James Dooley: SEO predictions for 2027.
Today I'm joined with Charles Floate, and there is no better person that I want to ask because, over the years, I have known you now for 15 years.
By the way, happy 30th for yesterday.
I have known you for a long time, and you have always seemed to be two steps ahead of the game.
There have always been systems and processes that you have brought to me that I have never heard of before. I have gone, “What is this?” Then 12 months later, people are talking about what you spoke about a long time before.
I know it is a hard question to ask, but what are your predictions for SEO next year and how do you see things moving?
Charles Floate: It is all based on AI becoming the default experience.
As soon as Google changes from the traditional 10 blue links, and it becomes 10 blue links plus AI overviews, or AI mode becomes the default experience, it is going to change everything.
The current consensus and internal reporting from Google is Q4 2026.
I'm not 100% confident in their confidence around that deadline. I do think they will probably end up delaying it.
Is it going to be delayed by one month, three months, six months or 12 months? We are not 100% sure.
But I do believe 2027 will be the year that at least the US defaults into some sort of AI experience for search.
James Dooley: Let me stop you on that.
AI mode, I am presuming everyone here will know what AI mode is. You are saying Google is looking to move over to AI mode as the default in Q4.
How do you know that Google is looking to do that, and do you think they are going to do it as a blanket change for all searches?
Charles Floate: If you're a Google shareholder, you can listen to their quarterly earnings calls.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai gives out his timelines for various things happening, and he said on the last earnings call that Q4 2026 is the deadline for when they are trying to achieve AI as the default experience.
He did not say AI mode or AI overviews. He said AI as the default search experience.
You can take that as you wish. It may not even be the case that the default AI search experience is available right now.
They might not have invented it yet. It might be a new interface that suddenly arrives. The AI itself might even invent the new layout.
We do not know.
However, their current internal consensus is that they are trying to achieve that by the end of this year.
As soon as that happens, it changes the entire SEO industry, the entire landscape and all of the targeting.
It will upend careers, jobs and, to some extent, people's value and worth.
I do think it is going to be a massive shock to the industry.
AI has already been a shock for content writers, editors, graphic designers and other roles that play a big part in SEO, but it will be an even bigger shock once that becomes the default experience.
James Dooley: Would it be a big shock though?
There are people in the industry who say GEO is just SEO.
What would actually change? Do you disagree and believe that AI SEO is different to SEO?
Charles Floate: If AI mode becomes the default experience, then it definitely is completely different from the traditional 10 blue links landscape.
The algorithm behind the LLM powering AI mode is nothing like the traditional SEO algorithm.
Your approach to trying to rank and be picked up in AI mode is not going to be the same as traditional SEO.
If anything, the one-website mentality that most of the industry has had will go out the window.
That approach is where you focus on your own website, content, technical fixes, links, root authority and social shares all on one domain name.
That is gone because AI mode takes from multiple sources.
In some cases, it could be taking from 20, 30 or 50 different pages to build the output it gives back to the user.
It might not be a text output. It could be a table, a graphic, a short video or all sorts of other things.
We do not know yet, but it will be a different output and a different experience from traditional blue links.
All the information powering it will be different.
You will have to move from a one-domain play of doing the blog, the on-page and everything else for one domain, and instead build consensus from different publishers.
You will need to reinforce your entity and make yourself and the people in your company seen as the experts behind that niche.
That is how you make AI return you as the output for whatever query the customer is entering.
James Dooley: So with regards to that, you are looking more at holistic marketing and being seen everywhere.
SEO is going to become more about marketing as a whole.
Charles Floate: 100%.
There is still weighting going on. Certain sources will be weighted higher than others.
A Wikipedia page may mean more to AI than a podcast episode with 100 followers.
There is still weighting in certain areas, and certain work will have a much bigger impact than other work.
But I also believe it will eventually become EO, which is everywhere engine optimisation.
The best piece of advice I have had in the last few months is to use the example of FatRank, which is a lead generation agency in the UK.
You can search for entity attributes, such as “FatRank PPC lead generation” minus “fatrank.com”, and see what shows up.
That removes anything from your own site and shows how you look elsewhere on the web.
Then you can search “FatRank SEO lead generation” minus “fatrank.com”.
There are all these different plays around the services you offer, minus your domain, to see how powerful you look elsewhere.
It is about building consensus offline, off-page topical maps, semantic content networks and interlinking them all.
People could call it tiered link building or whatever they want, but it is really about building relevance away from your own website.
James Dooley: What do you say to that?
Charles Floate: I think it is a fantastic idea because you are understanding how Google interprets your brand from a third-party position, especially for AI overviews.
If we move to a position where AI overviews themselves also demote self-references, then third-party corroboration and third-party sources become even more important for how the AI overview sees you.
At a minimum, when someone searches your brand plus reviews, your brand plus “is this a scam” or “is this a good company”, that already influences how certain customers see your brand and reputation.
That is already important now.
But as this becomes the default experience, that is the only way you will be able to create a more positive sentiment about your brand.
The worst thing you can have is negative sentiment, but a lot of companies right now have mixed sentiment.
Some users are saying they are the best company in the world. Others are saying they are the worst company in the world.
Some blog posts say they are number one. Some say they are number 10.
The more positive sentiment you build now, the better positioned you will be when AI becomes the default.
James Dooley: With regards to SEO predictions for 2027, I know it is guesswork and none of us truly know what will happen.
But how important are things like this podcast or video?
Should people be trying to do more video format as well as web pages?
Charles Floate: 100%.
Right now, the self-referencing demotion that you might get from being on James.com and saying the exact same thing does not apply on YouTube.com.
It does not apply on Spotify.com or those third-party sources.
You are not going to get that demotion penalty for doing the same content and saying the same thing when you post it on a third-party site.
From a trust angle, making sure Google understands your entity as a real expert and authority in that niche will also give you a better ability to rank and be picked up for positive sentiment.
James Dooley: What about social media?
You have Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Reddit, Quora and discussions showing up in Google search.
How important is that going to be?
If we are moving into AI visibility and not traditional Google search engine results pages that keep pulling in Reddit, how important are social media and platforms like Reddit?
Charles Floate: I think Reddit is becoming more and more the number one source for Google, AI and even users to get real expert opinions.
If you imagine the r/SEO subreddit, it has some of the best SEOs in the world commenting on people's posts and giving advice.
AI systems, users and everyone else want to see and gather that information.
That is why Reddit has become more and more of a priority.
It is also one of the last websites with a fully user-backed dataset for AI companies to ingest, put into their training data and use in their outputs.
I see Reddit becoming the number one source of the internet for user consensus around certain topics.
James Dooley: For sure.
Anyone watching this, I hope you liked the different SEO predictions Charles Floate has shared for 2027.
I would love to hear your feedback. What do you think is the future of SEO?
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