SEO and AI Search in 2026: What Has Changed and What Hasn't

Is AI the end of SEO? I get asked this more than almost anything else at the moment, and the honest answer is no. But three things really are changing, and one very important thing is not.

I have been building and looking after websites for businesses and organisations in Birmingham for 20 years, and I have watched plenty of “SEO is dead” headlines come and go. This time there is more substance behind the noise, so it is worth separating what has changed from what has not.

In this article

• The short version
• Is SEO on its way out?
• AI answers are now part of search
  • How common are AI answers?
  • What AI answers mean for your website traffic
  • Why search engines still sit behind every AI answer
• Three goals worth aiming for
• Google’s ranking systems are getting smarter
  • Why helpful content alone may not be enough
• The day-to-day work is quicker now
• What I would do next
• Need a hand with your website or SEO?

The short version

SEO is changing in three ways because of AI:

1. More searches now end in an AI-written answer.
2. Google is using AI to get better at judging which pages deserve to rank.
3. The day-to-day work of SEO is getting quicker and easier.

What is not changing is how pages get found. Google still ranks pages using the same fundamentals it has relied on for two decades, such as links from other websites and how well a page matches what someone is searching for. And the AI tools writing those answers still run searches in a search engine to find their sources.

For most small businesses, the right response is to keep doing the SEO basics well.

Is SEO on its way out?

No, and Google says as much. In its own guidance on AI features in Search, Google makes the point that optimising for its AI experiences is really just optimising for search, which means it is still SEO.

You may have seen agencies selling “GEO”, short for generative engine optimisation, as a brand new discipline. I see GEO as part of SEO rather than a replacement for it. Search is changing quickly, but that does not mean every part of it is changing, whatever the sales pitch says.

AI answers are now part of search

The most obvious change is that when you search on Google or ask ChatGPT a question, you often get an AI answer rather than just a list of links.

Google said in June 2026 that AI Overviews, the AI summaries at the top of its results, now have more than 2.5 billion monthly users. Its chat-style AI Mode passed one billion monthly users in May 2026, a year after launching.

How common are AI answers?

Not on every search yet. Google’s own documentation says AI Overviews only appear when its systems decide they add something useful. When Pew Research Center counted them in March 2025, 18% of Google searches showed one. For searches that began with words like “who”, “what” or “why”, the figure was 60%.

That count is now more than a year old, so it cannot tell you how common AI answers are today. Google’s own growth figures suggest the number is rising fast. My working assumption is that before long, almost every search will end in some kind of AI response, even if traditional links still sit alongside it.

What AI answers mean for your website traffic

Nobody can say for certain yet, because the evidence points both ways.

Pew found that people clicked a regular result on 8% of visits when an AI Overview was shown, compared with 15% when there was not one. That sounds alarming. But Google has said that total clicks from its unpaid results to websites have been relatively stable year on year. Both can be true, because one measures clicks per search and the other measures clicks overall. If AI encourages people to search more, more searches with fewer clicks each can add up to roughly the same total.

Many of the studies reporting big traffic drops focus on news publishers, which tells you little about a local tradesperson, a charity or a small online shop. Your own numbers are a better guide. Google Search Console is free, and it shows whether your clicks from Google are actually going down.

Why search engines still sit behind every AI answer

Yes, arguably more than ever. When you ask an AI a question, it works out what you are really asking, then runs its own searches in a search engine and reads the results to write its reply. Google calls this “query fan-out”.

Take someone asking how to fix a lawn full of weeds. The AI might quietly search for the best lawn weedkillers, ways to remove weeds without chemicals, and how to stop them coming back. One question becomes several searches.

Because the AI finds its sources through search, where your pages rank still matters.

Three goals worth aiming for

I think about three goals:

• Get found. The AI looks at a lot of pages for each answer, so this is the easiest part if your fundamentals are sound.
• Get cited. Being one of the sources the AI names or links to in its answer.
• Get recommended. The real prize is the AI suggesting your business rather than a competitor’s.

Google’s ranking systems are getting smarter

Yes, and that is the second big change. Some SEOs argue Google’s algorithm has not changed much, and in many ways they are right. It still leans heavily on PageRank, which judges a page partly by the links pointing to it from other websites. Google has used AI to understand meaning and relevance since RankBrain arrived in 2015.

What I am seeing is that Google is now improving its ranking systems much faster than it used to, and AI is a big reason why.

Why helpful content alone may not be enough

In my experience, helpful content on its own is not always enough. Google would have you believe that a good website and useful content are all you need, and it is true that plenty of pages do well without any obvious SEO effort. But the algorithm is still imperfect, and there are still ways to game it.

Gaming it is getting harder, though, and I would steer well clear. Google’s spam policies set out the tricks it will penalise, and a site that breaks them can be pushed down or removed from Google entirely. In May 2026 Google clarified that those rules apply to its AI answers too, and it has released four spam updates so far this year, the latest starting on 24 September.

The lesson is simple: do not take shortcuts that could put your website at risk.

The day-to-day work is quicker now

Yes, and this is the third change, and the one I feel every day. Both the strategy and the hands-on work are quicker than they used to be.

I build every website I make with Claude, Anthropic’s AI, and it has changed how fast I can work. Research, drafting, checking and tidying up that once took days now takes hours. The hard part is no longer doing the task. It is giving the AI good instructions and the right information about your business, such as your services, your customers and how you talk about what you do.

That is where experience still counts. AI is at its best when someone knows what to ask for, what to test and what to throw away. Everything it produces needs a person to check it for accuracy and make sure it sounds like you. Google agrees: its guidance on AI-generated content says it is critical to fact-check and review everything before publishing.

I wrote more about this way of working in The 2026 Web Stack: How Do You Improve AI? Add a Human.

What I would do next

Keep doing the SEO that already worked, and let AI help you do it faster without breaking Google’s rules. In practice:

• Get the fundamentals right. Earn links from other reputable websites, and make each page clearly match what people are searching for.
• Write for your real customers. Answer the questions people actually ask you, using what you know from doing the job. Google calls generic advice that anyone could write “commodity content”, and tells site owners to create something more useful instead.
• Use AI, but keep a human in charge. Have a person review everything before it goes live.
• Do not mass-produce pages just to rank. Google lists using AI to generate lots of pages without adding value as a form of spam.
• Ignore the “AI hacks”. Google says its search does not use llms.txt files, does not need your content chopped into tiny chunks, and does not need special schema markup for AI search. Be wary of anyone selling these as a package.
• Check Search Console. Google now has a generative AI report that shows how often your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It does not show clicks, and it only appears once your pages have been shown enough times.

Need a hand with your website or SEO?

If you would like an honest opinion on how your website is performing in Google and AI search, I am happy to take a look. No jargon, no hard sell, and I will always tell you what is worth doing and what is not.

Take a look at my website packages, or get in touch on 07859 925 041 or hello@darrenhodson.co.uk.