.By Think Creative Agency. Updated September 2026. Certified Google and Meta Partners helping Australian businesses stay visible in search since 2012.
SEO in 2026 is no longer just about ranking on Google. The biggest shift is the rise of AI in search, which means visibility now depends on being cited and summarised inside AI answers, not only appearing in the ten blue links. The trends that matter this year are AI Overviews, the growth of Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), zero-click search, E-E-A-T as a trust filter, and a shift from single rankings to visibility across multiple surfaces.
Search engine optimisation remains a cornerstone of digital marketing, but the ground has moved. Here are the trends shaping SEO in Australia this year.
Our AEO and GEO strategies are helping clients stay visible in both traditional search and AI-powered search experiences. By creating authoritative, optimised content, we’ve increased online visibility, driven more qualified enquiries and positioned our clients to be discovered wherever their audiences are searching.
AI Overviews are now part of everyday search
Google’s AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries that sit above the traditional results, now reach around 2.5 billion people a month globally and appear on a large share of searches. In Australia, roughly 64 percent of people say they have already seen an AI Overview (Telsyte and Roy Morgan data, 2026). For informational queries in particular, the answer often arrives before a user reaches any website at all.
The practical effect on clicks is real. Ahrefs’ analysis of 300,000 keywords found that when an AI Overview is present, the top-ranking page can see click-through rates fall by around 58 percent, while impressions for the same pages have risen as search volume grows. The lesson is not to abandon SEO, but to structure content so it can be pulled into these answers rather than buried beneath them.
Australians are searching with AI, not just Google
The audience is changing fast. In 2026, 12 percent of Australians name an AI tool such as ChatGPT as their primary way of finding information online, double the 5 percent recorded a year earlier (Telsyte). Roughly 5.2 million Australians now open an AI tool every day. Google still dominates, handling the vast majority of searches, but a Google-only strategy increasingly leaves demand on the table inside AI assistants.
This is why Answer Engine Optimisation and ChatGPT SEO have become distinct disciplines alongside traditional SEO, rather than buzzwords. We cover this shift in more detail in our guide to AI SEO in Australia.
Zero-click search keeps rising
More searches now end without a click to any website. Industry data shows zero-click rates climbing from around 34 percent on a standard Google search to about 43 percent when an AI Overview appears, and far higher inside Google’s dedicated AI Mode. For businesses, this means two things: the click you do earn is more valuable, and being the source an AI cites is now a visibility goal in its own right.
E-E-A-T is the trust filter for AI
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) has become more important, not less, because AI systems use these signals to decide which sources to trust and cite. Original data, named authors with real credentials, clear citations and genuine case studies now do double duty: they help you rank, and they make you quotable by AI. Thin, generic content is the biggest loser of 2026.
From ranking position to multi-surface visibility
The single ranking is no longer the whole game. A brand now competes for the number one organic position, inclusion in AI Overviews, mentions in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers, the local pack, and featured snippets, often for the same query. Measurement has to broaden too, from tracking rankings alone to tracking whether your brand is being cited across these surfaces.
What to actually do about it in 2026
- Structure content to answer specific questions clearly and early, so it can be extracted into AI answers.
- Invest in genuine E-E-A-T: original data, expert authorship and real results.
- Keep technical SEO sharp, because the same crawlability and structured data that helps Google also helps AI engines understand and cite you.
- Broaden measurement beyond rankings to include AI visibility.
- Treat SEO, AEO and GEO as one connected search strategy, not separate projects.
Ready to stay visible as search changes?
The businesses that win in 2026 are the ones being found on Google and cited by AI. As a Sydney SEO agency and certified Google Partner, we build search strategies that cover both.
Not sure how visible your business is in AI search? Get a free audit and we will show you where you stand across Google and AI answers, or get in touch with our team.