The Year in One Idea

AI rewards great humans.

In 2025, search and discovery changed in radical ways. 

AI systems like Chat GPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and in-platform AI-overviews from Google became exponentially faster at summarizing, answering, and recommending content. They also became far more selective about what they trusted to share with audiences. Search volume stopped winning by default, while usefulness rose: content that provided original insight, had proven authority, and authentically helped people won in the AI discovery race. 

Across industries and markets, brands that leaned too heavily on traditional SEO and content shortcuts lost ground, while those that invested in clarity, expertise, trust, and execution gained vital visibility as search and discovery interfaces changed.

In search and AI discovery, 2025 moved us away from rankings and into responses and relevance.

The signals of change in AI discovery are everywhere

Across enterprise B2B, eCommerce, and marketplace businesses, AI-driven discovery signals converged in 2025, showing striking consistency across categories and buyer segments.

Here are the patterns that repeated most often and have our full attention at Previsible in 2026:

1. Authority started to outweigh output

Brands publishing less, but with clearer expertise, consistently outperformed brands focused on content volume. AI systems were faster at detecting repetition, thin differentiation, and content that wasn’t authentically helpful.

At the same time, usefulness compounded. Brands that consistently demonstrated real-world expertise found that each new asset surfaced faster and more broadly across AI-driven discovery.

Implications for 2026: As teams bring AI content agents to life, they must keep human judgment fully in the loop to ensure content is high-value, differentiated, and audience-centric. Content for content’s sake will not be rewarded. 

2. AI visibility followed trust, not keywords

While the industry feared ChatGPT “stealing” traffic (despite our data showing it holds <1% of referral share), the real shift happened inside Google.

We saw AI Overviews (AIO) and LLM systems pull from sources with:

• Real-world application, not just definitions. TLDR: AI-Mode and LLMs want to drive outcomes, not rankings 
• External validation (links, citations, mentions). TLDR: Being seen throughout relevant web environments matters 
• Consistent entity definition across the web. TLDR: Ensuring AI systems accurately map brand expertise and offerings is vital

In many cases, the brands gaining AI visibility weren’t the ones most aggressively “optimized.” Instead, they were the brands already trusted by their audiences.

Implications for 2026: Success hinges on communicating measurable outcomes and practical utility, moving past ranking-centric strategies. As AI and LLMs control more search discovery, content must focus on real-world application and not keyword coverage. Key success efforts include establishing a clear entity definition across the web to ensure complete query fan-out alignment. Learn how here.

3. Discovery collapsed across channels

SEO, content, PR, affiliate, and brand stopped behaving like separate systems. This is a radical change.

AI didn’t care how content, channels, and campaigns are organized by internal marketing teams: it evaluated brands and sites holistically, looking for signals of authority, consistency, usefulness, and customer-centered outcomes. Brands that aligned marketing teams around shared discovery goals, orchestrated well across all channels and campaigns, moved faster and lost less momentum. 

Implications for 2026: The next phase of growth belongs to organizations that treat discovery as a shared system, not a set of marketing channels. High-value content, consistent messaging, and demonstrated expertise must work together across online and offline touchpoints to earn trust, scale, and visibility. Begin monitoring brand perception now.

4. Setting the Direction for 2026

As AI-driven discovery accelerated in 2025, two bodies of work helped us separate noise from signal to uncover what’s creating real impact. Together, they clarify how teams must evolve in 2026 to remain visible, trusted, and relevant in the discovery process:

• Our updated 2026 Previsible AI Manifesto: Established a human-led framework for AI adoption that accurately anticipated many of 2025’s shifts and now sets a clear standard for outcome-driven AI use in 2026.
• Our State of AI Discovery analysis of 1.96 million LLM sessions: Provides rare, empirical data in how AI discovery actually works, where intent forms, where friction exists, and what it truly takes to earn visibility and organic traffic. This is foundational research for all that’s ahead.

What these insights reinforce is a clear direction for 2026: success will not come from reacting to AI outputs, chasing search traffic, or optimizing in isolation. It will come from aligning strategy, expertise, and execution around how AI systems identify trust, usefulness, and authority at scale.

For teams willing to ground their decisions in real data and clear principles, AI discovery becomes not a threat, but a powerful lever for growth.

Exclusive Research & Insights from Previsible

As the trusted AI Discovery partner for the world’s top teams, we lead the SEO and GEO industry in proprietary research to proactively uncover, interpret, and operationalize breaking insights for our clients as AI discovery changes. Check your email weekly for breaking news, and what to do about it, on AI signal changes. Here are the key insights informing our approach to 2026:

• We published a study on 1.96 Million LLM Sessions
• Launched our AI SEO Benchmark Study
• Released our second AI Traffic Study
• Introduced the concept of LLM Brand Perception Drift
• Studied Black Friday eCommerce LLM Trends
• Shared guidance for Google’s Use and Indexation of Instagram Content
• Analyzed Google IO and Query Fan Out Implications
• Published an exclusive 2025 State of SEO Jobs Report

Why We Acquired IMN & Improove US

CMOs didn’t come into 2025 asking for more vendors. They came asking for fewer gaps.

They were tired of stitching together expert partners for strategy, content, authority, and eCommerce experimentation while AI systems quietly rewrote how discovery actually happens.

We felt that tension too.

That’s why we acquired two world-class organizations with shared values to help our clients activate all the strategic levers they needed to succeed in a world of AI discovery in 2026 and beyond with one partner at Previsible.

Why Internet Marketing Ninjas

In May, we acquired Internet Marketing Ninjas (IMN), the team that invented the playbook on how to earn digital authority at scale.

Their work focuses on acquiring high-quality trusted link placements, digital PR mentions, and trusted references through providing audience-centric, value-driven content. This approach has consistently produced durable authority for brands operating in competitive environments.

As AI-driven discovery systems evaluate credibility, expertise, and the trustworthiness of sources to surface brands in responses, our new authority-building capability via this team is mission-critical.

Why Improove US

In November, we acquired Improove US to strengthen our eCommerce offerings. Founded by former Google Search Quality Leader Michael Schwarz, the Improove US team specializes in translating visibility into performance through testing, conversion optimization, and cutting-edge experiences. Their work ensures that we can apply rapid prototyping and learnings as platforms and buyer behaviors evolve.

Why We’re Better Together

Previsible, Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Improove US are aligned around the belief that sustainable visibility is built through human-usefulness, credibility, and expert execution on behalf of, and with, our clients. 

As AI reshapes how information is evaluated, summarized, and presented, organizations need complete discovery capabilities, and we’re thrilled to grow our world-class team with the human-centered experts at Internet Marketing Ninjas and Improove US.

By The Numbers

2025 Customer Case Studies at Previsible

Enterprise B2B

Previsible contributed to the September launch of a category-leading AI SaaS company by planning the website migration, updating blog storytelling to highlight their expertise with content guardian agents, pruning old content that was no longer relevant, and laying the foundation for future growth with cutting-edge trust signals for the AI age.

Marketplace Platform

We collaborated with a popular local business online platform to accelerate their time to SEO experimentation, leading to 25% more winning tests than last year, which led to over an 80% improvement in organic performance on average.

Mid-market B2C

One of our ecommerce clients in the custom accessory space is having their “best year ever” despite industry-wide traffic declines and tariff uncertainty, thanks to our focus on answer-first content clusters and authority building.

Mid-market B2B

We reduced reliance on paid search by 90% in H2 2025 for a workplace safety training provider by increasing organic visibility, driving material cost-to-acquire efficiencies.

While AI discovery systems changed radically this year, it was the incredible humans inside Previsible that helped clients rapidly adapt to uncertainty, evolve content strategies, understand new KPIs for performance, and build out mechanisms for trust and authority building to gain traction in GEO. 

As a team, we listened, studied, scouted, grew, and added new capabilities to help our clients. We also shared intensely with our broader SEO and AI Discovery communities, because everyone is still actively learning and evolving, and we’re nowhere near a steady state yet.

Listening at Scale on the Weekly Voices of Search Podcast

Through Previsible’s longstanding podcast, Voices of Search, we connected with CMOs, in-house SEOs, growth leaders, and product teams to share best practices and key learnings. By the numbers, we have clocked 1.5 million downloads, rank in the Top 2% of podcasts, and have had 137,000 YouTube views of our live sessions.

Across hundreds of conversations, we tracked real-time changes in AI discovery systems, envisioned SEO team structures of the future, learned about the role AI agents will play, and unpacked how to make sites more discoverable for humans and AI. Tune in for fresh insights weekly on Spotify and Apple, or follow the conversations with a backstage pass on YouTube.

Our People and Our Culture

Our team members are the foundation of Previsible’s success. By the numbers, we’ve grown rapidly over the last three years, with a global team that spans the US, Chile, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, France, the Philippines, and Japan. This growth reflects our commitment to serving a rapidly evolving, AI-driven discovery landscape with localization, in-market expertise, and 24/7 coverage around the globe in services across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

At Previsible, our people are our greatest asset, and that’s why we prioritize learning and development, employee engagement, and retention programs, because the continuity of expert service directly benefits our clients and strengthens our business. For a company founded in late 2020, we’re proud that our average employee tenure exceeds three years. Our annual employee turnover remains below 7%, a testament to a culture built for long-term impact, innovation, and trust.

In addition to our in-house team, we’ve also expanded the Previsible Partner Program to provide trusted referrals to our clients for vetted, top-performing web development, public relations, and paid media agencies to drive outsized impact in complementary arenas of digital marketing. In turn, Previsible serves as their preferred SEO and AI discovery vendor of choice to help their clients drive cost-effective organic growth at scale.

Accomplishing What’s 750X Harder

The narrative that “AI traffic is a small percentage of overall traffic” is a trap. We’re here to debunk it and to ensure everyone has a plan on how to be found for what matters most, everywhere.

Our data shows AI-powered discovery events represent just 0.13% of total traffic, roughly 1 in 769 organic sessions. To the untrained eye, this looks negligible. In reality, it is an elite metric.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince recently quantified why: getting a referral click from OpenAI is “750 times more difficult” than from the traditional web. The architecture of LLMs is designed to retain users, not route them.

Any traffic that escapes that “750x” friction is no longer accidental. It is deliberate, high-intent, and hard-won.

The Generative Engine Optimization Strategy

Because the click is 750x harder to earn, we are done chasing volume for volume’s sake.

In 2026, we will win by optimizing for inclusion.

We must ensure brands win the synthesis inside the chat. When you are the cited answer, you win the impression. When the user cares enough to cross the friction barrier, you win the customer.

Winning in GEO means earning inclusion wherever your customers seek understanding and confidence. LLMs evaluate brands by synthesizing reputation, consistency, and real-world validation across the entire information ecosystem before deciding which voices are trusted enough to appear in an answer. Visibility is no longer granted by optimization alone; it is earned through credibility.

Clicks are rare and deliberate, so reducing friction will become critical. Brands that win in 2026 will lower barriers through strong partnerships, clean and accessible data, and genuinely useful multimodal content. GEO is about being the trusted answer and making it easy for customers to take action once you’ve provided it.

How We’ll Win Together

In 2026, you’ll continue to see the Previsible team provide clarity, strategic guidance, and hands-on execution to help your program evolve with each new shift in AI discovery. You can count on us to bring an AI mindset balanced with human-centered judgment to every recommendation. We will continue to invest in innovation, operational excellence, and team growth to bring exceptional value to our clients.

Together with our clients and partners, we won’t chase every shift. Instead, we’ll continue building industry-leading capabilities that adapt faster than the market, align strategy with execution, and earn trust and authority for our clients.

We’re deeply grateful to our clients, partners, and team members who make our work possible. Your trust, collaboration, and ambition continue to push our industry forward.

2025 was one for the books. Cheers to being discovered for what matters most: your values, your innovation, and your impact.

Wishing everyone a bright start to 2026!