And just like that, 2026 is well underway! Whatever will the year bring?
At Splitpixel, it’s essential that we stay up to speed with the latest trends across the SEO and PPC landscape to ensure we’re delivering the best-possible results for our clients. These are highly changeable channels – now more than ever thanks to the rapid injection of AI.
We thought we’d kick off the new working year with some of our own insights and predictions on the most important changes shaping the industry, and where we expect the sector to head throughout 2026.
Discover what Splitpixel’s marketing specialists have on their radar for the year ahead.
Ash
SEO & PPC Manager
Ash is a multi-disciplinary mastermind, focusing on where SEO and PPC intersect.
1. Zero-click searches will continue to grow
With the introduction of AI Overviews, I expect zero-click searches to keep increasing, impacting both SEO and PPC activity. Zero click searches are when users get answers to their search query directly on the results page, without clicking through to a website.
Initially, this has had a significant impact on organic performance particularly for informational search terms, where AI provides users with quick, specific answers directly in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
However, I expect this behaviour to grow even more, with the intent of zero-click searches becoming more transactional and commercial, alongside informational.
According to a 2025 study by SEO Bazooka, 60% of all Google searches (in the US) now end without a click – a huge change to where we were just a few years ago. I fully expect this figure to continue rising as AI-driven search becomes more prominent.
2. Agentic commerce and changes to the customer journey
Agentic commerce is another trend I expect to grow throughout 2026. This is when purchases can be made directly within an AI platform rather than on a website.
ChatGPT has recently introduced this in the US with participating merchants such as Shopify and Etsy allowing users to purchase products directly within ChatGPT rather than visiting the seller’s website.
This represents a significant shift in the customer journey. At the moment, this is limited to single product purchases, but it’s easy to imagine how this could expand.
How long before users are booking an entire holiday, flights, accommodation, transfers and even their sun lotion, through a single ChatGPT prompt?
While I still expect Google to dominate the search landscape, this dominance could gradually decline if large language models are able to support more of the end-to-end user journey.
3. Intent taking (even more) prominence over keywords
Although this isn’t exactly new, I expect search intent to take even more prominence over individual keywords, affecting both SEO and PPC.
From an SEO perspective, content will continue to become more intent-driven, focusing less on ranking for individual keywords and more on addressing common customer questions, pain points and benefits/solutions – thus impacting both Search Engine and AI visibility.
On the PPC side, campaigns are likely to become even less reliant on exact match keywords and more signal-led, using audience behaviour and context to drive performance. This shift has already started, but I expect it to accelerate further.
Will exact match keywords survive long-term? I personally hope so, but time will tell!
A change that I feel was introduced in 2025 on the quiet, but will impact both SEO and PPC, is how Google has started rolling out how they display paid search listings. Sponsored results are no longer clearly labelled with “Ad” next to each listing. Instead, they are grouped as Sponsored results, which can make it harder for users to immediately identify paid placements.
When my colleague Joe first noticed this change during its beta rollout, it took me a second glance to recognise the listings as sponsored. I see this as a potential opportunity to drive higher CT’s via PPC, but another challenge for SEO, as paid results may blend more into the organic SERP results.
Joe
PPC Specialist
If there’s something Joe doesn’t know about Google Ads, it’s either not worth knowing, or was released less than 30 seconds ago.
1. Google Ads appearing in AI Mode and AI Overviews
In 2025, Google launched AI Mode, appearing as a searching option to rival other LLMs. Google has also made no secret of their desire to drive PPC ads through AI Mode.
With the newly launched AI Max toggle inside Google Ads search campaigns and, Performance Max gaining more control with both final URL expansion and customisations in 2025, I’m expecting these features to allow for ads to soon start appearing in these AI features more frequently.
2. Google Ads further dominating search results
Touching on Ash’s point about how ads are now appearing, I think we’ll see more experiments with Google testing how ads will appear in a search result.
We’ve seen ads appear at the top of SERP results and at the bottom of SERP results for years. We’ve also seen Google test ads in the middle of organic results before, but not frequently – is this something Google will come back to this year?
With AI searches and results having taken over for the past two years, it only feels like Google’s going to test more SERP layouts in 2026.
3. A growing need for server-side tracking becoming the norm
Server-side tracking refers to when user data is collected directly by a server rather than through a user’s browser (client-side tracking).
Businesses are losing data due to only using client-side tracking, and we’ve seen it firsthand for our clients who run Google Ads.
Despite us knowing that a certain conversion has come through Google Ads within a CRM system, we’re seeing Google misattribute these away from Google Ads – and it’s harming in-platform conversion figures for clients.
Server-side tracking is helpful to prevent missed data by sending users’ data to a server instead of straight into Google Ads. I think it’ll be more discussed as a necessary requirement to run Google Ads reliably, pushed even more as the year goes on.
Seth
SEO Specialist
Seth joins the dots between our technical marketing team and content writers, keeping a watchful eye on every aspect of SEO.
1. Trust signals and authority becoming more important than traffic volume
SEO increasingly prioritises authority and trust signals over vast traffic volume, reflecting popular search engines shifting towards validating content quality rather than measuring popularity.
As AI generated content becomes increasingly more popular and regular, search algorithms are relying more heavily on verified expertise, high-quality backlinks, and transparent sourcing to distinguish trustworthy sites.
Traffic, while still being an outcome of effective SEO, carries less weight as a ranking factor. Instead, a website’s ability to showcase its authority and reliability in accuracy will be at the forefront for 2026.
2. Technical SEO foundations become more of an effective competitive edge over competitors
In 2026, technical SEO has become a very real competitive advantage in optimisation, as search engines now more popularly rely on AI-driven systems that require clean and structured websites.
Effective technical SEO makes for efficient crawling, fast page load speed, and comprehensive structured data, which now more than ever directly influences how accurately algorithms can interpret, index, and give value or trust to a websites content.
With this is mind, technical quality becomes a strategic advantage over competitors that overlook it – it’s not just the maintenance checklist it used to be.
3. Will AI Overviews dominate SERPs?
AI Overviews will play a far more dominant role in Google’s search experience, but they won’t fully replace the traditional results we’re so used to seeing.
While these AI summaries will appear on a certainly wider range of queries and questions, Google must still balance it with accuracy concerns and the need to continue ads and organic engagement.
With this in mind, AI Overviews will (we hope!) continue to exist besides the other standard listings, but the exact placements remain to be seen. As Joe mentioned, I think we’ll see experimentation in the year to come.
One thing is for certain, AI will reshape user behaviour through rewarding authoritative and unique content.
What are your marketing challenges for 2026?
If you’d like to ensure your organisation stays ahead of the curve and makes the most of its digital marketing opportunities in 2026, we’d love to help. Get in touch today to speak with our friendly team.
Google Ads is, without doubt, the best marketing tool for driving the right audience to your website, at exactly the right time. You’re spending money on making sure your result comes out on top – this makes picking the right keywords you want to target, writing the perfect ad copy, and even making sure your conversions are tracking correctly completely essential.
Since 2008 I’ve used countless brand guideline documents when designing websites. Back when I started, there wasn’t much of a conversation about accessibility – the overall aesthetic was all people were worried about.
