AI And The Future of SEO: Teaching AI Who You Are

For years, Google’s mission has been: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

What’s interesting is that this mission hasn’t changed since the company was founded in 1998. But search has.

I still remember when Google was simply a search engine. You’d type a query, get a page full of blue links, open a few websites, compare different results, and eventually find your answer. Google’s job was to organize the information, while you had to do the thinking.

Today, that’s no longer how search works.

With AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini, Google is increasingly doing the thinking for you. Instead of sending you to different websites, it pulls information from multiple sources, connects the dots, and presents a summarized answer right inside search.

That feels like a much bigger shift than people realize.

Google isn’t just organizing information anymore. It’s interpreting and synthesizing it. And in some cases, it’s generating entirely new content that has never existed before.

That’s very different from the company Google’s founders imagined nearly three decades ago.

So, is Google still organizing the world’s information, or has it quietly become a company that “steals” information from content creators to surface it on the SERP (search engine results page)?

I don’t have an answer. But after everything Google has released over the past year, I don’t think its original mission fully describes what the company does anymore.

And if Google’s role is changing this much, it’s worth asking what that means for the rest of us, and especially for those of us who build websites, create content, and rely on organic search to reach people.

What has changed

I don’t know if you’ve experienced the same thing, but my website’s organic traffic took a significant hit starting in December 2025.

At first, I assumed it was just another Google Core Update. The timing certainly matched Google’s December 2025 Core Update.

But the more I looked into it, the more I realized there was probably more going on.

By that point, AI Overviews had already rolled out far beyond the U.S. After launching for all U.S. users in 2024, Google spent 2025 expanding the feature globally. By May 2025, AI Overviews were available in more than 200 countries and territories and supported over 40 languages.

That’s why I don’t think the December Core Update alone explains what happened.

My theory is that two major changes collided at the same time. AI Overviews were showing up for a much larger share of searches, while the December Core Update also tightened Google’s quality signals. Together, they created a much bigger impact than either change would have on its own.

The result was hard to ignore.

My website went from getting around 150–400 organic clicks a day to just 30–50. Honestly, it felt like falling off a cliff.

By the time this article went live, I could clearly see the trend in Semrush’s Position Tracking report.

Looking back at the data in Semrush, I could see that almost every keyword that mattered to my website had started triggering AI Overviews over the previous couple of years. And it wasn’t limited to one type of search.

AI Overviews were showing up for informational queries, commercial keywords, and pretty much everything in between.

I also believe there was another factor that could have made the traffic drop even worse: a brand entity issue.

My old domain had been performing well in organic search for years. The SEO content strategy I created for my website generated over $45k USD in revenue in 2025.

However, right next to my website in organic search results, there was an active YouTube channel belonging to another creator with a similar brand identity. Over time, I started noticing that LLMs were getting confused and mixing us up, unsure which brand or person to associate with certain information.

This brand entity mismatch became a serious concern for me. It made me realize that having strong rankings alone might not be enough in the AI search era. Search engines and AI platforms also need to understand who you are, what you’re known for, and which information belongs to your brand.

Because of this, I made a difficult but necessary decision: in May 2026, I moved my old domain to a new domain — Behind Rankings.

Only about two months have passed since the migration (I published this post at the end of June 2026), but the early signs are promising. The work I’ve put into building a clear entity around the new domain is already starting to pay off. And honestly, this feels like just the beginning…

If you’re wondering what a brand entity is, why it matters more than ever, and where the AI SEO industry is heading, keep reading, cause I’ll be sharing my thoughts below.

Google’s LLM patent

If you’re wondering what Google’s LLM patent has to do with brand entities, let me explain why I think this is such an important topic.

In September 2023, Google filed a patent called “Data Extraction Using LLMs,” which became publicly available in March 2025.

In this patent, Google describes an AI system that can analyze a website, extract information from multiple pages, and build a broader understanding of the entity behind that website.

It’s not just about keywords or individual pages, but the actual brand entity.

Google uses the term “entity” quite broadly, but it can refer to people, companies, businesses, places, products, objects, or even concepts.

One specific detail from the patent caught my attention: the system is designed to extract information from webpages regardless of their format or structure. So, in simple words, this AI system can understand information from messy, unstructured content that older systems might have ignored.

For years, we’ve optimized individual pages to rank for specific queries. A service page targets a service keyword. A product page targets a product category. A location page targets a specific area.

But as AI systems become better at understanding websites, pages may start serving another purpose: helping search engines understand the brand behind them:

A service page is no longer just a page designed to rank for a keyword. It also tells Google what your business does.
A case study is not only a way to attract traffic. It is proof of your experience and expertise.
An about page can help search engines understand the people behind your company.
Customer reviews can contribute signals about your reputation.
Social media profiles and industry mentions all add context that can strengthen or confuse Google’s understanding of your brand.

I believe the future of SEO is no longer about creating content. It is about making sure Google and AI systems clearly understand your brand entity.

What’s also interesting is that this patent doesn’t only focus on information found on your website.

Google also mentions that their AI system can use additional sources of information, such as online maps, business data, and other third-party sources, to build a more complete understanding of an entity.

And this is where things get interesting to me.

Let’s think about what needs to happen before AI Overviews can answer a question about a company, product, or service. It first needs to understand what the brand entity is, what it offers, who it helps, how it compares to alternatives, and whether it actually matches what the user is looking for.

And this thought brings us to this conclusion …

The next era of SEO is about teaching AI who you are

The biggest shift I see happening in SEO is that the customer journey is becoming much more complex.

People no longer follow a simple path from Google organic search → website → purchase.

Today, someone might search for a solution on Google, read an AI Overview, continue the conversation in AI Mode, visit a few websites (or skip them entirely), check answers on Reddit, ask Gemini for another answer, look up your brand on LinkedIn or YouTube, and only then decide whether they trust you enough to buy.

The entire customer journey can actually happen without a single click to your website. That’s exactly how I see the impact of doing SEO in the future, and it’s alarming!

I no longer ask, “How do I rank my page?” Now, my question is: “How do I make sure LLMs and AI search understand my brand to recommend me?”

AI Overviews, AI Mode, and many Google AI experiences are powered by Gemini. And in this new search environment, visibility will increasingly depend on whether these systems recognize your brand, understand what you do, and see you as a trusted source.

Here’s what I do for my own website and my clients to improve both organic and AI search visibility.

1. Be consistent

AI systems don’t learn about your business only from your website. Instead, they collect information from multiple sources, so it’s important to review how your brand is described across:

Your website
Business profiles
Social media profiles
Third-party mentions
Industry directories

Every mention adds another piece of information that can help (or hinder) LLMs’ understanding of your brand.

2. Create an About page that clearly explains your brand

In the age of AI, your About page becomes a source that can help search engines and AI systems understand who you are.

For example, after I created an “About Behind Rankings” page, Google started ranking it prominently for branded searches. At the same time, I noticed LLMs started using information from that page when answering questions about my brand.

It’s a simple change, but it shows how important clear brand information can become.

3. Build your presence across third-party websites

To strengthen your brand entity, I suggest creating and maintaining profiles, such as:

Crunchbase (if applicable)
Product Hunt (for products and tools)
Wikidata (with caution, as entries can be removed and this is exactly what happened to me)
A branded subreddit (just like my subreddit)
A LinkedIn company page
A YouTube channel (if you can consistently publish helpful content)

You can also work on earning mentions from relevant websites. For example, being included in industry roundups, listicles, and resource pages can help you improve the way AI systems connect your brand to a specific topic.

I regularly receive requests from brands asking to be added to articles like best AI SEO tools, best AI marketing tools, or best SEO tools. These types of mentions can become valuable signals for brand recognition.

4. Encourage users to add your website as a preferred source

Google has also introduced a feature called Preferred Sources, which allows users to choose websites they want to see more often in Top Stories.

According to Google, this feature has expanded globally across supported languages and has already helped users connect with sources they trust. Google reported that readers are twice as likely to click through to a site after marking it as a Preferred Source.

This is another reminder that brand visibility is becoming broader than traditional rankings.

5. Don't block LLMs from crawling your website and ensure the schema markup is in place

Make sure you aren’t accidentally blocking LLM crawlers from accessing your website.

Also, check that your schema markup is properly implemented so search engines can better understand the information on your pages.

6. Ask AI about your own brand

One of the easiest ways to understand how AI sees your business is to simply ask.

Search your brand name in ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools and see what comes up. The answers can reveal gaps, incorrect information, missing context, or opportunities you might not notice when looking at individual pages on your website.

7. Start tracking your AI visibility

While we’re still waiting for Google to introduce a proper AI search performance report in Google Search Console (I discussed this topic with the Google team during Search Central Live Event in Toronto in April 2026), there are other ways to monitor how your brand appears in AI search.

You can use Bing Webmaster Tools, or AI visibility tools like Semrush, Otterly.AI, and Peekaboo AI.

Below, you can see my AI performance report from Bing for May and June 2026.

Considering that I launched the new domain in May 2026, I’m actually quite satisfied with the early results. The AI visibility is already trending upward, which shows that building a new brand entity takes time, but the right signals can start showing up relatively quickly.

There’s also an interesting mismatch between my traditional organic search performance and AI visibility data.

While my website’s organic traffic has dropped significantly, the data from Bing and other AI visibility tools, such as Semrush’s AI Visibility toolkit, shows that my brand’s presence in AI search is actually growing.

According to Liz Reid’s interview, Google’s VP of Search, AI visibility still comes down to one simple thing: creating content that people actually want to read.

And this might explain the issue I’ve been seeing with a decline in traditional organic traffic while AI visibility continues to grow.

During the podcast discussion (see below), Liz was asked what publishers and content creators can do to make their content more visible in AI experiences. Her answer closely matches what I shared earlier in this post:

She mentioned the following:

First, websites need to make sure AI systems can access their content. If you block crawlers or make your content difficult to discover, it becomes much harder for AI systems to use that information.
Second, creating genuinely valuable content.

As Liz explained, if you want people to click through to your website, they first need to find your content worth reading. Content created only for search engines, without considering the actual audience, will become easier to recognize over time. It’s sort of what we all know about E-E-A-T and should have already followed it.

You can watch the entire podcast here if you’re interested:

Ultimately, I believe this is where SEO is heading:

Websites are becoming sources of information that LLMs and AI search use to generate answers, provide citations, and recommend brands.

At the same time, traditional organic traffic will continue to decline. AI visibility may continue growing for websites that consistently demonstrate experience, expertise, authority, and trust.

But increased AI visibility won’t always translate into direct clicks.

The content that once brought visitors directly to your website may now become one part of a much longer customer journey. People may interact with your brand across multiple touchpoints, including AI generative search, social media, communities, reviews, and your website, before they decide to buy.

If there’s one piece of advice I would give startups and growing companies, it’s this: focus on building a recognizable brand entity and keep creating content that people genuinely want to read.