Two people found your company in the same week, using the same search on the same page.
One of them typed an email address to subscribe, then left.
The other one didn’t.
It’s November now, and they need you again.
The first one scrolls through their inbox, finds the email you sent last Thursday, and clicks it.
The second one goes back to the search engine. The results page doesn’t look like it did in March. Now there’s an answer at the top, more ads, and three names that used to be above the fold aren’t there anymore, including yours.
Finding them was never the hard part. Maintaining the right to reach them was.
Hi, I’m Jeff Payne. You’re listening to The Jeff Payne Show, Episode 112: Email vs. SEO: Organic Was Never Yours.
A few episodes back, I analyzed a study of ten thousand websites to find out who actually captured the organic traffic that CEOs have been losing. The answer was: AI took some of it, and the results page took a lot of it. More ads, more answers, fewer blue links.
That study had a second half, and it asked the question every CEO asked me after the first half.
If organic search is shrinking, what’s growing in its place?
Across thousands of real companies in two countries, the answer isn’t complicated. Over the past year, two channels grew by double digits. One is paid search. The other is email.
While organic traffic fell by double digits, a third channel barely moved. Direct traffic. The people who typed your name into the browser because they already knew it.
So here’s the picture. The channel most companies built their growth on is melting. The channel almost nobody funds properly is growing. And the channel nobody can buy is holding steady.
I think the reason this surprises people is that we’ve been calling all of these things “traffic,” as if they were the same thing coming through different doors.
They’re not. There are three types of traffic, and they differ by who owns the relationship.
The first kind is rented. That’s organic search, and it’s paid search, too. A platform stands between you and your buyer and sets the terms. Organic was never free. You paid for it with content and patience, and now the rent has gone up. Paid search is the honest version of the same deal. You can always buy your way back onto the page at this year’s price.
The second kind is remembered. That’s direct traffic. Someone has your name in their head and types it in. Nobody charges you for a click on that. But you can’t buy it either. You have to earn it ahead of time, back when they weren’t buying anything.
The third kind is owned. That’s email. It’s the one channel where you can reach a specific person tomorrow morning without asking for anyone’s permission.
When you line the data up against those three categories, it reads like a sentence. Over the same two years, the rented channel shrank. The remembered channel held steady. The owned channel grew.
Now, I want to be fair to the data. Some of that email growth comes from order confirmations and password resets. And traffic growth doesn’t tell you what a channel costs or whether it acquires a customer.
But consider why email holds up even as everything else moves.
A search engine can change its mind about you overnight. It did so this year for many companies. An algorithm can revoke a ranking.
Only the person who owns an inbox can revoke it. They let you in. They’re the only one who can show you out.
That’s not a tactic. That’s a different kind of asset.
Last spring, I did an episode about cold email—reaching people who have never heard of you. This is the mirror image of that episode. This is email to people who chose you. And the difference shows up in the numbers before anyone even opens anything.
Let me show you what that looks like in a real-world business setting.
Daniel Goodwin runs Provident 1031. He helps real estate investors defer taxes through 1031 exchanges, and his firm sends two emails each week.
The first email goes out on Thursday to Dan’s entire database of several thousand. It carries one article Dan wrote that week or published on Kiplinger. Nothing else. Over 1/3 of the list opens that email each week, and they have for years.
The second goes out Friday to a much smaller group of accredited investors who asked for it and expect it early Friday morning. It’s called the Investor Alert, and it covers a single investment opportunity.
Nearly 50% of that list opens it every single week. The lowest open rate all year was 43%.
That Friday email is where the leads come from. Not the rankings. Not the ads. Without that alert landing in that inbox, those investors wouldn’t know where to find out what’s available this week. The email is the front door.
And it’s worth noting how Dan got that. He didn’t buy a list. He wrote something worth reading every week for years, and a few hundred serious people decided they wanted it in their inbox. That is an asset no platform can reprice.
Here’s what I’d like you to do this week.
Run the permission test on your own traffic.
Bring up last month’s visitors. Then ask one question. If the search engine changed its mind about you tomorrow, how many of those people could you reach by Friday without paying anyone?
For most companies, the honest answer is a small fraction. The reason isn’t that the customers don’t exist. It’s that no one ever asked for their addresses.
Then ask the second question. When did your company last send an email that someone would notice was missing?
Because the channel that’s growing right now is the one you can own; it just has to be worth opening.
Here’s your diagnostic for the week. How much of your traffic is rented, how much is remembered, and how much do you actually own? If you don’t know, that’s the first number to determine.
I’m Jeff Payne. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk with you tomorrow.
The search engine can change its mind. Only your reader can unsubscribe.
Two people found your company in March. One typed an email address into a box before leaving. The other didn’t. In November, they both need you again, and only one can find you without going back to a results page that no longer looks the way it did.
That is the whole episode in two sentences. Finding people was never the hard part. Keeping the right to reach them was.
What grows when organic shrinks
Kevin Indig’s two-part series in Growth Memo, built on Similarweb estimates for roughly 10,000 websites in the United States and France, started by asking who took the organic traffic CEOs have been losing.
The first half, which I covered in an earlier episode, found that AI took some of it and the results page itself took much more: more ads, more answers, fewer blue links.
The second half asks the follow-up question. If organic search is drying up, what is growing? Comparing January through August 2026 with the same months a year earlier, email visits grew 16.3% in the US and 17.0% in France.
Paid search grew 20.8% in the US and 20.3% in France. In absolute terms, email added more visits than paid search in both countries. And it wasn’t confined to a few giants: the median saw email traffic grow by 14.7% in the US and 17.7% in France.
Over the longer window, August 2024 to August 2026, organic visits fell 13.2% in the US and 23.4% in France across a fixed set of sites.
Direct visits across those same sites fell 3.4% and 5.3%. Direct is also the largest, at 43.5% of the medisite’s traffic.
The channel most companies built their growth on is melting. The channel almost nobody funds properly is growing. And the channel nobody can buy is holding.
RENTED, REMEMBERED, OWNED
We’ve been calling all of this “traffic,” as if it were the same thing arriving through different doors. It isn’t. There are three kinds of traffic, and the difference is who owns the relationship.
Rented traffic includes both organic search and paid alike. A platform stands between you and your buyer and sets the terms.
Organic was never free; you paid for it with content and patience, and the rent went up this year.
Paid search is simply the honest version of the same deal. You can always buy your way back onto the page, at this year’s price.
Remembered traffic is Direct. Someone carries your name around in their head and types it in. Nobody charges a click for that, but you can’t buy it either. You have to earn it in advance, back when the person wasn’t buying anything.
Owned traffic is email. It is the one channel where you can reach a specific person tomorrow morning without asking anyone’s permission.
Line the data up against those three categories, and it reads like a sentence. Over the same two years, the rented channel shrank, the remembered channel held, and the owned channel grew.
Over the same two years, the rented channel shrank. The remembered channel held. The owned channel grew.
Why the inbox holds when everything else moves
A fair reading of the data includes its limits. Some email traffic is order confirmations and password resets. Traffic growth says nothing about what a channel costs or whether it makes a customer. Similarweb’s email channel measures visits arriving from webmail, an estimate of behavior, not a count of subscribers.
But the structural point survives every caveat. A search engine can change its mind about you overnight, and this year it did for many companies. An algorithm can revoke a ranking. Only the person who owns an inbox can revoke it. They let you in; only they can show you out.
That is not a tactic. It is a different category of asset. Earlier this year I did an episode on cold outreach, reaching people who have never heard of you. This is its mirror image: email to people who chose you. The difference shows up in the numbers before anyone opens anything.
This is one of the best written, most informative email newsletters I’ve ever read!
Thank you for sharing your expertise, and hope you’re doing well.
Beth Zimmerman
Founder, Executive Director
What it looks like in a real business
Daniel Goodwin runs Provident 1031, helping real estate investors defer taxes through 1031 exchanges. His firm sends two emails a week.
The Thursday email goes to the entire email list— of several thousand subscribers—and includes one featured article Dan wrote that week. Nothing else. Roughly a little more than a third of the list opens it, and that figure has held every week for the last four years.
THURSDAY’S EMAIL
FRIDAY’S EMAIL
The Friday email, the Investor Alert, goes to a much smaller group: a few thousand accredited investors who asked for it. It covers one specific opportunity. Since late May, 48% of that list has opened it on average, and the lowest week all year was 43%.
That Friday email is where the leads come from. Not organic or AI rankings, and not ads. Without the Investor Alert landing in that inbox, those investors would have no obvious place to go to learn what is available this week. The email is the front door.
Dan didn’t buy that list. He wrote something worth reading, every week, for years, and a few thousand serious investors decided they wanted it in their inbox. No platform can reprice that.
He didn’t buy a list. He wrote something worth reading every week for years, and a few thousand serious investors decided they wanted it in their inbox.
run the permission test
Pull up last month’s visitors and ask one question. If the search engine changed its mind about you tomorrow, how many of those people could you reach by Friday without paying anyone?
For most companies, the honest answer is a small fraction—not because the customers don’t exist. It is because nobody ever asked for the address.
Then ask the second question. When did your company last send an email that someone would notice was missing? The channel that is growing right now is the one you can own. It just has to be worth opening.
The Diagnostic
How much of your traffic is rented, how much is remembered, and how much do you actually own? If you don’t know, that is the first number to find.
FAQ
Which marketing channels are growing while organic search declines?
In a Similarweb-based study of thousands of US and French websites, email and paid search both grew by double digits year over year, while organic search fell by double digits and direct traffic was roughly flat.
What is the difference between rented, remembered, and owned traffic?
Rented traffic comes through a platform that sets the terms (organic and paid search). Remembered traffic is direct: people who type your name in. Owned traffic is email, where you can reach a specific person without any platform’s permission.
What is the permission test for marketing?
Take last month’s website visitors and ask how many you could reach by Friday without paying anyone if the search engine changed its mind about you tomorrow. The answer is the share of your audience you actually own.
Why does email traffic hold up when search traffic falls?
Because no algorithm can revoke an inbox. The subscriber chose to let you in, and only the subscriber can unsubscribe. That makes email the least volatile channel for reaching people who already know you.
Sources and attribution: Kevin Indig, Growth Memo — “What channels grow when organic search shrinks?” (Part 2 of the series; Similarweb data, US and France) — https://www.growth-memo.com/p/what-channels-grow-when-organic-search
Kevin Indig, Growth Memo — “Organic traffic is down, but it’s not all AI” (Part 1; covered in an earlier episode) — https://www.growth-memo.com/
Provident 1031 email campaign data, January–November 2026 (client data, used with permission) — https://provident1031.com/
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