Marketing predictions and wishes for 2026
Rather than write predictions as many are apt to do at this time of the year, I am doing the same, but I am also making some of my predictions wishes for the future.
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Rather than write predictions as many are apt to do at this time of the year, I am doing the same, but I am also making some of my predictions hopes for the future. I am not going to spell out which are predictions and which are wishes, and I hope that in the winter of 2026, all of these predictions have become reality.
[Sponsored by Semrush Enterprise & AI Optimization]
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AI hype will decline
By the time we settle into the reality of mid-2026, the deafening, frantic roar of AI hype disrupting search that defined the previous three years will have finally quieted, leaving us not with the impending fears of the apocalypse, but with a grounded, mundane reality where AI has become part of discovery. With the launch of Gemini and Google pulling back the search crown, Google will have the luxury of defining what this marriage of search + AI will look like.
Usage will increase
The reality is that as hysteria fades into the background, the actual use of these tools will shift vertically in a way that’s great for users. We don’t need to live in a dystopian world of AI slop for users to get real utility from search. AI overviews and AI mode are not just summaries of search results; they draw on search results, but, for the most part, they are dynamic, real-world LLM answers. This is great for users and will train users to rely on search even more. An increase in search volume benefits everyone.
Ads are coming
Most importantly, for Google and the other engines that have been spending billions of dollars on these products, monetization is now possible and on the way. I shared on LinkedIn how easy it would be for Google to sell product placements in generated images. They could do this via their Google ads bidding platform or simply as agency ad buys.
There will be complications with brands, but these issues would occur regardless; Google might as well offer it as a product. Additionally, Google has already created the paradigm for this with YouTube; the advertisers will only pay if the product placement is not removed.
In LLM results, as users now appreciate the value, Google can do many creative things to place ads. They can add ads to the actual content, place ads above the response, or sell banner ads. Much of the reluctance to do these things in the past stemmed from Google’s desire not to disrupt users' use of its LLMs. That ship has now sailed in Google’s direction, and they are safe to experiment.
Search volume rises, but web traffic might still drop
We are likely staring down the barrel of a future defined by a massive, counterintuitive paradox: global search volume reaches dizzying all-time highs while traditional website traffic is still in freefall, creating a scenario in which search did not die as the pessimists predicted, but instead mutated into something entirely different. This is a scenario of marketers’ own making. Years of worshipping rankings and creating keyword-optimized content created a dependency on low-quality traffic, now upended by AI search and answers, which negates any need to click.
While the big apocalypse already occurred with the launch of AI overviews, the declines will continue as AI expands into new areas, such as IoT and home devices. The use of non-text search is set to explode as these devices finally become useful with Gemini-enabled voice search.
(Paid subscribers can download this voice search playbook.)
Mid-funnel is the new SEO
However, this massive, unprecedented increase in query volume will not translate into a corresponding spike in traffic because the “Zero Click” reality will have solidified from a trend into the default standard of the web, creating a ruthless attention economy where the search engine is the final destination rather than a gateway, and where the user gets the instant satisfaction of a synthesized answer without ever feeling the need to visit the source that provided the data. Endlessly creating more top-of-funnel content will serve no purpose.
Search types expand
As users begin searching by circling objects on their screens or casually holding their phone cameras up to a storefront to get reviews and pricing, the concept of specific keywords will feel increasingly archaic, meaning that any SEO strategy relying purely on text-based optimization will be effectively rendered invisible to half the market, a shift that runs parallel to the aggressive permeation of advertising into AI modes where paid placements are so seamlessly integrated they become indistinguishable from organic recommendations.
No more rank tracking
In this new world, one of the hardest pills for the industry to swallow will be the total obsolescence of traditional rank and prompt tracking, because when every result is dynamically generated and deeply personalized by AI based on your immediate context and long-term history, the static result effectively dies, taking the comforting concept of “Position 1” along with it. As I have always recommended, we will be forced to retreat to Search Console as the only remaining source of empirical truth, shifting our primary health metric away from vanity metrics like average position and towards the brutal ratio of Brand versus Non-Brand visibility.
Brand vs non-brand is a KPI
Leaders will begin tasking their SEO teams with reporting on brand vs. non-brand performance, and they won’t be able to hide behind seasonal bumps. The good news will be that teams will finally get credit for brand traffic, just in a different way.
In my opinion, much of LLM visibility is “brand” rather than organic, and the correct metric for measuring LLM visibility is brand recall rather than search clicks. This means the brand teams will need to work closely with their SEO partners on budgets and reporting.
TikTok and Meta become search engines
With a US ban of TikTok now never going to happen, this year will be the time when TikTok entirely moves into Google’s space. Before the rise of OpenAI, TikTok was Google’s most feared competitor, and I think it will again become a formidable adversary in the search market share race. TikTok will solidify its status not just as a social app but as the primary search engine for the under-40 demographic, becoming the first stop for lifestyle advice, travel planning, and product discovery.
Additionally, this will be the year that Meta gets its footing as it integrates Meta AI in Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook to create a closed-loop ecosystem that rivals Google in scope and retention.
Even better for these platforms, social media will become a verified ranking signal for these closed systems. Google and others who have until now relied on the messy, gamed discussions on Reddit will find that content increasingly unreliable.
TV and podcasts get indexed
There is an incredible amount of valuable content in the world that is not yet available to search users: audio and video. Even today, with the prevalence of AI, you can’t find a movie quote online unless it has been snipped by a user and uploaded onto a video platform. Movie and TV studios will make their content available to LLMs, which will then drive additional viewers as that content surfaces in AI results.
Additionally, the millions of hours of archived podcast and radio content will find their way onto the broader internet, usurping the role that written content currently plays. This kind of content is specifically created to be scraped and shared, so even if web content providers begin blocking LLM crawlers, the LLMs will still be able to learn from all of this new content.
Browser wars are back
Because the AI assistant will become the primary gatekeeper of information and agent will replace some tasks of searchers, the “Browser Wars” will return with a vengeance as Chrome, Edge, Safari and many new entrants fight over AI integration, forcing SEOs to optimize not just for Google, but for the specific rendering and synthesis engines of different browsers, each of which will interpret and present content with its own bias.
SEO managers will be in high demand
Ultimately, despite the automation, the need for SEO managers will skyrocket rather than disappear, but the job description will be unrecognizable: we will evolve from the technical minutiae of tweaking meta tags to the strategic oversight of managing a complex ecosystem of signals across voice, visual, video, and text search, transforming the job from technicians into the architects of a brand’s digital presence who must provide the necessary human judgment to engineer the strategies that ensure the AI knows the answer in the first place.
2026 will be the year when SEO will be more important than ever. Happy New Year.
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