[Debate] Budgeting for multi-engine search: Where should your next $10K go?

All right, folks. We have a a lively debate planned here today. I want to introduce everybody that we've got on the panel here. We got Barry Schwarz, the president of Rusty Brick, as well as owner and publisher of Search Engine Roundtable. We've got Melissa Pop, VP of content strategy and innovation at Rickety Rue. We also have Grace Frolich, AI SEO senior manager over at Brain Labs and yours truly, CEO over at Site Strategics, Edge of Media Studios, as well as host of uh Edge of the Web Radio. Everybody, thanks for joining us in this final stage of our online conference, and it's going to be a fun debate, right? >> Yeah. >> Once I completely disagree. >> Okay. Okay. Okay, Barry. >> I'm gonna have to argue there. All right. So, here's our here's our uh our quandry here, right? We're going into 2026. Certainly, the strategies that we're going to have to adopt. We're certainly seeing the AI environment that

we're in and we're looking at what do we do with our our investment in our efforts, right? Going into either an agency or you're working on behalf of clients, there's there's a lot to be done and some choices to be made. So, first foremost, uh, and I'm going to toss individuals, uh, in the lineup here, uh, and give everybody a chance to be able to to jump in there. So, studies have shown, uh, big CTR drops when AI overviews, AI modes show up. Some analyses site close to 60 61% organic click-through decline on information C quiz. So, in 2026, what replaces get the click as the northstar? as a dimension link presence in AI answers and lift or something else. Um, I'm going to go to Barry first because I I want to I want to hear his uh his stance there. >> Um, so what replaces it? Yeah, I mean everybody in the SEO space is basically saying even the Google and things space like if you work for those companies, impressions, mentions, brand mentions,

all that replaces the actual click, which is kind of upsetting. We're going back to like newspaper advertising where or radio ads or billboards like these are the amount of people that potentially could buy it and potentially see your stuff, but we don't know if they're actually calling you or if they're clicking on you from that paper ad because there's no way to track it. So, that's what we're kind of going back to is those brand mentions and impressions that you might get from it, which is sad. >> It's almost the billboard of sorts nowadays. Melissa, what are your thoughts there? >> I thought I was going to disagree with Barry right off the bat, but no, I I agree with Exactly. Brand mentions have always been important. Even before we saw AI overviews and the rise of LLM, a lot of brands kind of slept on focusing on that instead of focusing on other areas of marketing to drive organic to their websites, right? So, I think brand brand just becomes so important. I know uh Morty Overstein's cheering me on right now saying that, but yeah, brand mentions and impressions are just going to become so much more important and so much more clarifying um as we report to

our clients and in-house >> and the measurement tools to be able to see that brand visibility as well. Grace, I'll toss it to you. What are your thoughts about this? >> Thanks, Aaron. I am leaning more towards what Melissa said, but I also want to make it known that I don't like that concept of northstar metrics. don't think we as SEOs should only look at traffic you know just even before AI search it's very narrow like a narrow scope of how you should view your data I think it makes more sense to view multiple metrics look at your data from all different views so yeah that's why I kind of lean towards well you can look at traffic but you should also look at other things specifically for AI search what we're doing at Brain Lab is we're looking at AI visibility share a voice for for an example you know how often is our our clients brand showing up in AI overviews not just like referral traffic

from there but actually like like you said brand mentions we also look at conversions revenue I mean we should always be be doing that anyway for organic but it's even more important now than ever to keep a closer eye on conversions and you know use that as I guess if you want to say northstar you can say it but a portion of the whole really >> you know it's it's really conventionally speaking we should be uh going hearkening back to those 12 points of contact with a consumer before they actually become a a customer right and where would they see us and I mean that's why in retail marketing you've got brand right there at the the traffic flow of of the entryway of of a of a a store that you're coming into, brand placement is incredibly important. And not to hearken back to Days of the Madmen, right? But this is still our space where we we have to position the brand on the intent funnel. And we

should never be wholly focused on the on the traffic as that North Stark. Completely agree with you. All right. So, positing the uh the hypothesis here. Okay. Here's the example. Assume I hand you $10,000 for multi-engine visibility. How would you divide it across Google's AI mode optimization, classic SEO, digital PR, citations, and social discovery, creator work like Tik Tok or short form that seeds signals? What would be your your balance of investment there? And why that mix in 2026 if that is the mix? So, I'll go to Grace first. >> You're assuming that I think you're assuming a lot of things. these are these sit within different channels or different teams. So, I guess with that assump ass assumption, I mean, obviously being an SEO, I'm going to say majority of that should go to SEO, right? [laughter] It's not I I'm biased. >> You just pull the entire budget over. All right. >> Yeah. I was like, give it all to us. We we know what to do with it. So, I would

say definitely majority of that should go to SEO still. We've seen from today's presentations, everyone has been talking about, yeah, SEO still matters. It's not dead. Specifically, technical SEO, content, those kind of things. So, you know, making my case, the majority should still go to SEO, but with AI in mind as well, you know, AI search is not its separate channel. At least it's not yet. It's it's really been >> it's a synthesis >> with Yeah, exactly. It's kind of like, well, I guess the SEO team should handle AI as well. So, and we're happy to do that. Definitely. >> So, Grace put all the chips on SEO. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not saying that social and, you know, other channels don't matter, but again, like I'm biased. Like I I think the majority should go to SEO. >> That Melissa, what about your thoughts around uh where where you should stack the chips on the roulette board? >> Well, this isn't going to surprise anybody and least of all grace. Um I think your majority of your budget um is

still going to go into your content creation. Um, I've said it hundred times this year that I believe AI mode, LMS, whatever answer engine that you're looking at is going to become our new top of the funnel. And the most important part of being seen at the top of the funnel when people aren't ready to click by whatever you're trying to get them to do is to remember who you are with a strong brand presence. Trust right from the get-go. And whether that happens with an AI over you that pops up or you surfacing in an LLM, investing in content that is going to be seen in these different places, not just organically, not just on social, not anywhere else you might be pushing it out, to me is still the most important and often still the most neglected part of our marketing regardless of channel that you're uh going all in on. Trust me, I'm a big big fan of SEO and like Grace, you know, I believe right now, you know, this is an evolution and a synthesis. Synthes Oh my gosh, I cannot say that word today. Y'all know what I mean, though. Of what we're already doing with SEO and evolving that, right? So, to me, it starts with content.

Having high quality content that's answering questions right to the point, building that trust. That's still where all my chips fall when it comes to budget allocation. >> All right, Barry, we know that you proclaim not to be a SEO. You just play one on TV, right? >> I write a lot of content, so I'm going to take the content play. Just give me your money. >> I said I write content for other people, but I'll take your money and [laughter] you could like sponsor my videos and do YouTube stuff. You could diversify and not put all your money into one place like SEO or email marketing or GEO or display ads and so forth. Put it into everything. Wherever your content you create, it shouldn't just go one place. It should go everywhere. Especially this podcast. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. I'll take a a swing at this as well. I'm really leaning into the multimodal. I'm really le leaning into the video content uh short form content, illustrative content that answers a question or very small series of questions and getting that into the carousels, getting that into because we're seeing these videos

come up in the AI overview more and more, right? Uh, but I'm also going to put put my chips on the user experience, uh, improvements of a website. If if I if I had the budget to be able to really focus on what we're doing with the consumer when they're coming in, because if we didn't have that focus before, it's incredibly important to make sure that we know who they are, what they're looking for, and be able to adjust that user experience accordingly. If I was to split that budget, I' SEO is still incredibly valuable, but if I'm going to push into something that I think is going to attract attention with that $10,000 budget, I'd stack it on video and user, but I'm also biased as well, as you can tell, right? So, there's that. Another question here, AI modes deep search can browse hundreds of sites and generally and I'm sorry, and generate fully cited synthesis. Does that push you towards original data methodologies or entity rich resources over volume publishing? And Barry, you

you hit volume publishing daily, right? What's a minimum asset to be a siteworthy asset? What do you guys think about this? Melissa first. >> Yeah, I mean, same thing with everything I encourage clients to do. It's any sort of original research, original point of thought, story they can tell. Anything that's new, different, valuable should be added to every piece of content. I firmly believe no matter what type of content, whatever niche, you can find that value. Of course, depending on your brand, depending on your company, your assets you already have could be valuable and you're not using them. And that's something that you should be auditing, integrating, and figuring out how to use. But on the flip side, everyone has a story. Everyone has a data point. They may not necessarily be thinking about it actively as they're looking at their marketing, but it's there. And it's part of our jobs is to dig and find that and leverage that. And so I think the more we can find ways to improve originality in content versus strictly just, you know, old school, we have a list of 50 keywords, we need to write a piece of content for every

single one of those keywords to rank. I think once we shift from that type of publishing to creating more original content, LLM's, Google, everybody is going to surface this more and it's again it's just going to be continue to be siteworthy in these Indians. >> Very good. Grace, what are your thoughts there? >> Yeah, I mean I obviously agree with Melissa. Yeah, everything she says is brilliant. But I also want to add that I think it we need to kind of change our messaging in terms of how we communicate that. I'm coming from the perspective of like agency, right? So, you know, a lot of our clients care more about quantity. Historically they have and it's really working we're working towards like shifting that conversation to like well you know now with AI search originality and point of view matter more but I do think it's going to be a slow process for sure like anything like people hate change so it's going to be a slow

transition but I but I think that it's definitely worthwhile um to to do that. I think it raises a really good point there is that with from an agency mindset, right? There's a lot of clients that won't dare to actually move into a a new channel. They're reticent. They're they're gunshy of of what it might require of them, right, to be able to create content in in different areas, especially if you've got, you know, mid to smalls size clients. their budget is is as important as everybody else's and they don't have the the dollars to be able to put to creator content to really move the needle so to speak. So I think part of the budget is is having to kind of lean into where they're comfortable but also what's going to be the most valuable execution for what they can do if you're actually pulling it from the client itself. Barry, what are your thoughts about the the methodologies here and and creating citationw worthy content? So, I disagree with everybody just because why

not? This is supposed to debate. And if I was AI, I could just ask why I should disagree and I'll just give you a response. But I do >> running right here. So, okay. Gotcha. Go ahead. >> I actually also like change, but I disagree with you in that. I'll just keep disagreeing. Anyway, I I do think we're all doomed. I used to think that maybe the only way to compete with AI is is really like being entertain entertaining. You know, Sora launched and that's pretty entertaining even though it looks fake, but it'll get better. Um I don't think originality is enough because I think the AI could come up with stuff as well at some point by taking I mean unless you have your own data fine but what most of us do so you have your own data fine you can't get that from other places unless you start using AI to process your data to come up with that originality which is going to happen. Um, so I think assuming the AI could pull your audience like what's to stop an AI bot from posting on LinkedIn saying, you know, what are your thoughts on this and that, I think eventually AI could easily do what I do. I mean, John Mueller said this or Gary said that or this podcast said this or Google blog

post said that. Um, I am look, I'm pretty much done, which is fine. I have enough gray hair so it doesn't make a difference, but I like change so we'll see what happens. But >> the deacto, they're the de facto Morty oversteining Wrangler now. AI will never be able to handle that. You realize that now I think the torque has been passed to you. >> I guess but Morty's easy easy to rank wrangle. He's not, you know, so that hard. You can tell I said so. So I think >> anyways can handle Morty, I think. So >> all right, that's going to be all right. That's my new ringtone. Okay, continue your thought there, though. >> I mean, that's I think I think it's going to be a big challenge. I don't think it's happening tomorrow. I think it's hap it's going to happen [clears throat] over time. >> I I think we're in trouble. I think Yeah, I don't know. I think we're in big trouble. >> Did we all have a round of this? I think so. Yeah, but I want to interject. >> I do want to interject. I see your point, Barry. It's a it's it's a bit pessimistic for me to be honest. >> But have you [clears throat] met Barry before? >> Well, in passing, but I think that's I think that's assuming that AI search is isn't going to change at all or like the

regulations around AI search aren't going to change. But I think it will. And I think that, you know, just like Lily said in her presentation today, it's it might work now. Like spamming might work now, but it's not always going to work probably. So, I do think it's going to evolved as AI search evolves. Regulations around it will involve there'll be guard rails put up. Who knows what that's going to look like? But again, I >> I'm taking the more optimistic view. I guess >> this is my disagreeing face. [laughter] I mean, historically, if you look at it, like we're in a similar situation we were when Google started to launch their Google News stuff and other other fe other other features where publishers like no, we don't this is horrible. We were taking our content using our snippets. Some governments tried I think I forgot like several governments tried to block it and Google's like all right, we'll take it down. And then those governments like all right, after 6 months we want to come back in. We're wrong. I I don't think the government regulations will work. US definitely it

won't happen. I think in the EU it'll probably something will happen and then Google will be like no fine we won't take your content. That's up to you. I think Google's in such a strong space. I don't think it's right. I think they're obviously they're monopoly. They ruled the monopoly but I think they're in such a position where they just yeah I hope AI I hope there's regulation that pushes Google to feed the publishers but I don't see that happening based on what has happened with original search changes to search over the years. And yeah, I think what we're seeing now with AI, AI overviews, AI mode, all that stuff is going to change. But I think the consumer, meaning the searcher, no offense to people who are searchers here, are becoming lazier and lazier and lazier and they just want to get the answers. And Google knows that's the future. And Google has to deliver on that or else open AI will or perplexity. And if Google doesn't do that, no matter how many lawsuits they get and they have so much money and cash sitting around and they keep making more piles of cash all the time, they could pay for it. I don't think Perplexity can handle all the lawsuits. I think OpenAI can for a long period of time because they have tons and tons of venture capital, but I don't think Perplexity is at the same level as OpenAI. And nobody's at the

same level as Google. Nobody has the cash that Google does and the infrastructure and the ad network and all this other stuff. So, I think Google ultimately will do whatever they think searchers want, even if it hurts the ecosystem, even though they know they need the ecosystem, but they need to win in this phase or else somebody else will will do it. That's my pessimistic view. >> All right. I'm going to argue with you a little bit here on this, Barry, because I think one thing in particular that we're not competing for is the uh consumer and how they are are going to be jaded with just an AI answer. Everything's getting polished so much that consumer push back will happen that it just can't they just can't be fed these AI PEZ pieces all the time without really looking at the authenticity and kind of pushing back. So possibly looking at different platforms where authent authenticity is going to be more valued as opposed to the AI generated synthesized and homogenized answer that could very well be a win for marketers

long term. >> I did preface that by saying the most the lazy searchers and there that's what people people become lazier and lazier and they don't care. They just read it and believe it and they move on. How many people have told you, I read this on an AI overview or I read this in OpenAI and you know that topic so well because it's your expert area. I'm like that's completely wrong. I don't care. That's what it says. I'm gonna go by it. And people are just just like when they scroll through Instagram and they see some person post a video or something that and that's what they're going to go by because that's the new world. >> It's also in schools and honestly that's a whole another discussion in its own right because AI overviews are being used as citable sources in school papers and what a terrible terrible thing that is. All right. So, anything else on that topic real quick? I got a couple more questions before we're off. No. All right. So, here's a here's a a interesting concept here. Do we centralize budgets for SEO, digital PR, social content under one visibility team or or do we keep them separate? Grace, what do you think? >> What should I I mean, ideally, yeah. And

I'll I'll explain why I I think this way. Um, so I helped pioneer at Brain Labs a framework called the customer journey framework that basically takes a bunch of data and organizes it into one like customer journey for search. So what that journey looks like, it's not just about organic search or search on Google. It also includes search on like social platforms. And of course now we're evolving that into you know search for a like search into that customer journey. So with that in mind, I do think that it's going that direction because once we we need to understand our customers journey, right? Because as we know searchers are behavior is changing like we've seen that from like just reading or looking online or even like presentations from today are saying like search is changing, search behavior is

changing. People don't just go on Google, they go, you know, they they do discovery on social, discover new brands on social and or AI search on LLMs. It's nonlinear. So I think understanding that means that yes, we we should be looking at it actually from like overall visibility across the entire journey. I know that was it's very a lot. I threw a lot out. So having a framework that all the different teams actually adhere to but have their own siloed practices right is is what you're saying here. >> So I don't I mean I'm I'm saying it shouldn't be siloed because that journey is like continuous but like each channel feeds in at different points of that journey. I hope that clarifies it. So you know social it's like beginning stages of the journey like social discovery brand discovery happens more on social probably and then you know people do their research on either AI

search LLMs even Google like they do that whole middle section of research there and then bottomfunnel you know depending on what it is like what the transaction is it's going to be on Google it's going to be um actually I don't even know if AI search has bottomfunnel transactions yet, but it might >> probably more the consideration stage. I mean, there's a deep dialogue that we can't see. Um, Melissa, what are your thoughts? Should we be in a a uh a department mindset or a visibility department? I >> really think it comes down to what your budget is. A company that a year on marketing is going to operate a lot differently than a client who's spending, you know, three fiber in a month, right? Y I am a big believer in centralizing budgets regardless of that scale. Of course, you don't always have control over what that looks like depending on the clients you're working with, but the idea is we're we're all trying to make money ourselves and by virtue of making money for our clients, right? So, if we're running from one

marketing playbook and what our end goal is, whatever that might be for our clients, it makes sense to use that playbook as your guard rail to centralize that budget. And you know, as things change, you know, right now I'm watching companies spend tens of thousands of dollars a month going all in on AIO, go whatever we're going to call it. I don't really care what we call it. >> That's just called ei. And so it's like we're going to shift these budgets around regardless of where that end goal is. But starting from a central bucket, we can then month-to-month, quarter to quarter change up what we're doing as things are shifting, which we see daily now with AI and what we're doing. It's hard to keep up. It's hard to pivot those strategies as well. So if you are working from one bucket, it makes sense to start there and then pivot as you need to. >> Very good. I appreciate that. Barry, any thoughts on the matter? >> I mean, I agree with it all. The question is like is the AI result are the AI results going to be you know the last like the end purchase the bottom of

the funnel where and I think they're trying with the aentic experiences where it could buy from you and so forth and I think they're all rushing to that to see how people adapt to that. So, it will be interesting. But yeah, I agree with everything I said here. No, I'm not going to argue. I didn't mean enough about it earlier. >> Folks, we're still talking about 2% of traffic coming to these sites right now. At the same time, are is AI and AIO and all the different experiences blocking consumers from interacting with the websites? Yeah, we're seeing that. But at the same time, isn't the traffic that we're getting more valuable than some of that loose top of the funnel query, right? Yeah, possibly. >> Yeah. >> The ad companies want you to think that like we're sending you the more most valuable stuff. I don't know. I saw some guy post on LinkedIn. It was from I forgot where it was. He's like, "Yeah, while some people have conversion rates of like 1%, we've seen as high as like 70% conversion rates." I'm like, "Come on." >> I don't know. on three visits from your

chat GPT referral. Yeah, no problem. No problem there. All right, so one one more question here and I want to pivot over to a couple questions in the audience. Should teams invest more in human written content and where can AI responsibly accelerate creation? So we're talking about budgets. Got to ask where does AI creation come in for both the website and socials without hurting selection credibility or brand voice? Grace, I'll throw to you. I think it's like most things, you get what you pay for. You know, AI content is cheaper, but it's also not as >> Have you seen some of Have you seen some of Barry's videos here recently? They they're incredible. >> Sorry. So, um Melissa actually did a really awesome talk in the Women in Tech SEO conference um a couple months back about, you know, how to >> basically use AI to write good content. So, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about like just putting in like

a few sentence prompts, write this content, boom, you know, AI slot. Um, so >> whatever, however you use AI, it needs it it definitely needs to have a human reviewer or editor, for example. Um but I also think that you know again AI AI is like it generates content but it it doesn't yet have original thought and that's what's missing you know with humans it's that's the advantage and the value you get from human writers. So so that absolutely I'll leave it at that. Melissa, any thoughts about the the balance of human written content in production compared to uh AI acceleration? Is we're talking about investments if we were still investing that $10,000? Um should we be going all in on human given the uh environment they're in? >> It's a balance. And as Grace said, um I spoke in Philadelphia a couple months ago talking about this balance of where do humans come in? Uh how much do we

trust AI with with what we're doing? I've made it no secret that I part of my primary job at Ricky Daroo is to find ways to leverage AI to improve efficiency on content but not content that sucks because I I would rather quit my career and just walk away right now if that's what we were trying to do. And as Grace said, there's so much AI slop that's being put out there. Go on LinkedIn and look at someone's who knows what sim screenshot it is talking about how they posted a hundred pages in a month and that graph is going up and you have no idea if that's true or false because nobody wants to actually share real data because if they did, you'd see how much they actually suck at what they're doing versus what I doing. And so for me it's a balance and that balance is going to look different depending on the niche and the subject matter. I've worked with clients um in the home services industries where you know there there's nothing new about plumbing. AI can figure out how to write about plumbing. There's no problems there. But then I've worked in the health and medical fields and worked

with companies trying to figure out how to improve efficiency in content creation in niches that have so much regulation who need credential reviewers to go through point by point to make sure that they're not only um not misinforming their audience but getting themselves in trouble with governmental agencies. So really finding that balance. I am a firm believer that at some point here AI will replace human writers. It's not today, it's not tomorrow, but at some point, this is going to be one of the quickest fields in our industry, just kind of like what we're seeing with web development as well. That is going to start going under. And for me, as a content strategist at heart and a writer at heart, my job is to figure out how do I not lose my job and my team's job by merging these two things. And so I do think it's something that every company needs to look at because the reality is whether you're hiring an agency, a freelancer, whatever, if they're not using AI to try to figure some of these things out, they are behind. And if they can figure out what works and what doesn't, you may be putting up more money upfront to figure those things

out. But you're going to save more money down the line and not run into as many problems with just putting out AI slop. >> No AI slop. I mean, let's have it as bumper stickers, right? >> Yeah. Got to get that. your thoughts on tattoo across >> Barry thoughts about human content investing in human content and any investment on AI tools to accelerate publishing and and and content creations. >> It's the same it's the same thing everybody's saying. The only difference is that I'm looking forward to losing my job so from AI. So that's the only difference. I mean like you said it's going to get better and better and better and eventually it will replace everything and everybody. So we're all doomed. The question is how soon. >> Fantastic. With that perspective, I'm going to pivot over to a couple questions here from our audience here before we sign off. Where do you see the biggest hidden costs, things teens will underfund now but regret in 12 months? Grace, I'll toss it to you again because that's the the pattern I'm >> Yeah. Um, that's a really great question. think per like from my own

experience is like data like reporting measurement data like everything I do think that you know as we know data is really important to make good decisions on everything especially like search I know that now our data may not be the most accurate trustworthy especially AI search data but it's still important and I do like I do see that teams aren't necessarily properly trained or they don't have the right tools to access that data. So, so yeah, I think I'm going to go with that answer. >> Data and reporting, uh, what's going to be underinvested that people are going to regret, teams are going to regret in 12 months? Melissa, >> without stealing racis, I do agree in data and reporting. what metrics we're using for success is changing whether we want it to or not. And understanding how that's changing now just like how search intent is changing is going to be critical to be able to prove budget

allocations, getting more budget, keeping your job frankly with your clients. And so I do think that is going to be something underfunded and frankly that's something that's underfunded for most companies in general. This isn't new just because AI is rolling out and taking market share from channels. But beyond that, you know, I'm going to harp again on, you know, it's going to be content. This is another corner that most companies have always cut on regardless of using AI now or not. They're just finding another way to do it. And so, I think that this potentially could be the time that that actually matters the most to not cut those corners and ensure that you're >> good, solid content, whether you're trying to use AI to do it or you're still 100% invested in your human rights. >> Yeah, I'm going to agree. I mean, the data thing, like I was going to say, it's not new. It's one of the most underfunded things for centuries now. And it's it's mostly the bigger companies are doing it. The really big companies are doing it. Some of those big companies don't know what to do with it and so forth. The small players are not doing anything with their data or even storing them, which is hard. But in general, I'm not going to I'm going to go with those that are like, you know,

basically saying, I am not going to use AI. I mean, people are like saying, I'm not using it period. I think I don't care how much you hate AI or, you know, it's going to take over everything you do and probably kill you in the future. You still need to spend money. Use it. Try it out. Try it in specific situations where you think it might help you or think it might hurt you. Spend some of your money and time on that. On using the AI that you hate so much so that you can be friends with your enemy and be able to like see where it's everything's going in the future. >> That sorry are people are people not using AI? >> Yes. >> People are not using it. >> Yeah. I've I I work with writers who are absolutely against using it in any way, shape, or form. And I spend a good deal of my time working with people on just the educational component of why AI matters, why the good, bad, and ugly, the evil aspects of it. Yeah. No, there are still a lot of people out there who are incredibly skeptical of trying to figure out how to use it um not just for work, but just using it in general to see how it integrates into how they're

already searching and how they have been searching for decade for over a decade. Yeah, it's wild this way. We got to be friends with Skynet while we still have time, right? >> Yes. Remember your pleases and thank yous. >> Absolutely. I do think I regret that teams will have 12 months from now if they don't invest is going to be video content. I think it's huge. short for short short form content is is an area that I think teams should adopt and adapt to and be able to curate from that effort into all different anal areas of of channels that they can move that content into. So I think that would be a regret that they have. Last question from the audience here if can how do you justify budget allocation when attribution models can't reliably tell tell you which search engine actually drove the conversion? I think we're talking about the same thing here. But can you even make budget allocations if you can't attribute? Well, yeah, we can because there's visibility there and either it's conversion attribution or

not. You still have tools to be able to measure v visibility brand and share of voice like you're talking about Grace in in these different platforms. So, it's it you have to change your KPIs to adapt to where we are now. Um Melissa, I'll give it to you. >> Yeah. No, I agree with that. We're not just seeing a shift in how people are searching and what that looks like, but it's also how we're reporting, how we're sending KPIs. There are so many old school KPIs that I can't tell you how many clients I work with that come in and it's the same set. I could it's almost like night and day. Boom, boom, boom, here you go. Same set. And so, this is another mindset that we have to change and educate our clients on because again, if we're have as the experts having trouble attributing, right? Why on earth would our clients understand any of that either? So, this goes back to I'm I'm huge on education, especially right now in this kind of era we're in. And I think, you know, helping your clients, you know, it's not always our jobs to necessarily define and set the KPIs that they want to track internally, but I think working with them and helping them understand what AI

visibility looks like, what tools out there can and can't do, and what they can show, and measuring that differently than we have before, and then encouraging our clients to look at it that way is the way to go. >> Absolutely. Great. to give you a swing at it. >> Yeah. I mean, this is why I I think teachers make the best SEOs. Like, if you're a teacher and you want to switch careers, look into SEO because we're teaching people all the time. Um, and the material is always changing. >> Amen to that. >> Yeah, 100%. Um I do in terms of attribution again I don't think this is a a new like I remember when you know it was really hard to attribute paid versus organic attribution sometimes >> the multi let alone the multi-touch point and yeah first touch and and last touch attribution oract now in G4 we're having later touch conversion points

right >> both the same thing it's not >> 100% %. Yeah, it's just a, you know, same problem, different day, I guess. Different era. Yeah, >> it's tough to to put attribution against the billboard sign on the highway, right? >> Mhm. Yep. >> Well, let's let's kind of look at it this way. Barry, I'll give you the the the final word on doom and gloom for 2026. >> Is that a new question or or should I answer >> question? Answer answer the other question first. >> I [snorts] was gonna say have AI figure it all out. Whatever. I mean, how do I do this? And just tell tell your client. I don't know. I don't really deal with budgets, so it's not my problem. And then the doom and gloom on 2026. It's just going to get worse. Honestly, it's going to get worse and worse and worse over this year. It will get better eventually, but I think this it was hard at the end of this year. It's just get a lot worse. Have a great >> I'm going to debate. I'm going to disagree. It's going to be fantastic and we're all going to come up >> horrible. We're done. >> All right, folks. Thanks so much for your time and participation of this semi-debate, semi- panel discussion. I

really do appreciate everybody's time and investment and uh we'll look forward to uh hearing from budget allocations in 2026. Right. All right. We'll wrap up here. I want to make sure that you follow SE Ranking on their social channels over LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and XL/ Twitter because I'm going to keep on saying that because I hated the brand change. Along with that, hey, we want to make sure that you watch the show. Share this show as well with friends and family. Well, maybe not family because they just won't get it, but share with your colleagues and any of the show any of the uh presentations that we've gone through today. Make sure that you've got a link to that. You can always share the YouTube channel to that particular presentation as well. Also from all of us over at Edge the Web as well as S Ranking. We appreciate everybody's attention and listening through the last three and a half hours here. Make sure that you go into 2026 with lots of great thoughts on strategy as well as attribution. And do not be as peace as Cyber Driftwood as we sign off

here over at Edge of the Web all the time. Thanks so much for listening. like.