AI Search — The Owners of the Facts Are Down 20–40%, the Answer Boxes Sit Near Their Highs

Google’s leaked 2024 ranking documents contain an attribute called contentEffort — a language-model estimate of how much human effort went into a page.

This week the search trade rediscovered it and drew the obvious conclusion: own facts the machine cannot generate, and the machine has to cite you. The tape has been running the same experiment for a year, with real money, and it reached a different verdict. The companies that own the facts are 20–40% below their highs. The two companies that own the an…