SEO Firms begin to Advise Clients to Ignore Google

[Brett_Tabke]

An absolutely fascinating piece by aHrefs here (man they been killin it lately)

They talk to a bunch of well known SEO's and get some of the ripest quotes about AI and SEO we have ever seen:

"I think as we move into 2026 and beyond, a lot of brands will be better suited taking their existing SEO investment and reallocating most of it towards other channels vs trying to go 'all in' on AI Search."

"For the programs I run, I'm no longer going to focus on SEO with our content strategy. It'll be an after thought at most."

In direct response to Google’s click ransom, some SEOs are locking down their content.

Content gating faded out, but it’s making a resurgence now that people want to wrest back control over their content from AI.

My SEO traffic has dropped 72% in the last 6 months. I’ve personally spent countless hours over the years doing SEO for Customers AI. We’ve navigated every Google update successfully, until now.

[ahrefs.com...]

[Whitey]

What Ahrefs captured here mirrors what’s been popping up in threads about NavBoost, AI Overviews, and the “SEO to zero-click” shift.

For the last decade, diversification talk always came with an asterisk - Google still brought the highest-intent, lowest-CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) users. The problem now is, as several here have noted, the user journey is being collapsed before they reach your site. NavBoost may still lift your visibility, but AI Overviews can just as easily truncate your funnel.

From the Ahrefs piece, the most relevant survival tactics I’m seeing in practice:

Gating or partial-gating valuable content – not full paywalls, but enough to make AI scrape summaries incomplete while still onboarding the human.

Shifting KPI from “sessions” to “subscribers” - email, push, account creation, private community sign-ups are now core metrics.

Platform-first discovery - LinkedIn, TikTok, niche Discords, even podcasts, are driving more first-touch awareness than Google in certain verticals.

Data & tool assets - proprietary calculators, interactive maps, or datasets that AI summaries can’t replicate well without the original source.

Brand imprinting - making sure that if your content does appear in AI Overviews, the user recognises you as the authority worth clicking.

Personally, I’ve watched projects lose 60–70% of search traffic in months despite good UX, E-E-A-T signals, and strong technical health. What’s changed is that Google is keeping more “click value” for itself, and AI is doing the same - it’s the click ransom problem.

Bottom line: SEO isn’t obsolete, but Google-only SEO is a liability. Treat search traffic as bonus, build channels you control, and think like it’s 1998 - except that the middleman this time is far more sophisticated and far less generous.

[RedBar]

I tried reading it but it became very repetitive and fixated on THEIR businesses for their supposed expertise.

Can they translate this into real-world manufacturing and marketing that is affordable by the average SME ?.?.? We're not all multi-billion Dollar enterprises.

[tangor]

Just remember what Grandma (and general human history) said:

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

Meanwhile, there's another adage:

"Guard the hen house!"

Don't let the fox in with the fowls. The new struggle will be protecting against AI without reducing traffic. Gonna be a balancing act.

[Brett_Tabke]

> popping up

A bit, but it has been mostly stray voices - no real authority. I see it going two ways:

1. Clients beging to bolt away from independent seo's towards agencies. As traffic declines, smaller sites that use seo's are going to blame the seo for the issues. We are kinda seeing this now with mid sized seo firms actually growing right now. (even though a bunch of smaller ones are going inhouse and closing up shop)
   
2. Large corps are shutting down a great deal of their seo in the name of ai. (they are in for a huge surprise before start of 2026 as there traffic tanks)
   

[Kendo]

On other words, they have no idea.

[explorador]

Apologies if this sounds ultra ignorant, but the article seems unreadable to me, not sure if it's more a piece of marketing... or something trying to cover just too many points at once without really going in depth.

RedBar: I tried reading it but it became very repetitive

Yes. The article reminded me of those empty interviews (supposed millionaires) who just jump from A to B to C to D talking about brands and names as... examples? but there is nothing really contributing to the conversation.

From where I'm standing, and to make some justice (to the forum) the thread title finds more justice on old posts from WebmasterWorld, where some users suggested exploring local and direct advertising to find leads and increase traffic (posters, ads on paper on the walls, at the stores, etc.), the numbers may not be amazingly high, but the conversions often are more positive. Or, trying to focus some more on Bing.

Just to say something (sure, it doesn't apply to everyone), sometimes a reddit thread with just 10 people interacting turns into more leads than Google.

** Also, it's been a while since finding the following words on an article... it sounds like an invitation to leave "so, here are 5 ways to..."

[Edge]

Ignore Google

I've kind of been doing that for more then a decade. What I am sure of is that building a online community, reputation and usefulness is well worth the effort than chasing the latest Google whatever.

I do monitor Google Search Console and analytics for the random unexplained dips and surges in traffic.

Also - publish stuff Google can't and won't.

[tangor]

building a online community, reputation and usefulness is well worth the effort

Bingo!

Even with AI hogging the horizon, community, reputation (brand) and usefulness (action/knowledge) can SHINE. Not every niche/biz can achieve all three for a variety of reasons, but there's every incentive to make the effort!

Never wrote for the search engines for MY stuff. It still does well, even with AI (particularly the Bing version). Coding for Clients? Do what they request with best effort since they are paying for it. And watch it gradually fail as g and bean counters whittle away.

YMMV

[BigKat]

Even with AI hogging the horizon, community, reputation (brand) and usefulness (action/knowledge) can SHINE

New entrants would need a rather large budget to achieve even one of these in today's times considering all paths to achieve these goals involve Google in one way or another. I personally wouldn't want to be involved in any new venture unless its backed by a substantial budget and talent. In ecommerce we can pass some of the harmful AI costs onto our customers (retail, B2B and B2G) which we have done. I wouldn't be surprised to see us push another price increase before the end of the year to help offset all the harm that has been done by Google. Thankfully we've been around a while so we aren't as heavily dependent on Google, Amazon, etc. as new entrants are to sell goods.

[explorador]

Nice, that's the value of this forum. The conversation shifted from an article to actually useful stuff.

Google is valid as a traffic tool, I can entirely agree on writing for people, not for G, just keep in mind how lots of people don't even write the name of the websites: they write something partially, hit enter, Google auto corrects, and then they click on the results. I've seen it plenty of times. Same goes to other search engines (whatever people have configured).

But yeah, I agree, write for people, that's what I also do.

[mosxu]

Yeah don’t participate in the moving cheese game!

Chat GBT will only charge you 2% of the upcoming agentic sales so will other AIs.

Many did not learn yet what was and it is still wrong …

[Rlilly]

I think it still behooves to use proper Tags, unique images, unique human written content never AI, make sure the site speed performance is great, 100% accessibility - get some direct referrals in Chrome. Yes some links from established sites, Follow basic SEO or you going nowhere.