Marcus Sheridan

AI Will Redefine Online Visibility by 2026

What extraordinary times in which we live my friends. In the world of marketing and technology, we’ve never seen change like this and 2026 will likely be a rude awakening for many businesses who have been asleep at the wheel for the past few years, unaware of the massive shift that was happening around them. For me personally, 2025 was a deeply enlightening year with respect to AI Visibility. My software AI Trust Signals ran about 4,000 reports for various websites this year and the trends we saw made it very clear where these LLMs are forcing us to go in the coming months and years. And when I say “forcing”—I really mean it. Just like companies were eventually “forced” to get a website (or be left behind) in the 2000s, organizations today must redefine almost everything they previously understood by what it meant to be found online, as the world of search will never be the same again. With that, let’s get into the meat of this post. Here are 7 predictions regarding AI visibility I believe will happen over the next year. Some of these you’ll likely agree with. Some not so much. But I can promise you this: I’ve not stated anything here whatsoever that is meant to be clickbait. This is EXACTLY what I believe will happen this year . I’ll be right on some, wrong on others. But these are my sincere thoughts. Here we go... 7 Predictions for AI Visibility & AEO in 2026 1. AEO & AI Visibility will be viewed as more important than SEO by most companies. Why: Traditional SEO focuses on ranking pages, AEO focuses on being cited and trusted by AI . (do yourself a favor and repeat that phrase again and again in 2026) With the extreme proliferation of AI Summaries, plus a massive movement away from legacy Google search toward AI-based search, this is inevitable, the only question is... when will it happen? I predict by the end of 2026, most successful business (and even most successful marketing agencies) will be much more focused on AEO than legacy SEO. 2. Every marketer will be forced to develop a clear understanding of what “Structured data” means. Why: AI crawlers want machine-readable data. This means marketers must lean-in to such things as schema markup, entity attributes, etc. (I know, sounds nerdy, but this is where we are.) 3. First-party reviews will become the #1 accepted top “trust signal” for AEO as LLMs build out “Reputation Graphs” of every company. Why: LLMs lean hard into reviews, as they should, but they do it in a way legacy Google never did as they focus more on things like “negative reviews” and “recency patterns” of reviews to create what is essentially “Reputation Graph” of your company. If you thought Reviews were important before, you haven’t seen anything yet... 4. Pricing transparency becomes the #2 accepted top “trust signal” for AEO forcing a massive wave of online pricing information, cost calculators, and more. Why: AI sees clearly the #1 question a buyer has about any product or service is, “Roughly, what will this cost?” Therefore, if AI can’t legitimately infer cost expectations from your content, it will default to competitors whose costs it does understand . For many industries, this will lead to a proliferation of pricing articles, videos, and pricing estimators . At the same time, many businesses will continue to completely ignore this question and be rejected by AI as “untrustworthy.” The trend will start with B2C home service businesses and move across all of B2C and eventually, in 2027 and 2028, take over B2B as well. 5. Keyword targeting will start to completely die out as “demonstrated expertise” and “domain authority” will become every marketer’s primary objective. Why: AI reads for depth, clarity, and confidence in responses ...NOT keywords. The death of keyword targeting has been in the works for a while, but hopefully 2026 will finish the job. 6. Personalized AI recommendations will dominate discovery while everyone will realize search “rankings” no longer exist. Why: AI tools increasingly consider intent, history, and preferences when suggesting solutions or vendors. This means there will never again be one set answer for any specific search. It’s all relative, making “We rank #1 for this keyword” a thing of the past. 7. “Unverified” labels will show up in AI assistants. Why: AI is obsessed with safe recommendations. For this reason, you’ll start seeing “unverified” labels popping up whenever they don’t feel a sense of clear proof. Once again, this raises the bar on the part of the business to “prove” what they say to be true. OK, so there you have it friends. Now that you’ve read them, I’d love to get your take. Which ones do you agree with? Which ones do you not agree with? Feel free to share your thoughts (and explanations) as I’d love to know where you stand. To an incredible 2026, Marcus --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PS #1: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone. What a special time of year this is, as it represents the life of someone who deeply changed the world, and whose example inspires me to be a better person every single day. PS#2: I want to thank you for your support in 2025. Seriously, I appreciate every comment, every “like”, every silent nod—all of it. Thank you.