AI-driven search reshaped search engine optimization in 2025, cutting click-through rates and referral traffic while forcing publishers to rethink long-standing tactics. Instead of focusing mainly on headlines and keywords, many are now optimizing for brand visibility, attribution in AI answers and long-term audience relationships as they look ahead to 2026.
For Ed Hyatt, director of newsroom SEO at The Wall Street Journal, the fundamentals still matter.
“It really goes back to… being intentional with your content and intentional with your audiences. Really focus on building authority in those key topic areas. Stay focused on your brand,” he said. “Really being focused on the type of content that’s resilient to AI but helps you create meaningful long-term connections with the audience.”
Here are the major SEO takeaways for publishers this year.
KPIs are shifting beyond traffic
Traffic alone is no longer a reliable measure of SEO success as AI answers capture more user intent directly on results pages.
“You have this new world where clicks as a KPI… is just not enough. You need to think super holistically about what metrics you’re tracking,” Hyatt said.
Faith Durand, svp of content at Apartment Therapy, said her team now splits its time between traditional search optimization and redefining which metrics matter.
“We have to think about the KPIs differently [and figure out] how these KPIs can further business goals. It’s not just a vanity metric,” she said.
Many publishers are prioritizing subscriber growth and free registrations. Forbes launched an AI-powered dynamic paywall in November to reduce reliance on search-driven programmatic revenue. The Economist is testing ways to encourage its large social audience to share email addresses and register.
“We’re in a state of flux where the new model needs to be figured out,” said Michael King, founder and CEO of content marketing and SEO agency iPullRank.
Conversions are becoming core SEO metrics
For Apartment Therapy, new KPIs center on membership, including a paid program The Kitchn plans to launch in 2026.
“You can go a mile wide and an inch deep with lots and lots and lots of people and monetize it with $20 or $30 RPMs. Or you can go much deeper with a smaller group of people, and monetize it however much… and serve them better,” Durand said.
Hyatt said clicks and subscription conversions remain primary metrics for his team at The Wall Street Journal, but they now sit within a broader framework.
“Now there are additional meaningful KPIs to track, because all of these different figures point to an ultimate goal for publishers, which is more connected readers, subscriptions, free registrations and ultimately revenue,” he said.
New AI visibility data is plentiful, but its value is unclear
Another major shift in 2025 was the surge of new dashboards, reports and tools designed to track how content surfaces in AI-driven discovery. Analytics and marketing firms such as Profound, Semrush and Similarweb rolled out predictive AI visibility tools, including prompt data and citation tracking, to help publishers understand how AI systems reference their work.
“There’s a lot of value in being able to track these things but there’s still a lot to be done yet on sort of making that make good sense for your business,” Hyatt said.
Publishers now have more AI-related data than ever, but many are still figuring out how to translate those signals into actionable strategy.
Distribution is more distributed than ever
As people increasingly search within AI tools and platforms, SEO can no longer be treated as a channel isolated from social and audience development.
“You have to be on Reddit, you need to be on YouTube, you need to be in all these places,” King said.
Hyatt noted that the way audiences interact with journalists and creators across platforms is also shaping how large language models interpret a brand.
“They’re assessing the journalists or the creators that you employ that are writing content, producing video content,” he said. “Whether it’s Google or ChatGPT, we’re seeing this become more and more important as to how these LLMs can understand your brand and understand your people.”
This is pushing publishers toward more distributed models, where search, social and creator strategies are closely linked.
Evergreen content delivers diminishing returns
AI search is eroding the long-tail value of evergreen articles. Large language models tend to favor recently updated, “fresh” content, and Google’s AI Overviews now surface instant answers for queries that once drove steady traffic to reference pieces, such as basic health or how-to information.
“The biggest thing for publishers is that the whole evergreen play is kind of done. There’s so many sources for that information, and you’re not likely going to be one of those sources. Because there’s going to be such diminishing returns on that traffic, it’s not really worth investing heavily into that anymore,” King said.
As a result, many publishers are rebalancing away from commodity evergreen content toward differentiated coverage and formats that build brand authority and loyalty.
Agentic search is on the horizon
Looking ahead, publishers are watching the rise of agentic search — AI agents and browsers that execute complex tasks on behalf of users. Products such as Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s Atlas aim to handle workflows like researching and booking travel end to end, potentially without exposing users to a traditional list of links.
That prospect is raising new questions for SEO and product teams.
“The elephant in the room is agentic search,” said Ray. “The fundamental idea is that agents can do a lot of the internet work for you. [People will need to figure out] how to set up your website and your content and your products to be fully discoverable and retrievable for agents. That’s really kind of the hot topic in the space right now.”
As AI systems move from answering queries to acting on users’ behalf, publishers face a new challenge: ensuring their content, subscriptions and products remain visible — and valuable — inside an increasingly intermediated web.