SEO in 2026: How I'd Rank in Google in the AI Era

SEO in 2026 has evolved, and here is exactly how I’d rank in Google in the AI era before your clicks disappear.

Additional Resources:
► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsVTqzratPs
► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NFei1FbytM
► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gReszNnykpg

Last year flipped the table. Traffic slid, panic spiked, and AI Overviews started siphoning clicks like crazy. Our fresh data shows that when an AI Overview appears, the top result now loses around 58% of its clicks. In this video, I break down the 3 shifts reshaping search that explain what actually works now. We start with modern discovery, because your buyers do not rely on one page or one platform anymore. They bounce from Google to Reddit to YouTube to review sites, then validate on Amazon. AI assistants are doing the same thing, pulling from YouTube, Reddit, forums, publishers, and niche sites. With 86% of top-cited sources unique to each assistant, you have to reverse engineer your niche. I show you how to use Ahrefs Brand Radar to open the Cited Domains report so you can see exactly which websites AI assistants cite, and where you and your competitors get mentioned.

Then we get into query fan-out and why brand is everything. AI takes a single prompt like best smartphone for photography, explodes it into dozens of sub-queries like vs, best, top, review, alternative, then stitches an answer from the pages ranking for those terms. If your brand is mentioned across those pages, your odds of inclusion go way up. Our research shows branded mentions correlate with AI Overview visibility more than backlinks, referring domains, or Domain Rating. I walk you through finding the right pages in Brand Radar’s Cited Pages report, filtering for predictable fan-out patterns, and getting your product reviewed or added to high-impact lists and comparisons without wasting time on pages that will never move the needle.

Finally, we talk about where traditional SEO still wins because organic clicks are flowing to action. AI can explain concepts, but it cannot complete the task. Queries like backlink checker, mortgage calculator, or snow removal service need a click. I show you a quick workflow to surface action-driven keywords at scale using a keyword research tool, the Matching Terms report, Include filters like calculator, checker, generator, and the Intents filter to pull transactional terms. This is where content, links, and technical SEO still work like a charm in 2026.

If you are planning your roadmap for the year, you cannot afford to guess. Watch now to see the exact playbook I’d use to be discoverable everywhere, win AI citations, and capture the action-driven clicks your competitors are sleeping on. Click play and adapt before the next update compounds your losses.