Search in 2026: What’s Changing, and Why Most Strategies Aren’t Ready

AI is accelerating how information is surfaced, privacy is constraining audience targeting, and economic pressure means brands need to work harder to get in front of the right people. 

Our team has created a paper that instead of focusing on tactics in isolation, explores the larger market focus shaping digital performance. We share trends across paid media, organic search, social, and commerce, and how these are becoming more interconnected. 

If your strategy is built around traffic, rankings, and channel silos, it’s already out of date. As platforms take more execution off our hands through automation, it’s the brands with clear strategy, strong signals, and real authority that are pulling ahead.

The user journey is fragmented and unpredictable, from search engines and social feeds to AI conversations, all influencing consumer decisions long before they land on your website. 

At the same time, conversational agents and AIOs are increasing ‘zero click’ searches, meaning visibility is often happening off-site. Brands should no longer rely solely on their own website to do the heavy lifting.

This tension sits at the centre of our whitepaper. If your strategy is still centred on traffic, rankings, and siloed channels, it’s already out of step with how discovery works heading into 2026. 

It’s not a ‘let’s just increase the amount of channels we are on, and post without a plan.’ It’s a multi-channel strategy, working in tandem to send consistent signals everywhere your audience is already looking.

Younger audiences in particular are turning to social media channels as their primary search engines, and sometimes even purchasing through the likes of TikTok Shop and Instagram swipe-up links. As brand investment in social media and video content grows, discoverability is going to be harder, so being aware of content best practices and social SEO is crucial to capture search demand. 

Content is increasingly shaped by speed, authenticity, and a focus on direct conversion. Our paper shares how to use videos in your strategy and key considerations when creating and sharing content on different platforms.

As we don’t know where a customer is going to be searching to find your brand, we need to make sure we map every stage of intent and hit these points across platforms to build out a fully-formed strategy to encapsulate each user. This way, interconnected topics can be built to help search engines fully understand your expertise and recommend your brand and content through different levels of search, whether users are looking for more information, going to purchase, or wanting to do research on specific products or topics. 

For more information on key search principles to keep in mind when creating content, how to build authority and expertise, what strategy to take, and how to map this out, we’ve got you covered.

We’ve seen the final phase-out of third-party cookies and tightening of GDPR and CCPA regulations, which means first-party data has become a valuable asset to support effective marketing. 

An example of this is the rise in commerce media, where sites are becoming dynamic media platforms, and first-party data is being turned into powerful advertising opportunities. The team have put together how these regulations are impacting consumer decision-making and marketing strategies, so you know how to plan for 2026.

Large Language Models (LLMs) aren’t only used for efficiency; they’re reshaping campaign performance and how modern marketing strategies are built.

AI Overviews (AIOs) and conversational search are compressing the user journey. 

AI is now embedded across digital campaigns, influencing everything from targeting and personalisation to how performance is optimised. With the autonomy of AI supporting teams with marketing efforts, experts can spend more time on strategy and sentiment analysis to inform their next steps.

Our whitepaper goes deeper into how these shifts are changing digital performance, where AI adds value, where it doesn’t, and how brands can build sustainable visibility in an increasingly AI-led landscape through showing authority and experience.

Zero-click searches mean more impressions, but fewer site visits. Users might get all the information they need without entering your site, and evaluate you as a brand from external sources and information gathered across the web.

Those who do click your site? Arguably, these users have more intent for purchase than before AIOs, featured snippets, and LLMs were introduced. They’ve more than likely searched for brand recommendations, read some information from the tools or third-party sites, and decided it sounds like you were worth a visit. 

Fewer visits don’t necessarily mean less opportunity. It means each visit carries more weight. The value of each visit is increasing, whether strategies reflect that or not.

With the increased amount of AI creative and content being shared across platforms, the difference between winning and losing campaigns will be the quality of the creative. 

Quality here does not refer to the professionalism with high-tech cameras in a proper studio. It means the content should mean something, being authentic to your brand with depth to it. 

We share some trends on what is going to matter across social media content, from influencer types, community building, and optimising for AI overviews in our Search Trends Paper.

With ongoing economic uncertainty and market volatility, we know brands are looking for greater efficiency in their marketing spend. Our paper looks at what you need to prioritise when navigating this landscape.