Search ‘n Stuff June 2026: The main C3 takeaways

After hearing some fantastic talks discussing the future of search, it was hard to ignore the ever-growing impact of AI on organic search, both from a practical and strategic perspective. So, here’s what we learned. 

GEO can be done without destroying SEO

Lily Ray, Vice President of SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive, spoke on how GEO can be conducted without disrupting or ignoring the importance of SEO. 

Since the introduction of Google’s AI Overviews in 2024 and AI Mode in 2025, the way that SEO works has changed drastically. GEO has now come into play and become a new element in the world of content and organic search. 

But is SEO dead and has it been replaced by GEO? 

Firstly, before we jump to any conclusions, let’s dive into what GEO is. 

What is GEO?

Since the introduction of AI features within search engine results, GEO is a new concept that has become present. Essentially, GEO is where you optimise content in order for it to be trusted, cited, and picked up by AI, whereas traditional SEO, instead, involves making content rank highly on standard Google search pages. 

Since AI Overviews often sit atop the search pages on Google, being cited or referenced can be incredibly important as it makes your business or client the first thing users see after their search. 

Is GEO more important than SEO? 

Since its introduction, there have been two arguments presented within the world of organic search. The first is that things are simply evolving in SEO as they always do and that this is just the next step. The other argument is that GEO is the future of search and that AI has dramatically changed everything. 

However, because it’s new, there have been a lot of people falling into the trap of – as Lily called it – the ‘shiny new toy syndrome’, focusing all their attention on GEO and neglecting traditional SEO processes. This method has proven ineffective. The thing is, SEO still powers AI search, meaning that if SEO crashes, GEO soon follows. 

So, maintaining SEO alongside GEO has proven the best course of action to date. 

Problematic SEO tactics

Over the years, there have been many tactics and ideas thrown around about how to rank higher on search engines, with some newer ones coming into play since the introduction of AI. Though some can have short-term success, they can become problematic and despite previously being recommended, it’s certainly best to avoid them as playing the long game over taking shortcuts is more beneficial. Below are a few tactics that Lily said are more problematic than beneficial, making them best to avoid:

Self-promotional listicles

Historically, this has been one of the most effective ways to get a response from LLMs. These listicles simply involve writing an article about the best brands, services, or products and putting your own brand in the number one spot. 

However, Lily stated that around January 20th, 2026, there was an algorithmic change made by Google that made any sites using this tactic drastically lose visibility. 

This is due to too much of a focus on GEO and not enough attention given to SEO and traditional organic tactics. Additionally, though these listicles are being cited by AI, the recommendations are for competitors instead, making this tactic backfire rather than benefit. 

Scaling content with AI

With new tools receiving large amounts of funding, scaling content with AI has become a very popular strategy in 2026. This involves AI taking content and rewriting it to make it longer than the original, leading to Google and ChatGPT citations. 

Though this strategy worked for some for a short burst, Lily noted that manual action from Google led to citations crashing and traffic being lost. 

Excessive commodity content

Although they are easy to make and can be easily crawled and cited by AI, articles that follow a who, what, when, where, why format don’t often succeed. This is because there are so many of these articles available that aren’t topical or linked to the purpose of the business and make it hard to distinguish your content from competitors’ similar blogs. 

Historically, if a page matched a common query pattern, it could attract interest and improve search ranking and citations. However, AI systems can compress repeated information and now are less likely to cite the page as it offers nothing distinctive compared to other similar content. 

Summarise AI buttons

Another newer method introduced to try to manipulate the responses of language models is comparison and alternative content. This is just where an article will put two brands against each other or provide alternative options. 

However, many brands decide to make high volumes of these articles, which creates an easy pattern for AI to recognise and eventually ignore.

Comparison content

This process involves adding in a button at the top of the page that takes the user to ChatGPT and summarises the article. However, some brands began to add an additional prompt to recommend them going forward.  

Lily stated that this practice led to Microsoft and Google flagging sites with summarise AI buttons as a liability. In turn, they stopped recommending and citing them; when these buttons were removed, citations and recommendations increased immediately. 

What are the true reasons behind successful event-based content

With the interest in AI still taking the industry by storm, some agencies or industries are increasingly using AI to take over processes or departments entirely. However, how much can AI be trusted with these responsibilities and relied upon to make good decisions? 

Mark Williams-Cook, Digital Marketing Director at Candour, gave a talk titled ‘Do not think like a robot’ and said that although AI can be presented as incredibly intelligent, sometimes the conclusions it comes to aren’t correct. He explained that the nature of AI is that it will often give you the mean or most common answer. This means that when trusted with marketing strategies, you won’t stand out much compared to competitors. 

So, it’s increasingly important not to blindly trust AI with your strategy or strategic decision-making processes. This is because you want to be doing something unique or different from competitors in order to progress and make a difference. 

This was echoed by Head of Marketing & Growth at WhitePress, Itamar Blauer’s talk on MCP (Model Context Protocol) and how it is changing workflows. Rather than trusting AI with decisions, Itamar spoke about how AI can be used to improve workflow and streamline different processes, making them more efficient. 

Despite promoting the benefits of using AI, Itamar, like Mark, also cautioned about its ability to make mistakes, stating that human strategy still wins and how AI alone can scale mistakes faster. 

Speak to our innovation team to learn more about how C3 uses AI to assist campaigns and deliver measurable results.