For years, publishers have been told that the homepage is dead. Search and social were supposed to be the engines of discovery, reliable pipelines of readers arriving from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever new platform happened to dominate that month. 

That world is disappearing. Search is shifting to zero-click answers that summarize articles before users ever reach them. Social platforms have deprioritized news entirely; AI models scrape, paraphrase, and repackage publisher content faster than it can be produced. 

Across the industry, the conclusion is becoming unavoidable. Publishers cannot rely on external sources to send them audiences anymore. To survive this shift, they need to turn their own sites, especially their homepages, back into destinations. 

The way they are doing it reveals a major strategic pivot: AI to help readers navigate, and community tools like Disqus to keep them engaged once they arrive. 

The Homepage Returns as a Strategic Asset 

What once functioned as a static billboard is now being redesigned as a dynamic hub for interaction. At the New York Times, a new “Most Commented” module surfaces stories that have sparked genuine conversation. The Guardian and Daily Mail have quietly reintroduced their own versions of comment-driven story ranking. These are not nostalgic attempts to revive the blog era. They are intentional redesigns meant to counter discovery loss by placing human engagement front and center. 

Readers gravitate toward activity. A highly commented story communicates urgency, conversation, energy, and interest. These are signals today’s AI-driven feeds cannot imitate. Unlike algorithmic content, human discussion reveals what real people care about in the moment. Publishers are learning to treat that signal as a competitive advantage. 

 

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Screenshot of The New York Times homepage, accessed November 2025

 

AI Tools Are Evolving Discovery While Human Interaction Builds Loyalty 

Publishers are also experimenting with new AI-driven experiences designed to help readers navigate their own sites more intuitively. Some have introduced dedicated AI sections that curate, explain, or explore emerging topics. Others are testing conversational search tools that let readers ask questions and instantly surface contextually relevant articles and insights right on the page. These additions are creating quicker paths to information while keeping the reader inside the publisher’s ecosystem. 

But they do not and cannot build loyalty. AI can summarize an article. AI can suggest another article. 

What it cannot do is create emotional connections or participation. It cannot recreate the moment two readers debate a political story, share a personal experience, or respond to a poll that reveals what thousands of others think. 

Which is why, as AI discovery expands, publishers are elevating comments, replies, debates, reactions, and polls. The strategy is not either-or. It is both. AI to help people find content, and community tools like Disqus to keep them there. 

Micro Interactions Are Becoming the New Currency of Engagement 

Publishers increasingly rely on small, fast ways for readers to participate, from reactions and polls to lightweight prompts and trending discussion markers. These features turn passive consumption into interactive behavior. 

Disqus provides these tools natively. Readers can react instantly, vote in a poll without friction, and follow lively discussion threads that often lead to more articles and more conversation. Each of these micro interactions deepens engagement and pulls readers further into the site, ultimately driving longer sessions and more return visits.  

Publishers are not recreating social media. They are borrowing the participation mechanics that worked on social platforms and re-integrating them into their own properties. 

Notifications Are Quietly Driving Return Traffic 

The most overlooked element of this new engagement architecture is the notification layer. When a reader receives an alert that someone replied to their comment or interacted with a thread they follow, they come back.

Not because of SEO. 
Not because of social distribution. 
But because they care about the conversation. 

Disqus offers two types of notifications to drive readers back to the publisher page: web notifications and email notifications. Together, they form one of the strongest drivers of return visits for Disqus publishers.  

Community Is Now a Revenue Strategy 

For publishers, the commercial case for community is more compelling than ever. Readers who participate, whether by commenting, voting, reacting, or following threads, view significantly more pages, see more ads, contribute more first-party data, and are far more likely to return and subscribe. 

This is why Reddit’s user-generated content model powered a multi-billion-dollar IPO and a major AI licensing deal with Google. Why Ringier redesigned its entire digital ecosystem around community infrastructure. Publishers like TIME, Vox, Forbes, and Gannett are experimenting with formats that encourage interaction rather than passive consumption. 

Publishers are not chasing community because it feels nostalgic or idealistic. They are doing it because engagement is becoming a direct line to revenue resilience. 

Luckily for them, Disqus helps publishers maximize their revenue in several ways. For one, Disqus offers ad-supported packages that enable publishers to earn a generous rev share on revenue generated by ad placements in the comment section. For Disqus publishers who choose an ad-free plan, they still benefit from revenue boosts driven by increased time on site, more return visits, and higher overall traffic.  

The Future of the Homepage Is Interaction 

AI may guide readers to a story, but the community determines whether they build a relationship with the brand behind it. As zero-click search reshapes referral patterns, the homepage becomes one of the few environments publishers can fully control. It needs to function as both an entry point and an engagement engine. 

This future will favor publishers who put interaction front and center: conversations, debates, reactions, polls, and all the signals that show readers they are part of something. Disqus sits at the center of that shift. It gives publishers the ability to showcase honest discussion, highlight trending moments, encourage participation, and create deeper on-site engagement that AI cannot replace. 

The next era of the homepage will not be defined by algorithms alone but by the communities built around journalism. Disqus is how publishers make that community visible and valuable. 

Connect with our team to see what this can look like for your brand.