Table of Contents
- 1. Customers found brands in a lot more places than Google.
- 2. Things got noisy fast, but clarity cut through.
- 3. Traffic mattered less than it used to.
- 4. Human experience mattered more than ever.
- 5. You can still create content for AI answers (without gaming anything).
- 6. None of this works without a clear brand voice in SEO content.
- How we’re using these lessons at Pepperstorm in 2026
- A final note
2025 was the year a lot of things changed quietly.
Not in the dramatic, “everything is broken” way the internet loves. More in the slow, slightly confusing, “hang on, something feels different here” way.
AI didn’t arrive overnight – but the way people find answers definitely shifted. And if you were paying attention, some interesting patterns started to emerge.
Here are six lessons we took from 2025, based on real client work, real content, and real results – and how they’re guiding what we’re building at Pepperstorm in 2026.
1. Customers found brands in a lot more places than Google.
People didn’t stop searching. They just stopped relying on one place to do it.
What we started to see in 2025 is quickly becoming the reality of how people discover brands online in 2026. Alongside Google, we saw customers find brands through:
- AI tools like ChatGPT
- summaries and overviews
- recommendations pulled from multiple sources
- conversations that never resulted in a traditional click
Search didn’t disappear. Discovery widened.
What we learned:
If your visibility plan only considers Google rankings and doesn’t include an AI search optimisation strategy too, you’re most likely missing where discovery is already happening.
Photo by Atlantic Ambience on Pexels.
2. Things got noisy fast, but clarity cut through.
AI-generated content flooded the internet almost overnight. A lot of it was fine. Some of it was even helpful. Much of it sounded… the same.
What stood out wasn’t louder brands or more content. It was clarity. Content that knew who it was for, answered something specific, and didn’t try to please everyone.
What we learned:
Volume stopped being the advantage. Serving a clear niche properly became the differentiator.
3. Traffic mattered less than it used to.
This one was uncomfortable at first.
We saw pages with solid rankings and declining clicks. We saw content doing its job without showing up neatly in analytics dashboards.
At the same time, we saw something else:
- fewer visitors
- better questions
- higher intent
- better outcomes
1,000 vague visitors looks great on a graph. 10 people who actually need the answer builds a business.
What we learned:
Traffic still matters, but relevance matters more. Traffic became a weaker proxy for success than it used to be.
Photo by Isaque Pereira on Pexels.
4. Human experience mattered more than ever.
Despite all the AI hype, search systems still reward the same underlying things:
- credibility
- specificity
- real-world insight
- consistency over time
Those qualities tend to come from lived experience. Not because AI can’t write well, but because it can’t originate judgement, context, or consequence.
You can usually tell when something was written by someone who’s actually done the work.
What we learned:
The gap between human written content vs AI generated content is more obvious now. AI is great for research and structure. Human input is still where meaning and trust come from.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.
5. You can still create content for AI answers (without gaming anything).
One of the more surprising things we saw was how well some older, pre-AI blog posts performed in AI answers.
Not because they were new. Not because they were “AI-optimised”.
But because they were:
- clearly structured
- direct
- Specific
- easy to extract answers from
The brands that showed up most consistently weren’t chasing tricks. They were answering real questions properly by implementing a content strategy for AI driven search.
What we learned:
AI-ready content is usually just well-designed information. Start with the real question, then answer it clearly and honestly.
6. None of this works without a clear brand voice in SEO content.
Visibility gets you found. Voice is what makes people stay.
SEO – whether Google or AI-driven – is how people arrive. Brand voice is how they decide whether you’re worth trusting, following, or buying from.
The good news is that the things that help with visibility and the things that build connection are no longer in conflict. Clear, specific, human content tends to do both.
What we learned:
Work out who you are before you worry too much about algorithms.
How we’re using these lessons at Pepperstorm in 2026
All of this is shaping how we think about the future of SEO and content marketing as we head into 2026.
We’re not throwing everything away. We’re building on what already works.
In 2026, that means:
- AI visibility services for teams who want help adapting their content for how discovery works now
- blog content structured for Google and AI answers, without losing human voice
- more education and examples for teams who want to do it themselves
- a YouTube channel so we can show the thinking, not just talk about it
Some teams want execution. Others want understanding.
We’re building for both.
A final note
We’re still Pepperstorm. You’re still you. Let’s do 2026 properly.
If you want help navigating what’s changing – or just want to understand it better – we’ll be sharing what we’re learning as we go.
No hype. Just the work. Get in touch!
