Three years ago, SEO meant keywords and backlinks. Rank on page one. Done.
That playbook still partially works. But search has fractured in ways that, in my view, many marketing strategies haven't caught up with yet. And the gap between where your customers are looking and where you're optimizing is where opportunity disappears.
The shift is visible. In July 2022, Google's Prabhakar Raghavan cited internal Google research showing that almost 40% of young people in the US (ages 18 to 24) go to TikTok or Instagram rather than Google Maps or Search when looking for a place to have lunch. YouTube functions as a search engine in its own right. I'm seeing ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI-native tools take on a bigger role in B2B research, largely because they're faster at synthesis. And your buyers are using all of these, often in the same decision journey.
In my experience, many CMOs are still optimizing for one platform, and that leaves them with a structural vulnerability.
What Changed and Why It Matters
Traditional SEO was built around one mechanic: be the most relevant result for a query on Google. Structure your page correctly, earn the right backlinks, and the algorithm rewards you with visibility.
The new reality has four distinct search environments, each with different mechanics:
- AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini): These systems synthesize an answer and cite sources instead of returning a list of links. Clear, expert-led, authoritative content helps your chances of being cited. It's closer to academic publishing than keyword optimization.
- Social search (TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn): Discovery here happens through engagement signals, not keyword density. The algorithm surfaces content that holds attention. Short-form video hooks, watch time, and save rates matter more than meta descriptions.
- Product search (Amazon, Google Shopping): For consumer brands, product page optimization is a separate discipline, driven by reviews, ratings, detail page content, and Q&A sections. Brands that own it, instead of outsourcing or ignoring it, have more control over how they show up.
- Voice and local search (Alexa, Siri, Gemini): Conversational queries require conversational answers. Local consistency (NAP alignment, Google Business Profile, structured data) is the foundation here.
What High-Performing Brands Do Differently
In my view, the brands winning in 2026 build a content architecture that serves multiple search surfaces from a single source of truth.
That means writing long-form content with clear, attributable claims that AI systems can cite. It means creating short-form video that mirrors the questions buyers ask at the top of funnel. It means treating product pages as conversion assets. And it means building expertise signals (consistent authorship, original expertise, citation-worthy data) that compound across all surfaces over time.
One content strategy, with intentional distribution across search surfaces, covers all of it.
The Reframe CMOs Need
I expect the most effective CMOs over the next three years to be the ones who stop thinking about SEO as a channel and start thinking about it as a visibility architecture. That starts with mapping where your buyer searches, what authoritative content looks like on each surface, and how well your current content strategy covers those environments.
The vocabulary has changed: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), query fan-out, LLM visibility. The underlying question is the same one it's always been: whether you're where your customer is looking.
Search has fragmented. Your strategy needs to follow.
David Manela is co-founder of Exactius, a growth and data science company. Follow him on LinkedIn for more frameworks on growth, marketing, and capital allocation.
David Manela
David Manela is the founder of Exactius and creator of the Growth Operating System — a framework for deploying capital-efficient, compounding growth inside scaling companies.
FAQ
Frequently asked
What is search everywhere optimization?
As this post uses the term, search everywhere optimization means planning visibility across every place buyers search, beyond Google alone. David Manela groups these into AI search such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini; social search on TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn; product search on Amazon and Google Shopping; and voice and local search. In his view, one content strategy with intentional distribution should serve all of these surfaces.
Do you need special optimization or schema to appear in Google AI Overviews or AI Mode?
No. Google Search Central states there are no additional requirements or special optimizations to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode; a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet. Google's optimization guide, updated in July 2026, adds that structured data is not required for generative AI search, that Google Search ignores llms.txt and similar AI files, and that content does not need to be chunked.
Are AEO and GEO different from SEO?
For Google's own AI features, Google says no. Its guide to optimizing for generative AI features, updated in July 2026, states that optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO. Google recommends original content based on first-hand expertise, sound technical structure, and supporting images and video, and it warns against third-party tools that promise ranking success. Other AI engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity set their own crawler rules.
How can a website appear in ChatGPT search and Perplexity?
Both depend on letting their search crawlers reach your pages. OpenAI's publisher FAQ says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search if it does not block OAI-SearchBot; GPTBot is a separate crawler that publishers can block to keep pages out of model training. Perplexity's documentation says PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in its results, is not used to crawl content for foundation models, and follows robots.txt.
Can site owners measure or control how they appear in Google's AI features?
Yes. In June 2026 Google announced a Search Console control that lets site owners opt out of appearing in, and grounding responses for, AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI Overviews in Discover. Opted out sites get no traffic or impressions from those features, and Google says the setting is not a ranking signal elsewhere. Search Console also added generative AI performance data, and Google says both reached all websites worldwide by August 31, 2026.
How widely is AI search used in 2026?
Google reported in May 2026 that AI Mode had passed one billion monthly users a year after its U.S. launch, with queries more than doubling every quarter. Google also said the average AI Mode query is three times the length of a traditional Search query, and that more than one in six U.S. searches now use voice or images. These are Google's own figures and cover only Google's surfaces.
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