Search is changing faster than at any point in the last decade. With Google’s AI Overviews rolling out globally and LLM-powered discovery becoming mainstream through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, brands must rethink how they create content, measure performance and build visibility.
Here are the essential insights we’ve taken from our own client work and the wealth of expertise from industry leaders at the most recent Brighton SEO event. We’ve boiled down the basics that are getting real-world results into a no-nonsense guide around the key topics and best practices that will make a difference to your results in 2026.
1. AI Overviews Are Reshaping How Users Search
Google AI Mode is set to become the default experience for many searchers, and usage is already at 25%. But the impact is dramatic: - 90% fewer clicks than traditional search. - CTR <0.1% for most queries. That’s 50–80 seconds dwell time inside AI Mode before users even decide whether to click.
Despite this, it’s not all bad news. 80% of users still click outside the AI Overview when they are close to converting. Your job is to be visible at precisely that point.
2. Winning Now Requires Content Built for Both Traditional Search, AI Mode & LLMs
Traditional keyword-only SEO is no longer enough. AI Mode and LLMs evaluate content differently and reward: Depth and clarity - Real expertise and brand authority - Recency and factual accuracy - Structured, extractable information
Practical actions brands must take:
- Write question-led H2s with 40–60 word direct answers.
- Include tables, lists, visuals and mini-summaries.
- Add expert bios, citations and first‑hand experience.
- Use schema: Organisation, Author, VideoObject and SameAs.
- Ensure content answers the next 2–3 follow-up questions (multi-turn search).
This isn’t about writing more content — it’s about writing better, more useful content that’s easy for the bots to crawl and understand.
3. Brand Is Now a Ranking Factor
One of the most important takeaways: brand mentions and citations behave like backlinks for LLMs.
LLMs look for mentions on Reddit, YouTube, forums and authoritative editorial sites. Consistency in how your brand appears across the web is vital. Sources that validate your expertise will help enormously.
If you want to be cited in AI answers, your brand must be part of the wider conversation and remain in the conversation as users dig deeper into the next layer of research.
4. Organic Traffic Isn’t Shrinking - It’s Shifting
While impressions are up 50%, clicks are down 30%. Users are consuming more information inside AI answers, turning to Reddit for unfiltered discussion and using YouTube as an authenticity engine. They will then typically take a 23-word average length query into LLMs for deeper research.
Your visibility must extend across formats - written, video, visual and UGC.
5. Video and Tools Are Becoming Key LLM Sources
LLMs increasingly cite YouTube videos, tools, calculators and free resources. Top # list articles (listicles) and data-led pages and diagrams all perform well.
This means businesses should: add short videos to primary landing pages, repurpose guides into carousels and shorts, build simple tools or comparison resources.
These formats are disproportionately rewarded in LLM-generated answers so embrace them!
6. Measuring Search Performance Must Evolve
GA4 currently undervalues organic traffic because it still uses last‑click attribution (the only traffic channel to be still measured this way).
With journeys now averaging 20 touchpoints, brands must update their measurement approach:
What to implement:
- Create a custom LLM traffic channel to pull together all the different LLM sources that get lost under referral and unassigned into one clean view.
- Build Looker dashboards for LLM and AI Overview impressions.
- Identify dark social by segmenting “direct” traffic that does not land on the homepage and likely coming from social shares or screenshots in private messages.
- Use a 7‑day time-lapse audience to capture organic contribution across the journey which should give a much more realistic count of your true organic users.
- Analyse multi-touch behaviour using the Attribution Path report which is hidden in the advertising section of GA4.
- Move to server-side tracking (up to 30% more accurate attribution).
Smarter attribution = a clearer understanding of SEO’s true commercial impact.
7. Conversion Content Still Wins - More Than Ever
Although AI Overview visibility is important, the highest-value clicks still come from Commercial intent pages (1-1.5% CTR) - Download resources (8-10% CTR).
Users who do click from LLMs spend 67% longer on site and convert at a rate of 30–40% higher, making LLM traffic disproportionately valuable. So you may not get the volumes you got from traditional search, but once they get there the intent is so much stronger.
Your website must:
- Lead with clear CTAs.
- Use emotional framing where appropriate (≈30% engagement lift).
- Show progress and steps in forms and tools.
- Provide helpful, trustworthy advice.
8. The New SEO Strategy: Plan for the Journey, Not the First Query
The core shift highlighted at BrightonSEO: “Optimise for journeys, not single answers.”
This means:
- Mapping likely prompt sequences.
- Building topical content clusters that answer deeper questions.
- Creating pages where facts are complete, verifiable and self-contained.
- Ensuring your brand is present wherever users validate information.
This is how you become the source LLMs choose to cite.
Google Core Updates
We've now seen the impact of the most recent Google core update in December 2025, and it just re-enforces the importance of all of these helpful, sign-posted content guidance directives. Providing genuinely useful and helpful content accredited to authoritative sources is still your no.1 weapon in being ranked well. Getting across the technical mark up elements of your content together with the basic raw ingredients will ensure that you get noticed in all the right places, at the right time for the relevant intent.
Final Thought: SEO Isn’t Dying - It’s Transforming
Google processed 5.9 trillion searches in 2025 (up from 5 trillion in 2024). The SEO industry is set to nearly double in value by 2029.
Users still search. They still research. They still click.
But the brands who win in the next era of search will be the ones who embrace AI-driven discovery. So invest in brand authority by creating deeply helpful content. And to make sure you get the credit for all your hard work, modernise how search performance is measured to match the new user journeys with data driven attribution.
If you want support building your search strategy for this new landscape, Appius can help you design a future-proof plan that works across AI, LLMs and traditional search.
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