10 SEO Trends I've Experienced Firsthand in 2026 (With Data)

Transcript

Why This Matters Now

Jeff Payne 0:30

direct competitors. They fight for the same customers, they have the same types of tools, and they actively try to out-compete each other every day: Ahrefs and Semrush. This year, they independently published research on what is happening to search traffic, and they reached the same conclusions. Not similar conclusions, the same ones. When two rivals who disagree on almost everything else look at the data and arrive at the same verdict, that is not an opinion piece. That is a signal your business cannot afford to miss. Today, I'm breaking down 10 trends that Ryan Law at Ahrefs documented firsthand and showing you exactly where Semrush's independent research confirms each one. Then I will tell you what I have seen in my own client work. Let's go.

Meet the Data Sources

Jeff Payne 1:25

I'm Jeff Payne. You're listening to episode number 16 of The Jeff Payne Show Ryan Law is the Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs. He has fourteen years of industry experience. He works with hundreds of SEO professionals. He has access to data that most agencies would pay fortunes for. His piece, Ten SEO Trends That I've Seen Firsthand in Twenty-Six with Data. Along that-- alongside that, Semrush, which serves ten million marketing professionals, including myself, and has been described by G2 as the top enterprise SEO platform, published parallel research on almost every one of these same trends in twenty twenty-six. These are not small shops running gut feeling analysis. These are the two largest SEO intelligence platforms on the planet, with independent data science teams looking at the same market and describing the same reality. Here's what they both see.

Trend 1 Info Sites Collapse

Jeff Payne 2:32

Trend number one: information-only websites are in a free fall. Ryan Law's most striking data point. He analyzed a basket of well-known information-only websites, businesses whose primary reason to exist is to educate, to inform, explain, and answer questions. No product, no transaction, just content. That basket now sits at twenty-eight percent of its peak organic traffic. That is a seventy-two percent collapse. Affiliate sites, same story, down sixty-two percent from peak, and the search demand for affiliate marketing topics has fallen to forty-one percent of what it was in twenty twenty-three. Why? Because AI overviews can now answer most informational queries directly inside Google. The click to a blog post is no longer necessary. Google absorbed it. Semrush confirms the mechanism. Search engines are now designed to answer queries directly rather than routing users to source websites. When users get the information immediately, they do not click through to a website like they used to. The business implication If your website exists primarily to inform and not to sell, transact, or demonstrate a service, you are competing directly with the answer engine. That is not a competition you can win. I've watched this play out with clients who built heavy educational content strategies. The traffic that used to look healthy two years ago is quietly evaporating. The visitors they do get convert better, but there are far fewer of them.

Trend 2 AI Search Revenue

Jeff Payne 4:19

The era of building revenue through pure information is over Trend number two, AI search is now a revenue channel. A brand new awareness and revenue channel appeared in twenty twenty six, and in most companies, it landed directly in the SEO's team's lap. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI mode, these are not toys. They are how a growing segment of buyers research, evaluate vendors, and decide who to hire. Ahrefs' own data found that eighty percent of AI search traffic goes to homepages, product pages, and free tools, not blog posts. That is the opposite of what traditional SEO told us to optimize. We built content funnels top-down. The AI is sending people straight to what your business actually does. Semrush frames this as search everywhere optimization, the recognition that your audience is already using seven or more platforms daily to search and research. They spend more time on TikTok each day than on Google search. Being visible only on Google is no longer a complete strategy. The business im-implication? AI visibility is not a future consideration. It is a present revenue channel. It requires a different architecture than traditional SEO, and most businesses have not built it yet. That is why Colt Melrose Photography in Houston, his website was engineered the way it was. Every page, every content decision was made with AI visibility in mind, not just Google ranking. Within one week of launch, multiple AI platforms were recommending Colt unprompted for commercial photography in Houston. That is the new game, and it is absolutely winnable if you understand what you are building.

Trend 3 AI Overviews Click Loss

Jeff Payne 6:19

Trend number three, AI overviews are stealing your clicks Ahrefs ran a study on three thousand keywords. Result? When an AI overview appears on a Google search result page, the number one website sees fifty-eight percent fewer clicks than it would without the AI overview. That was updated in twenty twenty-six. In the original twenty twenty-five study, it was thirty-four and a half percent. It got worse. For every hundred clicks your top ranking page used to earn, Google now keeps fifty-eight of them. You receive forty-two. Semrush confirms the mechanism and the direction. The user journey has been compressed from search, click, scan, find, answer to search, read answer in SERP, done. Your page is still powering the answer. Your brand is often invisible in it. The protection, you might ask? Commercial intent. Transactional queries, hire a photographer, book a dentist, find a ten thirty-one exchange specialist. AI overviews appear in roughly four to eight percent of those searches. That is where the clicks still live. This is a shift I keep making with clients. Stop writing to inform. Start writing to convert. The informational top of funnel content is being commoditized by AI. The bottom of your funnel, the page where someone makes a decision to call you, book you, buy from you, that real estate is more valuable right now than it has ever been.

Trend 4 Branded Search Wins

Jeff Payne 8:01

Trend number four, branded search is the new SEO currency Here's the finding that stopped most business owners cold. The brands winning in twenty twenty-six search, both traditional Google and AI platforms, are brands that people search for by name. Branded search volume is like a signal Google, Google uses to determine whether a site is legitimate or just built for algorithms. A site nobody searches for by name is easy to discount. It does not matter how many keywords you have optimized. If real people are not looking for you specifically, you're treated differently. And AI is the same way. The more your brand is talked about in relevant context across trusted platforms, the more likely you are to appear in ChatGPT, in Google AI mode, and in AI overviews. Semrush's Search Everywhere research confirms the brand as foundation principle. The practitioners winning in twenty twenty-six have built systems to be visible across every platform where their audience researches. It's not about gaming search results. It's about being genuinely known across channels, which then feeds back into search credibility. This has revived something the SEO industry allowed to atrophy: brand building, advertising, earned media, PR, making your business known beyond your website. Daniel Goodwin at Provident ten thirty one is the clearest example in my client roster. The masterclass video series, the Amazon best-selling book, the strategic content ecosystem we built around his expertise. That is brand building with an SEO and AI spine.

Trend 5 Zero Click Default

Jeff Payne 9:54

When AI systems discuss ten thirty one exchanges, Daniel comes up, not because we gamed an algorithm, because we made him genuinely known Trend number five: zero-click search is now the default. SparkToro has tracked zero-click search for a decade. The trajectory is not subtle. In twenty-sixteen, forty-five percent of Google searches ended without a click. The searcher got the answer and moved on without visiting a website. In twenty-twenty-six, that number is sixty-eight percent. Two out of every three searches, no visit, no opportunity. Semrush published a dedicated playbook on this. Their position? Zero-click searches might drive direct traffic, but they can still help your business grow by boosting visibility and brand awareness. When your brand appears in zero-click features like AI Overviews, you become part of the conversation your audience is already having, even if you never get the click. That reframe is critical. Visibility and traffic are no longer the same thing. Your content can power an AI answer. Your brand can be mentioned in it and receive no visit. The question is whether you are even in the answer at all, or whether it is a competitor's language the AI is using. Consumer demand has not disappeared. People still need services. They still hire vendors, book appointments, make purchases. The behavior has changed.

Trend 6 Query Fanout Explained

Jeff Payne 11:32

The discovery path has changed Trend number six, query fanout, the hidden way AI interprets every search. This is a concept Ahrefs called keyword research two point zero, and Semrush published an entire research piece on it. Here's what happens when someone types a complex question into Google AI mode or ChatGPT. The AI does not look for a single answer to a single query. It breaks the question into multiple sub-queries, runs them in parallel, and then synthesizes the results into a single response. Semrush documented Google AI mode doing this in real time, one user query triggering eight separate internal searches at the same time. Google's own head of search, Elizabeth Reid, described it as Google I/O twenty twenty-five. AI mode calls on Gemini to break the question into subtopics and issues multiple queries simultaneous on your behalf. Why does this matter to a business owner? Because your content needs to address not just the main question a prospect might ask, it needs to address every reasonable sub-question embedded in that search. A thin page that answers one narrow query is far less likely to be cited than a comprehensive resource that covers the topic from multiple angles. When we design content for AI visibility, we think in clusters, not single pages. What is the full constellation of questions a prospect has before they decide to hire someone in your category?

Trend 7 Reddit UGC Power

Jeff Payne 13:18

That architecture is the difference between showing up in AI answers and being invisible Trend number seven, Reddit and user-generated content are now SEO weapons. Here's one that consistently surprises people when I mention it. According to Ahrefs, Reddit receives one billion organic visits per month from Google. One billion. Reddit is also the second most cited source in ChatGPT responses, behind only Wikipedia. Semrush's Search Everywhere research quantifies the platform reality. Your audience engages with seven or more research services daily, and TikTok alone gets more daily time than Google Search. Community platforms, social platforms, and user-generated content environments are not peripheral to the search ecosystem. They are central to how AI systems train on and cite trusted information. Why does this matter? Because real human conversations, reviews, forum discussions, and community posts are now the source material that both Google and AI trust the most. For local businesses especially, the platforms where real customers share real opinions are more important than ever. A dentist with authentic reviews on Google's health grades, and relevant community forums is a fundamentally stronger position with AI systems than a dentist with a perfect website and no real digital footprint. The AI is looking for corroboration. It wants to see that real people vouch for your experience.

Trend 8 GEO New SEO

Jeff Payne 15:06

Trend number eight, GEO, known as Generative Engine Optimization. That is the new SEO Traditional SEO is optimization for ranked results with an ten blue links. GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, is optimization for AI-generated answers. The goal is not position one, the goal is to include citations in the AI response. And the factors that drive AI citations differ from those that drive organic rankings. Ahrefs found that sites with over thirty-two thousand referring domains are three and a half times more likely to be cited by ChatGPT. Original research drives citation. Structured content with clear definitions drive citation. Third party mentions drive citations. Brands are six and a half more times likely to be cited through third party sources than through their own domains. Semrush's zero-click research confirms the brand authority as citation driver principle. The ultimate defense against traffic decay is building uncommoditizable branded search demand, publishing proprietary data, and leveraging hu- human subject matter experts. This is the GEO playbook described from a different angle. Proof over proximity. That is the principle that governs every content and visibility strategy I build. Your organic SEO and your GEO have to work together. They feed each other. A site that does... A site that ranks does not automatically get cited. A site that is cited typically ranks. The architecture that produces both is deliberate, not accidental.

Trend 9 Local SEO Stronghold

Jeff Payne 17:04

Trend number nine Local SEO is still a stronghold. Here's good news for anyone running a local business. AI Overviews appears in only about eight percent of local searches, which means the queries that drive local business, hire a dentist near me, find a commercial photographer in Houston, ten thirty one exchange specialist in Austin, these still drive clicks. These still work the way they used to work. But the ranking factors have shifted. According to White Spark's twenty twenty-six Local Search Ranking Factors report, which I covered in episode number fourteen, proximity still controls about fifty-five percent of local rankings. The remaining forty-five percent is where you compete. Google Business Profile optimization, review volume and quality, website currency, and behavioral signals. Semrush's Search Everywhere research adds a layer. Your audience research-- Your audience's research behavior for high-stakes decisions. Hiring a vendor, choosing a service provider spans multiple platforms before a decision is made. For a local business, that means your reviews, your community presence, your social footprint, and your website all play a role in the multi-surface research path that ends in a phone call or a booking. The dentist prospect I am currently advising is a perfect example of this. The opportunity in local AI and search visibility is real and largely unclaimed. Most local businesses have no idea that being an early mover here is even possible.

Trend 10 Original Research Moat

Jeff Payne 18:49

The window is still open, but not for long, because once your competitors figure this out, the first mover advantage is gone Trend number ten, original research is now the highest value asset in search. The trend that ties everything together in a world where AI can summarize any public information instantly, the only content AI can't cannot replicate is content that does not yet exist. Original research, proprietary data, first-hand expertise from lived experience. Ryan's law entire article is about, built on this premise. He is sharing what he has seen firsthand, not what others have theorized, what he has personally observed with data attached. Semrush reaches the same collusion-- conclusion from a different angle. The survival strategy for businesses facing traffic decay is publishing proprietary data and leveraging human subject matter experts, content that could only have been created by someone who has actually done the work. That is what AI systems are built to cite, because that is what humans trust. The question Ryan Law's research ultimately ask is, what makes your business worth citing? If the answer is, quote, "We publish helpful articles," end of quote, that is no longer enough. If the answer is, "We conduct original research, we document real client outcomes, we hold a defensible expert position in our market," that is a business that will appear in AI answers. Every client case study I have shared in this series is an original research asset. The Colt Melrose website launch, the Daniel Goodwins Masterclass, the Burbank Dental Lab success guides, none of those outcomes can be replicated by a competitor who reads the transcript. They are firsthand. They are verifiable. They are the kind of proof AI systems are built to cite. That is not an accident. That is architecture.

Wrap Up Self Audit

Jeff Payne 21:01

So let us land this. Ten trends confirmed independently by Ahrefs and Semrush, two direct competitors who do not agree on very much, but agree on all of this. The businesses losing ground share a common characteristic. They built their visibility on informational content designed for the old version of Google. That version is being retired in real time. The businesses gaining ground share a different characteristic. They are genuinely known. People search for them by name. AI systems cite them unprompted. Their content is built from re-real expertise and documented outcomes, not rephrased internet knowledge, and they are visible not just on Google, but across the services where buyers are actually researching. Your three-question self-audit Number one, if someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI mode who to hire in your category and your market, does your business appear? Not do you rank on Google, does AI recommend you? Number two, is your website designed primarily to inform or to convert and demonstrate authority? Those are fundamentally different websites, and in 2026 they perform very differently. Number three, what original proof do you have? Not what do you believe, what can you document with client names, measurable outcomes, and real data? In actuality, what stories can you tell? Those three questions will tell you more about your competitive position in 2026 than any keyword ranking report ever will. Thank you for taking the time to be with me. When A-Ahrefs and Semrush look at the same market and research the same conclusions, that is the kind of consensus that deserves your attention. The data is clear. The direction is set. The question is whether you are moving with it. I'm Jeff Payne. This is The Jeff Payne Show. Until next time.