What’s on tap for news SEO in 2026?
17 experts dig out their magic balls and tell us what Google will do next year, plus how publishers should respond
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Hello, and welcome back. Jessie and Shelby here, back for the last newsletter of 2025! We’ve had an amazing fourth (!!!) year running WTF is SEO?. Highlights include more presentations — including our first at ONA! — than we can count; three community calls; six Ask a News SEO interviews; and 40 total newsletters sent. We’re so grateful for our more than 13,000 subscribers and community members.
This week: It’s prediction time! What’s in store for news SEO in 2026? Seventeen experts dig out their magic balls and tell us what Google will do next year, plus how publishers should respond.
ALSO: In 2026, we’re running a paywall masterclass with Barry Adams (Polemic Digital) and Harry Clarkson-Bennett (Leadership in SEO)! Attendees will learn best practices for the technical setup, monetization strategy and content optimization. Tell us what else you want to learn about paywalls!
Let’s get it.
THE EXPERTS
The answers below have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Aleyda Solis
With the decline in organic search traffic due to AI search, publishers will need to realign their organic search growth and content strategy to maximize brand and entity recognition across platforms — wherever their audience is — in a way that aligns with their topical authority and USP (unique selling point). Some publishers will also need to rethink their user experience to ensure they provide a delightful web experience, which unfortunately remains a major challenge for many publications.
Aleyda is a SEO consultant and author of SEOFOMO.
Alexia LaFata
As users increasingly rely on multiple sources to gather information, Google search referrals will likely never be what they once were, but they won’t disappear entirely.
Google and its AI search features will remain a big part of the user journey. For this reason, publishers need to continue meeting Google users where they’re at, whether that’s by smart topical swarming or more multimodal content creation.
Luckily, what’s good for Google users is also what’s good for building and maintaining a brand across all audiences. SEO strategies like E.E.A.T will not only continue into 2026, but will also contribute to various business needs.
Alexia is the senior SEO manager for Vox Media.
Barry Adams
AI will still not have the impact on news that many predicted, and will continue to simmer in the background as a topic of conversation without leading to meaningful change.
Despite abundant proclamations of the death of SEO, search will continue as the single largest driver of traffic to nearly every publisher on the web. Publishers who take their foot off the SEO pedal will suffer and interpret that as a sign of the demise of search. And for them, it’ll be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Publishers that maintain a strong focus on SEO will benefit, soaking up the traffic that others have abandoned.
Google Discover will continue to seduce publishers into bad habits, encouraging low-quality churnalism and clickbait. Publishers who are serious about long-term survival will focus on strengthening their USPs, and paywalls will become more ubiquitous.
Barry is a SEO consultant and author of SEO for Google News.
Clara Soteras
News organizations will need to fully adapt their strategies to changing user behaviour and consumption patterns. Users search differently, expect new formats and have diverse informational, educational and entertainment needs. We must understand what they want, the problems they need to solve and how we can serve them, not only through articles, but also via experiences, videos and safe spaces where they consistently find value.
Staying aware of algorithm updates is important, but even more crucial is tracking audience behaviour in order to respond effectively. Building community and a valuable editorial product will keep users returning. SEO is now about habit-building, cross-format storytelling, video optimization, collaboration with content creators and social algorithms.
Clara is a SEO consultant.
Deborah Carver
In the spirit of year-end big swings, I predict that at least one major news publisher will launch its own algorithmic content feed and ad network that competes with the major social networks.
More generally, in 2026, news organizations will hone in on how digital audiences perceive individual brand experiences, instead of relying solely on the wavering brand of “journalism” to provide credibility.
Publishers will develop AI-powered on-site search tools that serve their existing audiences with better UX and more trustworthy information than a genpop chatbot.
For individual SEOs, the shift means learning how to build semantic search products, rather than optimize for third-party experiences. If you’re a news SEO looking to superpower your career, figure out how to work on internal search products!
Deborah is a content strategy consultant.
Garrett Sussman
News publishers will, ironically, need to lean into bias. People want news that supports their belief system. They still go directly to sources they trust and rely on social platforms, meaning that when they do arrive via Google Discover, AI search or Google Search, they gravitate toward brands they already recognize. If your perspective clashes with theirs, they probably will not click.
Knowing your audience and leaning into that voice is your responsible content strategy. You can’t be everything to everyone. Preferred sources are already shaping Top Stories, and personalization will reinforce what people want to see. Readers want to hear from real people, not generic AI-generated content. Strong on-air personalities, columnists and reporters become critical anchors for growing loyalty across search channels.
Garrett is the director of marketing at iPullRank.
Harry Clarkson-Bennett
Publishers who don’t transition to building a multi-platform experience get lost amongst the noise; individual creators skyrocket the popularity of those who lean into them, and others get lost in the mist. It’s a fantastic opportunity for journalists and individuals. Brands who embrace proper full funnel marketing campaigns and do big, bold things will see success in all channels.
SEO starts to even out a bit as AI Mode edges a little closer, but Google will make more of an effort to insert a few sodding links here and there. The best publishers start to figure out some alternative ways to monetize.
Harry is the SEO director for The Telegraph and author of Leadership in SEO.
Johnny Herge
In 2026 we will see the authors themselves become increasingly important. An author, as opposed to a publisher, is a more reliable way to measure the reliability of a specific article. This also mitigates two potential issues: a great article missing out on visibility because the publisher is not authoritative enough, and a bad article only receiving visibility because of the publisher’s authority.
Johnny is a senior specialist of technical SEO at Amsive.
John Shehata
In 2026, AI Overviews will become the biggest concern for news publishers since they appear directly in search results and increasingly absorb user attention. More publishers will diversify revenue through video, creator style content and direct partnerships with AI platforms. Google will win the AI platform race, and web guides will emerge as the new interface for navigating the web. Google Discover will remain the top traffic driver, and more publishers will finally understand that Discover is an extension of Search, not a separate channel. Consolidation will accelerate as more publishers join larger groups for survival. The biggest wins will come from teams that integrate real time data, audience intent and cross-platform visibility into one workflow.
John is the founder of NewzDash.
Joy Johnston
The meteoric rise of LLMs and Google’s AI search products will hit speed bumps in 2026, from regulatory rulings to users’ aversion to ad proliferation to a growing return on investment demand from stakeholders.
Expect volatility and acquisitions in the AI visibility tool market. This reckoning will dial down the hype and bring some clarity about AI’s best use cases in the newsroom as well as AI’s actual impact on search behaviour, news publisher SERP visibility and search traffic. Successful newsrooms will focus on multimodal SEO fundamentals while diversifying content distribution streams to deliver high-quality, original content in formats their audience prefers and that LLMs and Google’s AI search tools can process and surface.
Joy is a news SEO strategist for Trisolute News Dashboard.
Kevin Indig
2026: The Year the Open Web Closes for Good.
We saw the cracks form in 2025, but 2026 will be the year the wall goes up. Look beyond The New York Times. CNN and Reuters — the giants of free, ad-supported news — started rolling out paywalls in late 2024.
Or, look at Reddit, which aggressively blocked search crawlers to turn its public square into a private data fortress. These aren’t outliers; they are the new standard. As AI Overviews increasingly satisfy the search, visit is becoming endangered.
Consequently, publishers are rethinking the purpose of visibility. Reach is still the game, but the goal is no longer click volume. It’s a connection. We are trading high-volume, anonymous traffic for lower-volume, high-value relationships. In 2026, the open web will become a collection of gated communities. Publishers will stop feeding the large language models that are starving them. If you want high-quality, human-verified journalism, you’ll have to log in.
Kevin is a growth advisor and author of Growth Memo.
Louisa Frahm
Search-friendly content will need to be recirculated beyond the first page of Google for publishers to stay relevant and authoritative. Search will remain a valuable trigger for content ideation, but publishers will have to take an intensified approach to reach their audiences anywhere and everywhere that they’re digesting content.
First, we’ll have to increase our odds of appearing in AI Overviews and chatbot modules by tapping into their preferences, including clear headings, bullet point lists and FAQ formatting. Second, we’ll have to recirculate content always in all ways through related channels including apps, social media, newsletters and videos, to maximize visibility in timely windows.
Brand loyalty will need to be prioritized and amplified to offset negative side effects of the AI age.
Louisa is the SEO director for ESPN.
Oleg Korneitchouk
More news organizations will bring their content behind a paywall or regwall and explore monetization options outside of advertising (especially events). Even though overall page views are likely to shrink, the remaining views will come from a more focused audience. Nailing down your target audience is key.
Expect more partnerships between organizations and influencers that share audiences, and more reporters-turned-influencers. Newsrooms will need to build up rapport with their audiences wherever they currently are, and funnel them into their ecosystem — while still engaging on off-site platforms.
Oleg is a SEO consultant.
Rebecca Zamon
2026 is going to be a turning point in the general public’s use of AI in their daily lives, a huge challenge for news publishers fighting the uphill battle against summaries.
I predict a focus for news organizations in the areas where they can set themselves apart instead of trying to fight the platforms: live coverage and trusted voices. Formats like live blogs, which provide immediate coverage that can’t easily be ingested by LLMs, are an opportunity. Similarly, as people get used to looking to AI for general information, they’ll turn to brands and names they know to verify it or go deeper.
If publishers can demonstrate they’re worthy of the audience’s trust, it can build a lasting relationship.
Rebecca is the audience growth manager for The Globe and Mail.
Ryan Y. Kellett
This year, I’ve gotten numerous text messages from media executives along these lines: “Hey Ryan, do you know someone who’d be interested in leading our AI strategy? Big job!”
Most of these leaders want to be able to delegate their AI planning, so hiring the right person makes perfect sense. But my response usually surprises: look at hiring and promoting from your existing SEO team.
SEOs are among the best equipped in news organizations to handle the big AI questions of intellectual property, licensing, tracking, algorithms, content auditing, topic authority and more. News SEOs have had no choice in the past two years but to become AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and then GEO (generative engine optimization) experts within their larger organizations — perfect training for the even bigger questions ahead.
These are the ideal candidates for big strategy and operational roles leading change. It’s about time after decades of being cast into organizational backwaters.
Ryan is an independent journalism consultant.
Steven Wilson-Beales
The AI search hype bubble is going to burst as publishers fail to see the return on investment after paying for some very expensive tools.
Expect a renewed interest in SEO from the C-suite; double down on the basics and build up your case studies. Publishers will start to move away from page views as their key metric, focusing instead on visibility, engagement and conversions. Original content will be prioritized over churning out news stories.
A review of meaningful distribution will follow — do you really need to be on Reddit if your audience isn’t there?
Steven is a SEO and content strategy consultant.
Vahe Arabian
News organizations will increasingly shape their publishing and SEO strategies around large language models. Visibility will no longer depend only on traditional search optimization, but also on how well stories are structured, labeled and delivered so that LLMs can interpret and surface them accurately. One clear sign of this shift is the rise of adaptive paywalls that respond to a reader’s intent in real time.
Publishers will optimize for LLM-driven SEO by building systems that identify why a reader has arrived at a story. That intent will activate tailored access rules: a softened paywall for civic-value reporting, an extended preview for readers who are trying to understand a topic or a timed pass for those using the material for work. Newsrooms will also craft concise summaries that meet an immediate need.
Behind the scenes, controlled access to paywalled sections, article chunking and internal decision models will protect rights and maintain attribution. In this landscape, optimizing for LLMs becomes the next evolution of publisher SEO, ensuring journalism can be discovered, trusted and valued in an AI-shaped information world.
Vahe is the founder of the State of Digital Publishing.
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THE JOBS LIST
Audience or SEO jobs in journalism. Want to include a position for promotion? Email us.
The Athletic is hiring a Technical SEO Manager (Canada or U.S., remote).
The Times and The Sunday Times are hiring a Deputy Head of Audience (London, UK).
The Cut is hiring a Platforms Editor (New York, N.Y.).
New York Magazine is hiring an Associate Audience Editor (New York, N.Y., hybrid).
The i Paper is hiring for their pool of audience team freelancers for 2026 (UK).
RECOMMENDED READING
Google news and updates
🤖 Google: The December 2025 core update is currently rolling out.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: Intense impact from the December core update is already being felt.
🤖 Google: Features like Preferred Sources are expanding, and we’re updating our partnerships with news publications and creators for the AI era.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: The Preferred Sources feature is rolling out globally.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: Web Guide has expanded to the “All” tab on Search results pages.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: AI-powered summaries of articles go live in Google News.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: Links in AI Mode have been tweaked to encourage clicks, Google says.
Even more recommended reading
👥 Gene Maddaus: Google removes AI videos of Disney characters after cease and desist letter.
🔮 David Pierce: The end of OpenAI, and other 2026 predictions [Podcast].
🔪 Emma Roth: A new AI licensing standard, RSL 1.0, helps publishers outline how AI companies should pay for the content they scrape across the web.
🎧 Barry Adams and Steven Wilson-Beales: Will AI kill SEO? Publisher growth tactics for 2026 [Podcast].
🤢 Danny Goodwin: A doctor and YouTuber says a Google AI Overview summary falsely accused him of selling sick notes.
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Have something you’d like us to discuss? Send us a note on Twitter (Jessie or Shelby) or to our email: seoforjournalism@gmail.com.
Written by Jessie Willms and Shelby Blackley
Stellar roundup here. Barry's point abt publishers taking their foot off the SEO pedal creating a self-fulfilling prophecy really captures the biggest trap I've seen teams fall into when panic sets in. The differenc between organizations that double down on visibility fundamentals vs those chasing every shiny AI tool is already showing up in traffic patterns. I worked with a publisher last quarter who shifted their entire strategy to "AI optimization" at the expense of basic technical SEO, and the decline was brutal compared to their competitors who just kept doing the work.