Which Sites Can Win?
The rise of AI Overviews and chatbots means that sites relying on information are at a severe disadvantage when AI can (and will) simply answer the questions that used to drive users to your website. As a business model, informational sites are the biggest losers in the modern landscape. They are, honestly, often doing what Google has asked them to do, provide useful content for users, but are now being robbed of clicks by AIO. Fewer clicks means less advertising revenue, and many sites have found that this model simply isn’t viable any more.
Those informational sites that are thriving are those that have diversified. Adding a more solid offering has worked for countless sites that used to rely just on adverts. An online shop, one-to-one training, and arranging community events are some of the tactics that sites have pivoted to. Anything that can’t be easily replicated (or simply stolen) by AI.
Which Sites Connived At Their Own Destruction?
“I used AI to write 300 blogs a day and scaled my site massively in no time with hardly any effort.” Sound familiar? I know I saw posts like that on LinkedIn in 2024 and early 2025. Google presumably took note as well, because all of that useless text was quickly analysed by Google and determined to be of zero value, and those sites were hit hard.
Google are still going after websites relying on large quantities of hollow content. If your new blog doesn’t actually offer anything of value to a user, Google are going to penalise you for it. Not just that page, your entire website. We saw even more sites hit by the recent Google March 2026 Spam Update and March 2026 Core Update.
It’s not just the sites that went out of their way to populate their website with vast quantities of rubbish that have been hit. Websites that leave outdated content on their site have been hit as well. And again, it’s not just your old, “What to do during lockdown,” posts from 2020 that will disappear. The knock-on effect will impact your whole website.
The Real Win
What really sets the successful websites apart from the rest in 2026 is those that have cultivated a strong brand presence. Building up that loyal following means there are people who will organically mention you on social media, engage with your posts, and write glowing (and more importantly, genuine) reviews about you.
This is how to get really noticed by Google and the chatbots. Off-site SEO used to involve backlinks by the dozen. It didn’t really matter how relevant they were; you just needed to have another site link to you.
Today’s more intelligent systems are more subtle. Brand mentions are good enough. The big players (Google, Chat GPT, Claude, Copilot) will recognise your brand name, and when they find content about your products or services, that’s all grist for the mill. Do be aware that they can recognise the good as well as the bad, so keep on top of those negative reviews with genuine responses.
Your brand should be your most prized possession as a company trying to succeed on the internet in 2026. You have to cultivate it, make it stand out, and respect the people who decide to follow you.
