Is SEO still worth doing in 2026 now that people use AI search?
SEO is still worth it, but it now works alongside GEO (getting cited by AI answer engines). Traditional search still sends most traffic for many businesses, while a fast-growing share of people ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity directly. The fundamentals overlap heavily — clear, trustworthy, well-structured content helps both — so the right move is to do both, not abandon one.
This is framed as either/or, but it is not. SEO and GEO share the same foundations and reinforce each other. Traditional SEO still matters: for most businesses, ordinary search continues to drive a large share of visits, and ranking well remains valuable. Writing it off in 2026 is premature. At the same time, AI referrals are climbing fast, and ChatGPT is by far the largest of these channels. People increasingly ask an assistant for a recommendation and act on the handful of sources it cites, never touching a results page. The good news is that the work overlaps. Clear content that answers real questions, genuine reviews, consistent business details, structured data, and third-party mentions all help you rank in search and get cited by AI. You are rarely choosing between them. So the practical answer is: keep the SEO fundamentals, and extend them into GEO. Every SiteExperts site is built for both from the start, which is why "is SEO dead?" is the wrong question — the winning approach uses both.