AI search has moved faster than most SEO strategies. Rankings are holding across the board, clicks are falling and the businesses that adapted earliest are starting to pull ahead – not because they found a shortcut, but because they stopped treating the problem as a rankings problem and started treating it as a citations and authority problem. The question now is what that actually looks like in practice.
The answer depends significantly on what kind of business you are. According to BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, 45% of consumers are now using generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini for local recommendations – up from just 6% in 2025. That one data point speaks volumes about how fast things are moving.
A local service provider whose customers are asking Perplexity for recommendations right now has a different and more urgent problem than a B2B SaaS company with a long enterprise sales cycle. Most businesses are adapting their strategies mid-flight, tailoring their strategies to their specific industries and measurement goals.
What’s becoming clearer is where the real leverage sits – third-party coverage and off-site mentions are driving AI citation rates far more than owned content. Measurement tools built specifically for AI visibility are starting to emerge. And the businesses seeing the strongest results are those treating SEO and GEO as connected disciplines rather than separate ones.
We put the question to the specialists. Here’s what they said.
Our Experts
- Myles Anderson, CEO, BrightLocal
- Marcus Hearn, SEO Specialist, Another Concept
- Mindy Faieta, Head of Customer Success, Stateshift
- Monica Tomasso, Chief AI Visibility Expert, Monic AI Systems
- Jeremy Moser, CEO, uSERP
- Cathy Farmer, Head of GEO, Third City
- Ben Gibson, UK CEO, Cosmo5
- Jo Wilmot, PR Director, The Think Tank
- Kat Gibbons, Strategic Director, Bamboo
- Fiorela Imerai, Account Director, Wildcat Digital
- Hannah Spelman, Head of Organic Marketing, I-COM
- Andrew McLernon, CEO and Co-founder, Interlink
- Chris Pitt, CEO, GAIN Performance
Myles Anderson, CEO, BrightLocal
“Our 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 45% – up from just 6% in 2025 – of consumers are now using generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini for local recommendations.
“In the era of AI-driven search and zero-click results, local success is no longer just about ranking – it’s about becoming the most trusted and verified option in your market. Search engines now look for a consistent pattern of activity rather than one-off changes.
“The traditional SEO playbook is ready for an update, and businesses need to start taking a tailored approach to each platform. Google Business Profiles, websites and third-party directories are the sources of truth for AI – keep your information updated and accurate so LLMs and search engines can verify your legitimacy. On TikTok and YouTube, focus on content that answers questions: how-to and explainer videos for service businesses drive strong visibility in AI search. And don’t overlook Maps – our research found that one in five people conduct local searches directly in maps, which means your Google Business Profile deserves as much care as your website.
“Local SEO is only as good as the leads it generates. Focus on what actually matters by measuring the actions that drive revenue, not vanity metrics. The growth of generative AI search means brands must lean into Google’s E-E-A-T framework more than ever. Search success in 2026 involves maintaining a consistent presence across a wide variety of touchpoints and making sure your business is positioned as trustworthy and helpful to consumers.”
Marcus Hearn, SEO Specialist, Another Concept
“Your approach to GEO should really depend on the vertical in which you’re operating.
“For publishers, we’ve seen very little benefit from optimising to increase citations, and in terms of traffic it has effectively become a form of brand PR. Someone else is ultimately going to get cited if you’re not there, so it should still be on your radar but the time would be better spent optimising for Google Discover, which in our experience provides up to five times as many sessions versus organic search.
“For ecommerce and lead gen it’s slightly different, as the user is, for the moment, still required to visit your website to achieve their goal. For ecommerce, we’ve found implementing product-level reviews to be the most influential factor in increasing citations and recommendations. Product-level FAQs or bullet point summaries of key product information have also delivered positive results.
“One of our best performing clients for AI referral sessions, of which it sees around a 40% conversion rate, has none of the technical optimisations implemented. They simply have a strong SEO strategy, really great reviews, get natural recommendations on UGC forums like Reddit, and are active in digital PR. So therein probably lies your answer.”
Mindy Faieta, Head of Customer Success, Stateshift
“The old SEO playbook assumed a click was the prize, but that’s changing fast. When AI Overviews, ChatGPT and others answer the question right on the page, the click never happens, so chasing rankings for traffic that no longer shows up is wasted effort most of the time.
“What still works is being useful and being citable. AI tools pull from sources they can parse and trust, so the most important thing now is making your content easy for models to extract and quote. We bind the brand name and ICP language into the first 100 to 150 words of every post, structure it so an LLM can lift a clean answer, and lead with real data and direct quotes instead of surface-level summaries. But just being cited isn’t enough. You want to be mentioned by brand name. There’s not much benefit if AI uses your information without naming you.
“The biggest mistake I see founders make is dragging old SEO habits into this, especially the instinct to chase prompt volume and keyword breadth. GEO rewards depth, not coverage. The opportunity is that most businesses haven’t caught up yet. I recommend tracking your AI visibility with a tool like Peec AI, Otterly or Profound. And it’s more than the content on your own site. It’s the full digital PR picture: mentions on Reddit, LinkedIn and third-party outlets. Join the conversation where it’s already happening.”
Monica Tomasso, Chief AI Visibility Expert, Monic AI Systems
“One of the biggest shifts I’m seeing is that AI search is no longer a single-query experience. Users ask a question, refine it, compare options and continue the conversation in the same session. That means brands are no longer competing just to ‘rank’ once. They’re competing to stay in the conversation.
“What I’m seeing in practice is that the businesses performing best in AI search usually have enough depth and consistency for AI systems to keep returning to them as the conversation evolves. I often describe this as conversational persistence or conversation survivability.
“Companies optimise only for the first question. The real opportunity is building enough connected expertise, trust signals and conversational content for AI systems to confidently continue recommending the brand throughout the buyer journey.”
Jeremy Moser, CEO, uSERP
“Every GEO and AEO solution on the market tells you to publish significantly more content to ‘show up in AI engines.’ Structure that content for LLMs. Spin off 100 programmatic posts per month. Chunk your content. Listicles. Comparison posts. While publishing great content in multiple formats on core keywords and prompts is a good foundation, that’s one of the smallest pieces of the puzzle. It’s table stakes now. Everyone is doing it.
“As a business, you don’t actually want more citations in AI. You want more mentions for decision-making prompts. You want your brand to be recommended when someone asks ChatGPT ‘what are the best solutions for XYZ’ more than you want ChatGPT to cite your article as a source for an informational, broad prompt.
“And the best way to make that happen? Off-page SEO, link building, brand building and PR. AI engines only pull from your site 8% of the time when recommending you. Meaning 92% of the time an LLM gives a brand recommendation, it’s pulling from other websites that mention and discuss the topic.”
Cathy Farmer, Head of GEO, Third City
“The old SEO playbook assumed one thing: the user would click. That assumption is now broken. AI platforms like ChatGPT Search, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews are synthesising answers directly from source material, and the visit never happens. Ranking first means nothing if the model answers the question before the user reaches your site.
“What still works is credibility at scale. LLMs draw on patterns across everything that’s been published about a brand, not just your own website. Third-party coverage in high-authority publications, consistent messaging across owned and earned channels, a clear and distinctive point of view that actually exists in the world – these things matter more now than ever.
“What’s broken is the feedback loop. Traditional SEO gave you rankings, click data and clear signals. GEO doesn’t. You’re not optimising a page, you’re shaping how a model understands your brand across hundreds of sources. To get any meaningful read on that, you need to run queries at volume and track patterns. That’s exactly why we built our own AI visibility tool, GEOView, which runs LLM searches at scale so clients can see how, and how consistently, they’re being cited. It starts with understanding where you actually stand.”
Ben Gibson, UK CEO, Cosmo5
“The core of the problem is that ranking and reaching an audience are no longer the same thing. Businesses are holding their positions in search results and still watching traffic fall, because the question is being answered before anyone clicks through. That breaks the assumption the old SEO playbook was built on.
“What still works is authority. AI systems weight trusted media coverage, thought leadership, structured content that addresses real questions and signals from peer communities and review platforms. The brands surfacing consistently in AI-generated responses tend to have a coherent presence across the sources these models draw on, not just a well-optimised website.
“The opportunity lies in treating SEO and GEO as connected rather than parallel. Content built around genuine user intent, distributed across credible sources and reinforced by consistent brand signals serves both. Visibility is moving upstream, and those that understand where in that journey they are being defined, and by what, are the ones better positioned for where search is heading.”
Jo Wilmot, PR Director, The Think Tank
“One big change we’re seeing: a few months back, we were telling prospects about GEO and AI search and the reaction was somewhere between a blank stare and ‘I’ll worry about this when it’s time to worry about it.’ Over the last six weeks, that’s changed. Every company that approaches us for PR services is asking us if we can help get them discovered in GEO. With about 90% of AI search citations coming from earned media, according to a recent Muck Rack report, the answer is definitely yes.
“AI pays attention to media coverage in a way that makes it a direct input into whether AI surfaces you. Since AI cites it when delivering instant answers, humans have to pay attention too.
“For companies that have already invested in SEO for years, your money wasn’t wasted. AI search is still informed by the fundamentals of good SEO. But the added layer is getting coverage in the media, whether that’s in big outlets or niche, relevant trade publications. Different LLMs use different media sets – research shows that Claude cites niche titles more than ChatGPT. So depending on your audiences and which LLMs they use, you might need to select different campaign approaches.”
Kat Gibbons, Strategic Director, Bamboo
“AI hasn’t killed SEO, but it has fundamentally changed what success looks like. For years, the goal was winning clicks from search results. Now, the challenge is winning visibility and trust in a world where AI tools answer questions without sending users to a website.
“What’s broken? The old playbook of producing high volumes of keyword-led content designed to rank. If your strategy relies on being the tenth version of an answer, AI will summarise it before a user ever sees your site.
“What still works is creating genuinely useful content rooted in expertise, experience and originality. AI models need sources, opinions and evidence to reference. Brands that publish unique insights, expert commentary and real-world perspectives are more likely to be surfaced than those repackaging information already available elsewhere.
“The opportunity is to think beyond rankings and focus on discoverability. People now encounter content through AI-generated answers, LinkedIn posts, industry publications and peer recommendations as much as traditional search. SEO is no longer about being searchable; it’s about being the source that AI, journalists and industry peers choose to reference. That’s a much bigger opportunity than a click.”
Fiorela Imerai, Account Director, Wildcat Digital
“AI search is not killing SEO, but it is making lazy SEO much harder to hide. If a strategy is built around generic blog content, broad keywords and traffic for traffic’s sake, it’s going to struggle, because AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search and Perplexity can answer a lot of those basic queries without sending anyone to the site.
“The brands that will win in 2026 are the ones that become harder to summarise without citing. That means sharper product and service pages, genuinely useful expert content, clear answers to real customer questions, strong technical foundations, structured data and authority signals beyond the website itself – reviews, digital PR, industry mentions and credible third-party coverage.
“What is broken is the idea that SEO is only about rankings and sessions. Those still matter, but they are no longer the full picture. The question for businesses is no longer just ‘are we ranking?’ It is ‘are we giving search engines and AI tools enough confidence to choose us as the answer?’”
Hannah Spelman, Head of Organic Marketing, I-COM
“A winning SEO strategy in 2026 must prioritise brand visibility across all search spaces, not just website traffic. While direct traffic remains important, the rise of AI Overviews and AI-powered search tools means users increasingly find answers without visiting your site. A modern SEO strategy needs to account for this reality and actively work to get your brand into these new spaces.
“This shifts how success should be measured. You should also track brand mentions and impressions in AI Overviews and LLMs like ChatGPT, as well as your market share against competitors, looking at how often your site appears versus your main competitors. That said, website traffic hasn’t disappeared. Commercial and transactional queries still drive conversions, making on-site optimisation critical. Pages that do generate traffic must be well-optimised, fulfil search intent and convert users effectively.
“The solution isn’t to abandon SEO. Google’s own AI optimisation guide confirms that solid SEO fundamentals are essential for appearing in these new spaces. Instead, adopt a consistent, integrated strategy that secures visibility across traditional search results, AI Overviews and LLM responses. The competitive advantage lies in appearing everywhere your audience is looking.”
Andrew McLernon, CEO and Co-founder, Interlink
“For a winning SEO strategy in 2026, ranking is no longer enough. When AI Overviews appear in more than half of all search results and 70% of B2B searches include an AI-generated answer, appearing at the top of the page no longer guarantees a click, let alone a conversation.
“What’s broken is the assumption that search behaviour signals buying intent in a way that’s actionable. Click-through rates drop by nearly 50% when AI summaries are present, which means a significant volume of queries are now resolved directly within the results page. The buyer gets their answer and moves on without ever visiting a website.
“For B2B businesses specifically, this accelerates a problem that already existed. Buyers form opinions, build shortlists and develop category preferences before their behaviour becomes visible to vendors. AI tools are making that hidden phase longer and harder to influence. By the time a prospect’s activity registers in a CRM or intent platform, the evaluation process is often already well underway.
“What still works is substance. AI systems surface content that is authoritative, specific and genuinely useful, so the quality bar has gone up, not down. The real opportunity is for businesses willing to build presence beyond their own websites. Third-party credibility, through contributions to industry publications, consistent association with the right topics and presence in trusted communities, shapes how AI tools represent a brand and whether they recommend it.”
Chris Pitt, CEO, GAIN Performance
“AI Overviews, chatbots and generative search are changing how people discover and evaluate brands, but they haven’t changed what actually wins. The journey is messier, more conversational and far harder to track: buyers bounce between AI summaries, social feeds, forums, reviews, traditional search and messaging long before they ever hit your site. Yet underneath that complexity the fundamentals of SEO remain. Experience, relevance, authority, technical performance and offsite signals – it’s all still there.
“The brands that come out on top are the ones that show up consistently, credibly and memorably across all commercially relevant touchpoints, not just in one channel’s dashboard. What has shifted is the centre of gravity: individual platform metrics are less useful in isolation, while commercially relevant, targeted brand visibility has become the key performance outcome. Off-page tactics like branded mentions, digital PR and link acquisition are now core brand infrastructure, because they fuel both search and AI visibility. As AI handles more of the mechanical optimisation, the real human advantage moves upstream into strategy and creativity.”
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