Hey everyone, 

Recently I had the pleasure of attending Search Central Live 2026 hosted by the Google team down at the NSW Library. 

It was a full day of talks from the Google Search team and speakers from the Australian community, with topics covering SEO fundamentals, use cases, and AI in Search.

It was amazing to see the Aussie SEO community gathered in one place, engaged in discussion about industry change, and leaping over small tables to get their hands on the glazed donuts being circulated at tea break. 

Here’s a round-up of my 4 key takeaways from the day. 

Note: I haven’t used AI at all to write this.

1. SEO is not dead (again).

This is a question that has been headlined for over two decades. In fact, you can almost bet on this question reappearing every time there is a major change to the platforms upon which search is conducted.

But as Garly Illyes pointed out to the room, our craft has not suddenly become irrelevant due to AI disruption. Rather, long held SEO values, best practice, and the core SEO skillset actually underpins success across AI Search.

If you’re doing good SEO, there’s a chance you’re already doing good AEO. 

This is especially applicable to Gemini which is rooted in the same quality and ranking systems as the old school Google SERPs. 

If Googlebot can index you, so can Gemini, for the most part. The same technical considerations SEOs factor day in and day out (indexing, javascript and server side rendering etc) are highly relevant AI visibility considerations.

The same quality and value focused approach to best practice SEO is applicable to the content that AI is likely to source: content written for humans, based on first-hand experience, adds real value, unique perspective, credible and trustworthy.

2. Goodbye channel-to-website conversion paths

AI conversations have the potential to facilitate much faster and more confident purchase decisions. But the path will become more unpredictable as AI opens new lines of more personalised searching. 

This does present tracking problems if you still think in the old school way of needing to track conversions per channel, which I believe is too siloed for the future. Many digital marketers are no longer pursuing channel by channel attribution and moving towards MER and MMM instead.

Conversational search is being adopted very quickly, whether we like it or not. In addition to Gemini.. Claude, Perplexity and Chat GPT are now go-to sources of information and guidance for many users. 

Search behaviour that would once flow into your website as “traffic” now stays within AI conversations for the majority of the research & consideration phase, set to bleed even further into the final purchase via in-conversation lead capture or checkout functionality (see Google Universal Commerce Protocol as an example)

And what does this mean for the role of AI and websites as we know them?

Based on conversations I’ve had with client-side decision makers and industry-side change makers, the general feeling is that the role of the website will fundamentally evolve:

• The website may no longer be the container within which a user learns about your product and whether it’s the best choice for their needs (i.e. manual on-site research).
• The website may simply exist as a repository of structured and helpful content that AI can pull answers from, and perhaps as a final indicator of legitimacy, though social media is also important here.
• The AI conversation can facilitate better product to user fit, which in turn can mean higher consumer confidence and conversion rates. 
  • High conversion rates are good, very good. Because let’s not forget that the average website has a conversion rate of only 2-5%, depending on the industry. For ecommerce it was under 2% for 2025. The conversion rate from AI conversations can be up to 4x that. Which is going to mean something, considering many businesses simply don’t have the budget to invest in website development, CRO or UX optimisation. 

So while traffic to websites may decrease in terms of clicks or on page sessions, a conversation with AI may actually be a much better way to engage and convert your target users. So long as you are visible across the right AI conversations for the right topics and questions.

3. Appealing to the individual > appealing to the average

During my career I’ve encountered many brands who have no defined customer persona(s). Many businesses have a surprisingly limited idea of who they are speaking to, and in some cases they don’t seem to realise or care. As a result, the way they communicate is less about the customer and more about themselves. 

This will not cut it in a world of personalised AI conversations. Particularly across markets such as Australia that are extremely diverse in terms of needs, personal context and values.

Australian consumers care deeply about the solution that is best for their specific needs.

Content strategies must speak to the nuances of what your ideal customers actually care about, ask about, and need.

The personalised nature of AI will force many brands to think more deeply on how they communicate with their customers online.

4. Humanness is the guiding north star when it comes to AI. 

Search Central Live was a full 8 hour agenda with talks that ranged from technical recaps on how crawling works, to how you can still win at SEO even if your site is majority javascript.

But the day started with a poem by Aidan Beanland. Written pen to pad about how much human qualities still matter in a world of AI.

This ended up being among many attendees’ favourite talks of the day, which speaks volumes to how much “cut through” human emotion and vulnerability has against a backdrop of AI output. 

Not to be cheesy, but I would argue that it matters now more than ever. People can sense it innately, and it resonates.

When it comes to AI application across workflows, needing to apply a human quality control process was strongly highlighted throughout the day.

Let’s call this applying human sense, which I’ve summarised below:

• Understand that human instinct and intuition must come first, before using AI to do the “heavy lifting”
• The real world context you provide AI will significantly improve what you get out of it

When using AI to produce something: remember that hallucinations are currently unavoidable.

• Remember that AI is predictive/generative, and not necessarily the correct answer

• Remember that AI has limitations crawling or rendering all content on a page, especially Javascript. This impacts its understanding of some sources.
• Understand that AI has a limited range of sources and that based on what these sources are, answers can vary wildly across topics and languages

From my favourite talk of the day: “Same Intent, Different Results: How Language Shapes What Google AI Recommends in APAC” – Loki Yan:

The advice from the Google team was to use AI as much as possible. 

I would say use it with discernment. 

I’ll wrap this up by paraphrasing something Gary Illyes said on the day that resonated with me: “AI is simply a tool, just like a hammer. You could do a lot of damage with a hammer… or you could build a house.”

Apply human sense! 

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Thanks for reading. If you’d like to chat further about AEO and SEO you can contact us directly, connect with me on Linkedin or check out our page on optimising for AI visibility.

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Appendix – Lightning talks & speakers:

• Why Humans Matter More Than Ever in the AI Era – Aidan Beanland
• Using Gemini CLI for SEO Analysis – Regan McGregor
• Same Intent, Different Results: How Language Shapes What Google AI Recommends in APAC – Loki Yan
• Crawl Efficiency at Scale: Prioritising Indexation on a 350M+ URL Website – Jine Wu
• Yes, you can do SEO at scale on a JS‑heavy site – Gaston Riera
• Expanding SEO Reach with Local Inventory Feeds – Brodie Clark
• Actionable Shopify SEO Tips – James Locke
• The GA Transparency Hack: AI-Driven Keyword Recovery – Sophia Vu
• Same Intent, Different Results: How Language Shapes What Google AI Recommends in APAC – Loki Yan
• The SEO Pipeline: Moving from Marketing Tactics to CI/CD Infrastructure – Nick Smith
• Don’t forget the people: Empowering Australian Search Teams in the AI Era – Jack Telford