What The CJR study Means for Small Businesses and Bloggers

Now, here’s an important question: If AI search engines are this inaccurate with news content, what does this mean for small businesses and bloggers?

The Columbia Journalism Review study focused on news publishers, but the same issues likely extend to small content creators. Bloggers and small businesses rely on search visibility to drive traffic. If AI chatbots are misattributing sources, fabricating links, and ignoring blocked content, then there’s a serious risk of misinformation affecting individual creators as well.

As a small business owner or blogger, here’s what you can do:

1. Regularly check AI search tools to see how they present your content.
2. Make sure citations are correct—if they aren’t, put out content that corrects misinformation.
3. Be aware that blocked content may still be crawled—adjust your strategy accordingly. (More on this coming soon)

For now, it doesn’t seem like bloggers and small business owners are as directly affected as news publishers. But as AI search tools evolve, keeping an eye on how your content is being represented is crucial. If AI chatbots aren’t held accountable, then the misinformation problem is only going to get worse.

At the end of the day, AI tools are supposed to help us, not mislead us. Let’s hope that there’s a solution on the horizon because these issues need to be addressed—fast.