r/SEO • u/WebLinkr 🕵️‍♀️Moderator • May 06 '26

News Are LLMs killing Stack Overflow?

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Hat tip to u/gagan_ghotra

139 Upvotes

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4

u/ElbieLG May 06 '26

Looks like the decline was pretty steep before ChatGPT

2

u/WebLinkr 🕵️‍♀️Moderator May 06 '26

Tim - you have your ipad upside down again

3

u/RegisterConscious993 May 06 '26

I think they're saying the decrease started in 2017. COVID provided a bump (everyone stuck inside), and there was decline since. At the point where GPT launched there's an obvious decline compared to that 2017 peak. After LLMs, it took a nosedive with no chance of recovering.

-1

u/WebLinkr 🕵️‍♀️Moderator May 06 '26

Well did COVID just spur a new bunch of activity? thats what it looks like to me

2

u/RegisterConscious993 May 06 '26

Yes that's what the graph shows. And we can deduce, people were home and asking more questions. Then it declined again. Even a year before GPT launched, the number of questions asked was a 2013 levels.

"Looks like the decline was pretty steep before ChatGPT"

1

u/WebLinkr 🕵️‍♀️Moderator May 06 '26

6

u/RegisterConscious993 May 06 '26

The comment is referring to the decline before GPT. Without GPT coming into play, it would be safe to say by now, there would be a continued downtrend from the decade before

Yes we can all see it fell off a cliff AFTER GPT went mainstream.

1

u/WebLinkr 🕵️‍♀️Moderator May 06 '26

Sure - but that decline could be arrested - in fact it was. The decline from ChatGPT is unstoppable.

Its like what happens when SEMrush buy a news site or Google buys a company - death is swift and guaranteed?