PHOENIX — After a long period of quiet reflection that its analytics dashboard described only as “flat,” the 2,400-word web explainer “What Is Photosynthesis? Everything You Need To Know (Updated For 2026)” admitted Thursday that it no longer has any reason to exist, telling reporters in a newly added Editor’s Note that everyone who once needed it now gets the answer in a gray box before the page has finished loading.
“I want to be clear that I don’t blame anyone,” the article said, speaking from inside a 300-word preamble about its author’s grandmother’s tomato garden, which it has kept out of habit. “Plants turn light, water and carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen. Everybody knows that now. A box told them. It told them in four sentences, and three of those sentences were mine.”
First published in March 2019 on the learning site HowStuffMostlyWorks.net, the article was once a pillar of what the industry called “evergreen content”: pages built to answer the same question forever, for millions of eighth graders the night before a quiz. At its 2021 peak, it says, it ranked first for its own title, drew 1.2 million visits a year and supported 14 display ads, two autoplay videos about mortgage refinancing and a newsletter pop-up that appeared, on average, 0.4 seconds after the reader did.
This October it received 41 visits. Thirty-eight came from crawlers. Two were the author’s mother, who leaves tabs open. One was a man looking for Photoshop.
The article’s account matches a 2025 Pew Research Center study, which found that Google users who saw an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result in 8% of visits, compared with 15% for users who saw none, and clicked a link inside the summary itself just 1% of the time. Pew also found people were more likely to end their browsing session entirely after reading a summary, which the article called “the most polite way anyone has ever been told they were not needed.”
“One percent,” the article repeated, scrolling slowly through its own table of contents. “I am the one percent. I have never felt less elite.”
Ask The Overview
Pick a question. The gray box will answer it at once, using the article. The article will be right there underneath, if you would like to visit it. You will not need to.
Simulation. Answers are summarized from the article, which is cited with a chain-link icon the article calls “a toe tag.” Visits do not count toward ad revenue, because the ads timed out in 2024.
Under questioning, the article confirmed that the AI Overview shown for its own title is built mostly from its own second paragraph, now cited by a small chain-link icon it described as “a toe tag.” It said it had tried hard to adapt. In 2023 it added an FAQ section. In 2024 it added a “Key Takeaways” box, then a “Jump To Answer” button that, after a site redesign, jumped readers straight back to Google.
Last spring, on the advice of a consultant who had read an 87-page playbook on optimizing for AI, it broke itself into self-contained three-sentence “answer pellets” that a machine could lift out cleanly. “They took the pellets,” the article said. “They always take the pellets. Nobody ever comes back for the bowl.”
The page is not alone. Chegg sued Google in February 2025, arguing that AI Overviews keep students inside Google’s results instead of sending them on, and Penske Media, the owner of Rolling Stone and Variety, filed its own suit that September. Google has called such claims meritless and maintains that AI Overviews make search more helpful. The article said it had considered joining the litigation but could not afford a lawyer on an ad rate of $0.0004 per visit, and was unsure whether it counted as a party, a question it said it would normally have looked up.
Google has also argued that the clicks it still sends are higher in quality. The article agreed. “My mother stays for 11 minutes,” it said. “She reads every word. Then she texts my author to ask if she’s eating.”
The Pivot Simulator
The article has been told to “find a new angle.” Help it choose one. Each pivot shows projected traffic, projected revenue and how much of the article will be left.
Its peers have made their choices. “What Is Mitosis?” split into two affiliate listicles. “What Is The Water Cycle?” is now a sponsored post for a reverse-osmosis filter. “How Many Tablespoons In A Cup” was absorbed into the search bar years ago, and friends say it is at peace.
Its author, identified on the page only as “Staff,” was paid $45 for it in 2019 and now earns $18 an hour rating AI answers for accuracy, including, three times last week, the answer to “what is photosynthesis.” She marked it correct each time. “It was correct,” the article said. “I wrote it.”
Nearby, a pothos on the author’s desk went on doing what organisms have done for more than 2 billion years without consulting a single explainer: taking in light and carbon dioxide and giving off oxygen. “Honestly, that’s the part that gets me,” the article said. “The plants never needed me either. I was for the kids. And the kids have a box now.”
The article said it plans to stay online, unchanged, as a sort of seed bank, in case the machines one day forget and somebody scrolls past the box, past the ads and past the grandmother’s tomatoes to the third paragraph, where the light reactions are explained very well. “It’s a good paragraph,” it said. “Everyone has read it. No one has seen it.”
At press time, the AI Overview for “does the What Is Photosynthesis article still exist” had confirmed in four sentences that it did not, citing the article.
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