I was invited to Edward Strum’s podcast, The Edward Show, for a two-hour holiday roundtable on the future of AI and SEO alongside David Quaid and Gagan Ghotra. We dug into what actually changed in search in 2025, what stayed the same, and how much noise and disinformation has crept into the industry.

GEO, AEO and “AI SEO”

We talked about why “Generative Engine Optimization” (GEO), “Answer Engine Optimization” (AEO), and “AI SEO” are mostly rebrands of classic SEO, not truly separate disciplines. Large language models and AI search products still lean on traditional search indexes like Google for crawling, ranking, and sourcing, so anything that hurts your organic SEO usually hurts your AI visibility too

Disinformation and AI SEO tools

A big chunk of the conversation focused on disinformation campaigns aimed at CMOs and executives, where vendors sell AI SEO as a silver bullet while mainly offering scaled AI content and dashboards. We discussed how many of these tools push “fan-out” content tactics that directly contradict the Helpful Content Update era advice to consolidate, improve quality, and reduce thin, low-value pages.

Authority, topical focus and backlinks

We spent time on authority and topical relevance, including how Google still behaves very domain-centric and often over-rewards huge publishers at the expense of more specialized sites. The group argued that Google is slowly shifting toward more granular topical and subtopic-level authority, and that high-quality backlinks plus a tight topical lane remain critical for both classic rankings and AI citations.

AI Overviews, traffic and behavior

The episode looks closely at Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode as the real “AI SEO” battleground, with usage that dwarfs standalone chatbots. We compared notes on AI-driven traffic plateauing, engagement from AI referrals converging with organic, and what that means for attribution, PR value, and the ROI of GEO-focused campaigns.

Video, YouTube and UGC

Another key theme is the rise of video and user-generated style content in AI results, especially YouTube listicle videos being surfaced in AI Overviews for “best” and comparison queries. We talked about why brands should treat YouTube optimization, creator collaborations, and embedded video as core parts of their SEO and AI search playbook, not just side channels.

Strategy going into 2026

To wrap up, we outlined what a realistic AI-era SEO strategy looks like heading into 2026, especially for small and mid-sized sites. The focus is on staying in your topical lane, investing in strong backlinks and digital PR, and getting SEO, content, PR, social, and video teams working together so brand and authority signals line up across both traditional search and AI experiences.