Is SEO Dead? How AI Changes Everything In 2026

For 25 years, the game was simple. Rank number one on Google, get traffic, make money. Then AI showed up.

Now when someone searches for "best running shoes for flat feet," they don't get 10 blue links anymore. They get one AI-generated answer. No clicks. No traffic. No revenue.

Meet Dhruv Kantak. For the past four to five years, he's driven millions of organic visits for some of the biggest D2C e-commerce brands and B2B SaaS companies out there. He's watched Google's AI overviews cut traffic for some sites by more than 30%. He's seeing zero-click searches dominate the landscape. And he's watching traditional SEO metrics become basically meaningless in real time.

So what does an SEO expert do when search itself gets rewritten by AI? He evolves. And today, we're learning exactly how.

Key Takeaways: The New Rules of Search

The SEO Playbook Just Changed:

• SEO has shifted from keywords and meta titles to how large language models (LLMs) interpret your brand as a reliable entity
• 80-90% of good SEO still overlaps with AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
• Brands who built on fundamentals from the beginning are sleeping like babies right now

The Death of Copy-Paste SEO:

• You can't just scrape competitor content, add keywords, and expect results anymore
• If you're not telling LLMs something new or adding genuine value, you won't rank
• Brands optimized for Google's EAT framework (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) are benefiting most today

What Actually Matters Now:

• Reviews, UGC (user-generated content), and influencer mentions are what AI can never take away
• Conversational selling through WhatsApp, SMS, and email is becoming critical
• Building trust through content matters more than optimizing for algorithms

Q: On a scale of 1 to 10, how much has AI changed what you do every day as an SEO professional?

Dhruv: Probably at an 11. SEO was mainly about three things, right? Keywords, how you structure your content, and intent. Now that has completely shifted. It's more about how LLMs or large language models basically interpret your brand. Last year, we'd probably have conversations with the team around "how do we rank this page?" Now it's more about "how do we become the most reliable entity for this particular topic across LLMs?" Overall, it's changed from optimizing the right keywords and meta titles to adding more value through your content for your end user rather than anything else.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Keywords still matter, but playing keyword Tetris won't save you anymore. If LLMs don't see you as an authority, you're invisible.

Q: So does that mean keywords and all the traditional SEO tactics make less sense now?

Dhruv: They're still super important, but how it used to work has changed. Earlier, a very standard way of going about it would be that you scrape your competitor's website, you see what content they've written, you make it a little better, add a few more keywords, and then you go ahead and publish it. Then you expect your rankings to improve. You can't do that today. Today, if you're not adding value that hasn't been given already from your competitors, if you're not telling your users something new or the LLMs something new, you're not going to rank. Having unique content out there, having value-adding content out there is what's more important rather than just keywords.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Plagiarism with a thesaurus used to work. Now it's a death sentence.

Q: There are these new terms now - AEO and GEO. For people who don't know, what are those?

Dhruv: AEO, when you say Answer Engine Optimization, this is mainly for optimizing for Google's AI Overviews or basically models where you have responses or results in a question-answer format. GEO is more towards ChatGPT and other LLMs where the content that you want is generated out of nothing. Answer engine is more about what's already out there, and generative engine optimization is for models where the answer is actually generated according to what your query is.

To be completely honest with you, you'll see a lot of people on LinkedIn talking about "we're the new AEO experts, we have the playbook." But honestly, nobody has the playbook because this is something that is so new that there has to be still years of research before you have a solid strategy as to what works and what doesn't. Everybody in the industry, including myself right now, is just working on experiments. Sometimes things work, some things don't.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: When everyone's an expert on LinkedIn, nobody is. AEO and GEO are still the wild west.

Q: I read somewhere that AEO is like on-page SEO and GEO is like off-page SEO. Is that accurate?

Dhruv: To a certain extent, yes. For GEO particularly, UGC matters a lot - how you look on Reddit, Quora, Wikipedia, Trust Pilot. All these UGC platforms matter. But that's not the entire story. I would still come back to how my content is structured. If my content is actually readable and crawlable for the crawlers, and how is my content perceived - for me it's still 70-80% of the content that is on our own website. The rest of it is more towards UGC and your PR as well.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Your website is 80% of the battle. Reddit mentions are just the cherry on top.

Q: Let's talk about e-commerce. When someone searches "best protein powder for muscle gain," they used to see 10 websites. Now they see an AI overview with a direct answer. How does a D2C brand even survive this?

Dhruv: Honestly, the whole primary metric in this case changes, right? It's no more about the traffic that you would get on your website. One way to probably look at it is impressions, visibility. When you're building trust, when you're building a good community, when you're building the channels that you own - when you do all of these things, you'll see yourself getting cited and showing up on AI overviews as well.

Apart from that, at the end of the day, if you're able to build that trust from the content that you're putting out, irrespective of whether you're ranking in AI overviews or if you're getting the right amount of traffic, at the end of the day the end goal still remains revenue. So as long as you're still able to pull in that revenue, I don't think it should be a big problem.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Traffic is vanity. Revenue is sanity. Build trust, not just rankings.

Q: So it's shifting more towards what - conversational selling?

Dhruv: Yes, that's something that's a hot topic as of now. First-party audience selling through emails, SMS, WhatsApp. Reviews, UGC - these are things that AI can never replace. Your UGC, your reviews, what kind of brand trust do you have - this is not something that AI can take away from you. This will always be important.

I always believe that retail has always been conversational. AI and AI agents are basically just bringing that back at scale. When people buy through DMs or through WhatsApp or just through chat, that entire experience now is conversational and makes it more personalized.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: AI didn't invent conversational commerce. It just automated what your local shopkeeper did 50 years ago.

Q: How are brands using AI agents for conversational selling?

Dhruv: There are multiple use cases. One is building agents for pre-sales. For D2C brands, for a few brands that I've personally worked on, they're in the process of building these AI agents where these AI agents will basically help with product recommendations. For some apparel brands, probably sizing help, different comparisons, stock queries.

Another very important thing that performance marketing and SEO can't solve is the personalization layer. An AI agent, especially when you have a chatbot or through WhatsApp, can be programmed to remember your past orders, what kind of colors you've picked, what your average cart value looked like, and help you personalize your options accordingly. If I'm buying t-shirts and I'm talking to an AI agent who remembers my past orders, the colors I've picked before, my size - that whole personalization layer just makes it a lot easier for me.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Recommendation engines have existed for years. AI agents just remember you like a friend would.

Q: What are the biggest pain points you're seeing with D2C brands right now?

Dhruv: One is over-dependence on Meta and Google. I'm not just saying this because I'm in SEO, but brands - D2C brands from the beginning or even every D2C brand that launches today - they launch, they have a few products, they do a little bit of social media, a little bit of influencer marketing, and then they just go on spending on Meta and Google.

If the majority of your revenue is driven by Meta and Google, that is not a sustainable way to grow. It's basically like gambling. The more amount of money you put in, the more you're expected to get back. Of course, for the performance marketing folks, there's a lot of effort and optimizations that go into it, but it's not the most sustainable way to grow.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: If Meta shuts down your ad account tomorrow, does your business die? That's not a business model. That's Russian roulette.

Q: How can SEO help reduce that dependency on paid ads?

Dhruv: Unfortunately, there's no way to remove it altogether. The only way you can do it is to substitute it to a large extent through organic channels. With brands particularly, what happens is they've spent a lot of money making their website, getting inventory - so they want instant return on that investment. That's why ads work, because they get you revenue faster. But SEO, AEO, GEO - these are more games to play in the long run. If I start today, it'll probably start showing me revenue 6-7 months down the line. Probably that will also be less than 10% of your overall revenue share initially.

The whole goal as an SEO is: how do I bring their performance marketing spends lower? If they spend less on Google tomorrow or Facebook tomorrow, how do I help them make that revenue from SEO? When I'm able to cover that gap is when I feel SEO is successful.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: SEO is insurance, not a lottery ticket. It compounds slowly, then suddenly.

Q: How does SEO save brands money beyond just driving revenue?

Dhruv: A lot of brands think SEO revenue seems pretty straightforward - you have some tracking set up on Shopify or Google Analytics and you see what organic channel is driving for you. But what you don't realize is that there are ways in which SEO also saves you a lot of money.

For example, let's say I have a t-shirt brand and I have a red checkered shirt that I want to sell. In terms of "red checkered shirt," I'm bidding for that keyword on Google ads, spending a lot of money. High competition keyword, high search volumes. Over the next 6 months, I start ranking for that keyword organically on number one. Now, if I'm ranking for that keyword on number one, I don't probably need to spend so much on Google search ads anymore. That's money saved. Money saved is also equal to money earned in terms of SEO.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Every organic ranking is a paid ad you don't have to run. SEO doesn't just make money - it stops the bleeding.

Q: How do brands stay trusted in the age of AI-generated everything?

Dhruv: It's all about customer experience. When you have a good customer experience in place, when your entire experience itself is good, the user is more likely to go ahead and give you a good review. Reviews, UGC, influencers - this is what's going to move the needle in the next few months or years in my opinion.

As long as you're providing a good experience, people are going to say good things about you, and that's something AI can never take away. When you have these good reviews and good UGC that's supporting your brand, of course it'll help you with AI visibility as well. But on a user level also, when I'm seeing people say good things about a particular brand on Reddit, on Quora, all of these different forums, I'm naturally going to trust that brand a lot more.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: AI can fake content, but it can't fake a thousand angry Reddit users. Real reviews are the new moat.

Q: Are digital marketers losing sleep over AI, or is that just hype?

Dhruv: I can tell you for a fact that the marketers who've gotten their fundamentals right from the beginning are sleeping like a baby right now. Honestly, I think I'm more excited than nervous because at a certain point, SEO was getting a little monotonous where you're optimizing for the same things, doing the same things over and over, waiting for results to come.

Now it has become a lot more fast-paced where you constantly have to be on your feet. You go on leave for one week and suddenly Google comes up with a new core update, ChatGPT's algorithms have changed, my citations are gone, and everything's a mess. So you always have to be on top of your game. The only thing that worked for me to grow at this pace throughout my career has been staying up to date - always being on top of what's new, what are some new things you can do, what's something that nobody's doing, always experimenting, trying out something new.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: If you're bored, AI will kill your job. If you're curious, AI will make you indispensable.

Q: Where should people go to stay updated on these SEO changes?

Dhruv: The main spokesperson from Google's end is someone named John Müller who's very active on LinkedIn and will always keep telling you what Google's updates are. Apart from that, there are a lot of great SEO folks on LinkedIn as well. Google Search Central is very good with what updates they're sharing, what core updates are coming, what they're targeting through those updates. Just staying on top of all of these news pieces and you're good to go.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Following John Müller is like having Google's cheat codes. Just without the lawsuit.

Q: You started your own agency at one point. What was the biggest lesson from that?

Dhruv: The biggest lesson was that having a lot of passion and probably having the right skills for the job is not enough to run a business. A business is a lot more than that. When I actually started my own agency, I was a lot younger. It was more about "this is something I'm passionate about, I know I'm good at this, so let's start an agency."

Little did I know that one of the biggest chunks which I'd never done before was going to haunt me and take me down, which was sales. Sales is something I struggled with a lot. The irony is that I'm in a sales role as of now, so about 70% of my job is sales. What I couldn't do 3-4 years back with my agency, I can do very well now. I think the next time I try to start my own agency or something of my own, I'll be a lot better at it for sure.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Being good at your craft doesn't make you good at business. Sales isn't optional - it's the whole game.

Q: What was your biggest personal challenge in your SEO career?

Dhruv: For me, the biggest challenge has been more on a personal level where I've always been sort of a perfectionist. Anything I'm doing, I have to get it right or it has to be perfect. There has to be absolutely no room for error whatsoever. I've learned to let that go, and that's always been a challenge. When I had that in my mind, I used to miss deadlines, time management used to become a big problem.

Through my agency, one of the bigger lessons I learned was that sometimes even if it's not perfect, it's okay. The first thing that you need to do is go out and show it to the world. That's where I understood the value of MVP products and all of these things. Letting go of that perfection, always getting everything right, always getting everything perfect - that was a big challenge for me.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Perfect is the enemy of shipped. Done beats perfect every single time.

Q: How did that perfectionism hurt your agency?

Dhruv: Initially, a few months or years down the line, I had identified that sales was my problem. But I was so hellbent that "let me take some time, I'll figure it out myself" that I never really delegated the sales part to anyone. In that process, I lost out on a good amount of time and value because of which things went down over time. Even if I didn't get better at sales at one point, if I had just delegated, I'd probably still be here as the founder of my agency.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Delegation isn't weakness. It's survival. Trying to do everything yourself is how founders die.

Q: What AI tools are you actually using for SEO and content?

Dhruv: In terms of content, Claude. Rather than ChatGPT or even Gemini, I've found Claude to be very useful. When you explain your brand guidelines or your brand tone to Claude properly, or you have the right prompts put in, the output I was expecting was very close to what the standards are supposed to be. Claude has worked really well for me so far.

But I don't think AI is at a point where it can take over writing and publishing content for us. There has to be some sort of human intervention at some stage, and it's absolutely necessary.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Claude writes like a human. ChatGPT writes like a corporate press release had a baby with a motivational poster.

Final Thoughts: Build for Humans, Not Algorithms

Dhruv's ultimate philosophy: "Build for your user. Everybody in SEO wants to build for algorithms, for LLMs, for search engines. But throughout all this, you're alienating the very people that you're trying to sell to. While optimizing for LLMs and search engines is all well and good, as long as you're building for the user, as long as your product or content is adding some value to your end user's life, SEO, AEO, GEO - everything will follow along."

The bottom line: AI hasn't killed SEO. It's killed lazy SEO. The brands panicking right now are the ones who were gaming the system with copy-paste content and keyword stuffing. The brands thriving are the ones who've been building trust, creating genuine value, and treating their audience like humans instead of traffic sources.

Here's what actually matters in 2026: Your reviews matter more than your meta descriptions. Your Reddit mentions matter more than your backlink count. Your customer experience matters more than your keyword density. And your ability to build a first-party audience through email, SMS, and WhatsApp matters more than your Google ranking.

The game didn't disappear. The rules just got honest. If you've been doing SEO the right way all along - creating value, building trust, solving real problems - you're not losing sleep. You're watching everyone else finally play by your rules.

Q: How can people connect with you and learn more about modern SEO?

Dhruv: You can find me on LinkedIn where I share updates about SEO, AEO, GEO, and everything happening in the search world. I'm constantly experimenting with new strategies and sharing what works and what doesn't. The industry is moving so fast right now that staying connected and learning from each other is more important than ever.

Final words: The marketers who treat AI as a tool instead of a threat, who prioritize users over algorithms, and who stay curious instead of comfortable - those are the ones who'll own search in 2026 and beyond. Stop optimizing for Google. Start optimizing for trust. Everything else is just tactics.