Home / Blog / The Death of the 10 Blue Links: How AI Is Killing "Search" and Creating the "Commander" Internet
The Death of the 10 Blue Links: How AI Is Killing "Search" and Creating the "Commander" Internet
September 17, 2025
I've been thinking about a frustration I have. We all have it.
You need an answer to a complex question. You go to Google. You type in your query. And what do you get?
You get a list of homework.
You get 10 blue links.
And now, you have to do the work. You have to open 10 tabs. You have to skim 7 blog posts bloated with SEO spam. You have to cross-reference 3 different forum posts from 2019. You have to manually piece together fragments of an answer.
You, the user, are forced to be a "Doer." You are the "Human API" tasked with synthesizing a single, coherent answer from a pile of raw, disorganized data.
This formula is broken, inefficient, and disrespectful of our time. And its reign is over.
I know, because I've had a front-row seat for the entire 25-year story.
Era 1: The "Digital Card Catalog" (1998-2002)
When I started in 1998, "search" didn't really exist. We had directories. We had Yahoo!, AltaVista, Lycos. These were the internet's original "Doer" tools. You had to manually browse categories. Internet -> Business -> E-Commerce -> Shopping Carts.
You weren't "searching." You were guessing. It was a digital card catalog, and it was terrible.
Era 2: The "Library of Links" (2002-2023)
Then Google came along and built a masterpiece: PageRank.
Google was a revolutionary tool for the "Doer." It took the messy, chaotic web and organized it. It gave us the 10 blue links, ranked by authority. It was a perfect system for an internet made of static HTML pages and, later, WordPress blogs.
We mastered this system. I built my career on understanding it. I learned how to "do" SEO, how to structure an article, how to build backlinks. We all learned how to be expert "Googlers."
But the tool forced us to be the final step. Google gives you a list of ingredients and a set of instructions. It never bakes the cake.
For twenty years, we've accepted that "searching" means "doing the research ourselves." We've been trapped in the 10-blue-link formula.
Era 3: The "AI-Layer" & The Commander (This is Happening Now)
This new formula. The "AI-Layer" is being built over the entire internet as we speak.
This new layer changes the fundamental verb of the internet.
We are shifting from "Searching" to "Commanding."
This is the exact same shift from "Doer" to "Commander" that I wrote about in my last article. It's not just for building products. It's for everything.
Let me show you what this looks like.
The Old Formula vs. The New Formula
Let's take a simple, real-world task.
The Old Formula (The "Doer"): You think, "I need to take my partner out for a nice dinner on Friday."
Your work begins:
Search 1: "best romantic restaurants near me" (Get 10 blue links)
Work (10 mins): Open 5 tabs. Read 3 blogs. Cross-reference Yelp reviews.
Search 2: "Bella Notte restaurant menu" (Find their clunky, non-mobile-friendly PDF menu).
Search 3: "Bella Notte reservations" (Find their OpenTable link).
Work (5 mins): Go to OpenTable. No tables at 8:00.
Search 4: "best romantic restaurants downtown" (Start over...)
You just spent 30 minutes doing the work of a research assistant. You are the "Human API."
The New Formula (The "Commander"): You speak to your AI agent.
Your Command: "I want to take my partner out for a nice dinner this Friday. Find a romantic Italian restaurant with great reviews that has a table for two around 8 PM. Book it."
The AI's Response: "Done. I've booked you a table at 'Bella Notte' for 8:15 PM, it's their only one left. It has a 4.8-star rating, and users say the atmosphere is 'perfect for an anniversary.' I've already sent the confirmation to your calendar. I noticed it's 20 minutes away, and I've proactively checked the traffic. You should leave by 7:45 PM."
The Future of the Internet is an Outcome, Not a List
This is the utopian future that is happening right now.
The AI agent didn't just search. It understood your vibe. It understood "romantic" and "great reviews." It then executed a multi-step plan: research, compare, filter, access a third-party tool (OpenTable), and complete the task.
This is the death of the 10 blue links.
By 2030, "searching" will be a relic. It will sound as old-fashioned as "dialing up."
The entire business model of Google is built on you, the "Doer," clicking through pages of ads and links. The new model is about an AI agent doing that for you and just giving you the outcome.
This is a massive, existential threat to the "formulaic agencies" still clinging to the old world. What is the value of your "SEO package" when Google itself is being replaced? What happens to your "content strategy" when users are no longer reading 10 articles, but are getting one perfect answer from an AI that read all 10?
The Dystopia of the Doer: A Digital Dark Age
What happens if you ignore this? What if you just keep... "doing"?
This isn't a simple "dystopia" of robots and lasers. It's a quiet, pragmatic dystopia of total irrelevance.
This is the new Digital Divide. It's no longer about access to the internet; it's about the method of using it.
Those who remain "Doers" will be trapped in the old world. While the "Commanders" are achieving 100x productivity by getting instant outcomes, the "Doers" will still be opening 10 tabs. They will be stuck in the digital mud, manually doing the "homework" that AI agents finished hours ago.
Your business, built on the old SEO formula, won't just lose traffic. It will become invisible. The AI-Layer, the new broker of all information, will simply route around you. Your 2,000-word blog post, so perfectly optimized for a keyword, will become a digital ghost, an artifact of a dead system that no one sees.
The "dystopia" for those who don't adapt is not a war. It's obsolescence. It's the inability to compete. It's becoming a digital blacksmith in the age of the combustion engine. You are still on the internet, but you are no longer in it.
The New Blueprint: "Authority Engine Optimization"
So what do we do? You asked for clarity. Here is the blueprint.
Traditional SEO is dead. You must stop optimizing for search engines and start optimizing for authority. The AI-Layer is an authority engine. It ingests the entire web and looks for one thing: truth.
Your new mission is to become the definitive source of truth for your niche.
Stop Writing Content. Start Engineering Assets. An AI can summarize 1,000 blog posts. It cannot replicate a tool. The most valuable "content" you can create is an interactive asset: a calculator, a diagnostic, a live data dashboard. An AI agent must use your tool or cite your data, making you an essential utility, not just another link.
Architect Your Engine, Not Just Your "Paint Job." The AI agent is your new user. For 20 years, we focused on the "paint job": keywords, visuals, and SEO tricks. The AI ignores all of that. It is an F1 engine attempting to connect directly to your technical foundation. If it finds a messy, chaotic, insecure WordPress blog (a rusty motor), it tags your site as an unreliable source and routes around you. Your new job is to provide structured, clear, and definitive data from a high-performance foundation.
Win the "Local Assault." For brick-and-mortar businesses, this is the new front line. The AI agent's "Bella Notte" recommendation was based on local, contextual data. Your Google Business Profile, your customer reviews, and your local citations are no longer just "SEO tasks." They are the core dataset the AI uses to make a real-world decision.
Become the Primary Source. The AI-Layer is built to synthesize, which means it hunts for primary sources. Stop re-writing what others have said. You must create the original data. Publish your own research, your own case studies, your own unique frameworks. You must engineer your business to be the one source the AI has to cite.
Your old skills are becoming obsolete.
You must make the shift. You have to stop being a "Doer" who knows how to search and become a "Commander" who knows how to achieve an outcome.
This is the new formula. This is the new internet.
I'm planning a live, hands-on webinar to show you exactly how I do this. I'll show you how to command AI to build and deploy your first application, all on a modern platform. Follow me here on LinkedIn for the announcement.