What are the top AI SEO trends in 2026?
These are the five 2026 changes I'd pay attention to, each documented by the company that made it. FAQ rich results disappeared from Google (May 7). Google published official guidance on generative AI search and said AEO and GEO are "still SEO" (May 15). Search Console started reporting impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode (June 3, for every site by August 31). Site owners got a Search Console setting to opt out of Google's generative AI features (all sites by August 31). And AI companies keep separating search crawlers from training crawlers, with Google planning a shared training opt-out for 2027.
For context, Google rolled out AI Overviews to everyone in the US on May 14, 2024, after testing them in Search Labs as SGE, and launched AI Mode in the US on May 20, 2025. OpenAI launched ChatGPT search on October 31, 2024 and opened it to everyone, with no signup, on February 5, 2025. The 2026 changes below built on that.
From SEO to AEO: why I'm changing my strategy
Last year I focused on keywords. This year I'm focusing on whether AI answers cite my pages, and on what those pages offer that a summary can't. AI Overviews and chatbots can now give the gist of a basic how-to in a paragraph, so the pages worth writing have something to cite: a test, a number, a clear opinion.
Google doesn't use the AEO label. Its guide to optimizing for generative AI features says that "from Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." I agree with the substance. I keep the AEO label because it reminds me to check citations as well as rankings. I make the longer case in AEO vs SEO.
Five changes from 2026, with dates
1. Google published official advice on AI search, and most of it is "keep doing SEO"
On May 15, 2026, Google added a guide to optimizing for generative AI features in Search. Its mythbusting section lists things you don't need for Google: llms.txt files and other "special" markup, chunking content into small pieces, rewriting content just for AI systems, chasing inauthentic mentions, and over-focusing on structured data. It also says "there's no ideal page length." The same day, Google clarified that its spam policies apply to generative AI responses in Search, and the guide warns that making content for every fan-out query to manipulate AI answers falls under scaled content abuse.
2. FAQ rich results are gone
Google's documentation changelog says FAQ rich results stopped appearing in Google Search from May 7, 2026, and the FAQ structured data documentation was removed on June 15. HowTo rich results were dropped back in September 2023. If you added FAQ markup to get expandable questions in Google's results, that reason no longer exists. Google also says AI Overviews and AI Mode need no special schema.org markup. Keep the structured data that still earns rich results; Google's guide says that remains worth doing.
3. You can measure AI Overview visibility in Search Console
On June 3, 2026, Google launched generative AI performance reports in Search Console for a subset of sites, then rolled them out to all websites on August 31. The Search report shows how often your URLs appeared in generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by page, country, device and date. Those impressions were already counted in the main performance report; the new report separates them out. On September 24, Google added a multimodal search type covering Lens, Circle to Search, image uploads and Chrome's "Search this image".
4. There's now an opt-out setting for Google's AI features
Search Console has a Search generative AI control under Settings, rolled out to all sites on August 31, 2026. Including your site is the default, and Google's guide says a site must be included to be eligible for these features. Excluding it stops your links and content from appearing in, or being used to ground, Google's generative AI features in Search, and you get no traffic or impressions from them. Google says the setting isn't a ranking signal for the rest of Search, and warns that content from other sites "may appear similar to yours" in those answers.
5. Search crawlers and training crawlers keep splitting
OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search) and GPTBot (model training) as independent settings. Perplexity says PerplexityBot surfaces sites in its search results and "is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models," while its user-triggered fetcher, Perplexity-User, "generally ignores robots.txt rules." Google has offered Google-Extended as its training control since 2023, and on October 30, 2026 it announced plans to honor a shared AI-training opt-out in robots.txt, based on work by the IETF AIPREF working group, with support aimed for 2027 alongside other AI providers. Blocking "AI bots" as a single group can therefore remove you from AI search results you wanted to be in.
SEO trends 2026: what didn't change
Most of the year's AI search news sits on top of ordinary SEO. Google's AI features page says that to be eligible as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet, and that "there are no additional technical requirements." Its May guide describes the features as "rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems," retrieving pages from the Search index to ground each answer.
So the checks that mattered in 2024 still decide whether you show up in AI search: crawling allowed in robots.txt and by your CDN, no stray noindex or nosnippet, internal links to every page, and important content in the HTML as text. Structured data still earns the rich results that remain. And the spam policies cover AI answers as well as the blue links.
AI SEO trends I'm not acting on
Some advice that spread in 2026 has no support in the platforms' own documentation:
- llms.txt files. Google says its search ignores them and that keeping one "will neither harm nor help." OpenAI's crawler documentation doesn't mention them.
- Splitting pages into short chunks for AI. Google says there's "no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces" and no ideal page length.
- A page for every fan-out query. Google's guide says doing that "primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses" violates its scaled content abuse policy.
- Third-party dashboards that claim to read Google's AI ranking. Google's answer: "No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems."
A monthly AI search check
Search Console and a few free tools cover it:
- Open the generative AI performance report and note the five pages with the most AI impressions. Compare them with the top five in the main performance report.
- Read your live robots.txt group by group. If you need to rebuild it, start from the robots.txt generator and add the AI crawler groups you want.
- Spot-check that pages you want cited don't carry
noindex,nosnippetor a lowmax-snippet. - Check that structured data still matches the visible text. If you rebuild it, the schema markup generator writes JSON-LD you can compare against the page.
- Preview the title and description of any page you've edited in the SERP preview tool.
- Ask ChatGPT (with search on) and Perplexity the same ten questions you asked last month and note which pages they cite. The Perplexity SEO guide covers how I log these.
What I'd do with this
- Open the generative AI performance report next to the main performance report once a month and compare the pages that show up in each.
- Review robots.txt bot by bot with our AI crawler robots.txt guide: allow the search crawlers you want to appear in and decide on training crawlers separately. The ChatGPT search checklist covers OpenAI's bots in detail.
- Put writing time into first-hand material, which Google's May guide calls non-commodity content, instead of splitting pages into chunks.
- Stop adding FAQ markup just for rich results.
Frequently asked questions
What is AEO?
Answer engine optimization: shaping content so AI-powered search tools such as Perplexity, ChatGPT search, Google Gemini and Google's AI Overviews pick it up and cite it. Google treats this as part of SEO and says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
Is traditional SEO dead?
No. Google's own answer to "Is SEO still relevant for generative AI search?" is "In short, yes!" Its generative AI features retrieve pages through its core ranking systems, and a page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear in them, so technical SEO and helpful content still matter.
What is AI Mode?
A conversational view in Google Search that launched in the US on May 20, 2025. Google says it's meant for questions that need "further exploration, reasoning, or complex comparisons," and it shows links to supporting websites. The eligibility rules are the same as for AI Overviews: indexed and eligible for a snippet.
Do I need an llms.txt file in 2026?
Not for Google. Its guide says Google Search ignores llms.txt and that keeping one will neither harm nor help your visibility. Google says it is fine to keep one for other services that read the file.
