotiate lucrative deals, others are in a much more precarious position, he continues.

• You are what you eat: But the most significant risk is not that some publishers lose, Long explains. It's that the AI models themselves develop a skewed worldview. "If a large enough group of publishers blocks access, OpenAI might only have access to 80% of the web's content instead of 100%. Suddenly, there are gaps in its training data, and the model can't understand the full picture."

For Long, the new rules of search begin with a hard truth: the old metrics are fading. "We're heading into a world where clicks are flat or dropping, and click-through rates are going down—that's not going to change. While that means fewer clicks, the branding opportunity is still there," he says.

• A multimodal reality: As Google integrates AI, publishers must completely rethink what it means to be discovered online, Long continues. "SEOs need to think multimodally and ask: How do I rank in traditional search, in AI Overviews, and in ChatGPT? How do I optimize for platforms like Reddit that feed AI training models?"

• Survival of the fittest: Here, SEOs are uniquely positioned to adapt, he says. "In a world of AI search, SEOs are the best-positioned practice to lead this charge. They need to adapt their approach."

• My house, my rules: Most publishers already have the tools to control access, Long continues. For example, "The simple 'robots.txt' file is a perfectly fine way for a site owner to control their content."

Rather than a lack of tools, however, the problem is a lack of a cohesive strategy. Without collective action, AI companies hold all the cards. "The conversation only changes if small publishers band together. Unless that happens, AI companies will be comfortable not paying for that content," Long says.

Now, the dilemma is forcing brands to answer a new, fundamental question: "Are we now optimizing our content for AI and for agentic discoverability?" he asks. "Good content for an LLM is highly structured—plenty of headings, bullet points, short paragraphs, and FAQs. That isn't inherently bad for users, but will we see a shift where people optimize for these agentic workflows first, and the user second?"

Ultimately, the path forward requires brands to diversify their approach to discoverability, Long concludes. "In an era of AI, publishers must think outside of a single ecosystem. You have to optimize for traditional Google, LLMs, Reddit, affiliates, and YouTube. We advise our clients to think not just in one ecosystem, but in multiple."