Opinion
Search Everywhere Optimization: Why 2026 Marks the End of Channel-Based SEO
For twenty years, SEO operated in channels.
Essays and columns on the future of marketing in a funnel shaped by generative engines.
For twenty years, SEO operated in channels.
For two decades, search visibility was an engineering problem.
For two decades, the dominant theory of search visibility went like this: if enough authoritative websites link to you, Google will trust you, and users will find you.
In the nearly two and a half years since a team of researchers at Princeton and Georgia Tech published the first paper on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the search marketing world has done…