5 Spicy 2026 SEO/AI Predictions
2025 was a bizarre year full of dread and excitement. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg as I share a few predictions going into the new year.
This week’s #SEOForLunch is sponsored by Junction Jack.2025 was a bizarre year full of dread and excitement: LLMs showed up everywhere, AI sped up the chaos, Google kept rewriting the rules, and lawsuits became part of the norm.
And I don’t think we’ve seen the worst (or best) of it yet.
So this week, I’m sharing 5 spicy SEO/AI predictions for 2026. Drop yours in the comments, too. I want to see what you’re all calling!
Happy holidays, and a quick thank you to everyone who took my 3-question survey the other week. In 2026, I’m going to keep shipping thought-provoking takes that (politely, maybe) punch the status quo in the face.
Thanks again to this week’s sponsor, Junction Jack.
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Prediction 1:
AI-Mode Doesn’t Become Default Until Q4 26’+
Google has made it crystal clear that AI is the direction of travel. AI Overviews and AI Mode keep users on Google longer and answer more questions without needing ten blue links. (or so Google wants us to think, ha!)
But wanting it and defaulting it are two very different things.
Google is sitting on a golden goose. Alphabet did roughly $307B in revenue in 2023, and ads and clicks still power the machine.
Here’s the problem: early data suggests the AI experience is bad for the click economy. Seer’s research found that for informational queries with AI Overviews, organic CTR dropped 61% and paid CTR dropped 68% vs mid-2024.
There’s no chance Google makes AI Mode the default experience at scale until monetization is solved in a way that actually holds up.
So my bet: 2026 stays “optional tab / toggle,” with any true default push happening late in the year at best, and only after a meaningfully different ad model shows up.
Prediction 2:
Many SEO agencies will go out of business.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you never had to be good at SEO to run an agency.
For years, many shops built a decent standard operating procedure (SOP), slapped it on a retainer, then hired the cheapest possible labor (overseas, contractors, entry-level) to “execute.” The deliverables factory looked productive. The business impact was… meh at best.
Checkbox SEO is finally getting exposed. Business owners are going to realize their $1k, $2k, or $5k+/month retainer isn’t moving the needle, and that money can be spent somewhere else that actually drives revenue.
Some agencies will pivot and evolve. Many won’t.
A few will try to rebrand the same old work as “AI optimization” and sprinkle in buzzwords like it’s magic fairy dust. But a lot of the rest? They’ll close up shop and move on. Digital marketing was easy money for a long time. Those days are over. And it’s getting clearer by the month that SEO is no longer a fit for every business.
Usually, this gets framed as “bad for the industry,” and I’m not cheering for layoffs (trust me, I spend way too much time/money running seojobs.com!) But the barrier to entry has been so low for so long that a bit of house cleaning might actually raise the bar for everyone who’s left.
Prediction 3:
LLMs Start Providing Paid Ads
I was talking to Dan “Dejan” Patrovic on Twitter/X /the other day about this. Unlike Google, OpenAI, Perplexity, Claude, and the rest do not have a decades-old, ad-click money printer keeping the lights on. They’re building the plane while flying it, and $20 monthly subscriptions alone won't fund this arms race forever.
Perplexity already started experimenting with ads, and their first formats were basically “sponsored follow-up questions” sitting next to answers. That’s the “tell.” The market is training users (and advertisers) to treat LLM attention as monetizable, even when packaged as “helpful suggestions.”
The bigger question is what the trade looks like: do we get obvious sponsored placements (fine), or do we get “sponsored influence” inside the answer (not acceptable)? Either way, ads are coming because the incentives are inevitable.
Dan’s CAPS idea is one of the few publisher-friendly paths I see that at least tries to solve the “AI uses your content, you get paid” problem. But until something like that is real and scalable, the easiest lever to pull is still the same one it’s always been: paid placements.
Prediction 4:
LLMs Measurement Businesses Start To Fail
AI visibility tooling is having its “gold rush” moment. Everyone wants a dashboard that shows where they appear in ChatGPT, AI Mode, Perplexity, etc.
The problem is we still haven’t agreed on the fundamentals:
What are the KPIs?
What does “doing good” even look like?
How do you prove ROI when the journey is mostly off-platform and clickless?
So a lot of these standalone “LLM reporting” tools are going to run into the same wall in 2026: renewal conversations. When budgets tighten, pretty charts without a clear financial return are the first to get cut.
The companies I’m less worried about are the ones where AI/LLM measurement is an extension of an existing, sticky product (think Semrush and Ahrefs).
The standalone players will need to evolve fast. Tracking alone will get commoditized. The winners will pair measurement with action: automation, workflows, content ops, refresh programs, and execution that actually moves visibility. AirOps and Profound feel closer to that direction than most.
The rest? I’d bet a bunch of them are gone by the end of 2026.
Prediction 5:
C-Suite Eats Crow: SEO Job Market Returns
I’ve seen the drop in SEO job listings firsthand. You’ve seen it too: layoffs, hiring freezes, and companies announcing “replacing” teams with AI automation.
Here’s the twist: “SEO” didn’t die. It got promoted.
In a world where visibility now includes LLM answers, AI Mode, and recommendation engines, companies still need someone who understands discoverability, technical foundations, content strategy, and brand signals. The difference is that the job title might change, but the skill set is about to be back in demand.
I’ve written before about leaders chasing the easy button. In 2026, more of them are going to regret using AI as an excuse to cut payroll to make a single year’s P&L look prettier. The Salesforce example is a prime example: cut thousands, tout AI efficiency, then reality shows up when quality, trust, and outcomes start wobbling.
I’ve been yelling this for a while: AI is an incredible tool. But it’s supposed to augment strong humans, not replace them.
So yes, I think a meaningful chunk of these roles come back in 26’. The frustrating part is that compensation is likely to drop in the short term because companies will try to get “senior experience” at a discount, leveraging the AI fear/reality impacting jobs in 2025. But that won’t last. Once enough teams feel the pain of cheap execution and expensive mistakes, the market will correct, and the best talent will win again.