The internet changes faster every year. And 2025 said, “hold my beer.”

How people find you, whether they trust you, and if they even visit your website - all of it changed. Again. And if you’re not paying attention, you could be losing customers without even knowing why.

The internet in 2026 isn’t the internet we built websites for five, ten, or fifteen years ago. Traffic is down. Tracking is harder. And a huge chunk of your “visitors” aren’t even human.

We wade through these mazes daily while building websites and like to share - first, because we enjoy geeking out, and second, so you don’t have to go in blind.

The short version:

Bots are everywhere.
AI ate a big chunk of your traffic.
And your Google Business listing is probably more important than your social media now.

Fun times.

We also break down what’s happening with cookies, privacy laws, and why your PHP version matters way more than you think.

Read the fully formatted blog post to accompany this episode at: mayecreate.com/blog/state-of-the-internet-2026/

You wake up to 47 emails about cryptocurrency, someone wants to sell you SEO services (the irony), and three bots are VERY concerned about your website's performance.

You know the drill. You delete five, ten more appear. You silently cuss technology and consider just shutting down your contact form entirely and making people send carrier pigeons instead.

You, my friend, are NOT alone. AND you don't have to live like this.

In this week’s episode our resident bot bouncer Rebecca joined me to share how she protects over 300 websites from spam armies. Everything from the basics you can set up in 10 minutes to advanced bot warfare (yes, that's a real thing and yes, it's as satisfying as it sounds).

Rebecca explains:

• How to shut down comment spam (spoiler: just turn them off)
• The two essential tools that stop form spam before it hits your inbox automatically
• How reCAPTCHA actually works (it's not just about clicking a box)
• When to bring out the big guns: manual logic tests, IP blocking, and CDNs
• Why Cloudflare protects websites using lava lamps (we're not making this up)

If you don’t have spam YET and haven’t done anything to your knowledge to block it don't wait until your inbox is a disaster zone. Most of these fixes take minutes to implement and will save you hours of sorting through garbage in the future.

Prefer to read? We turned the whole episode into a blog post for you to reference whenever you need it. Read the fully formatted blog post to accompany this episode at: https://mayecreate.com/blog/tricks-to-fix-and-stop-website-spam/