Brighton SEO: My field notes at ground zero of the AI search reckoning

There's an unmistakable buzz the moment I step into the Brighton Centre. I can hear it in the corridor whispers between sessions and in the way people cluster together with slightly manic energy.

LLMs. AI search. What's happening? What are we going to do?

Like the diligent content marketer I am, I'm preparing to take notes during Friday morning's main panel when Kelvin Newman takes the stage. He does so virtually, which somehow makes it funnier when he delivers the punchline: "Some of you are probably wondering if we changed the name from Brighton SEO to Brighton AI."

I allow a small laugh to escape my lips, and so do many other people. It's the kind of laugh that comes from recognition, from sitting with discomfort long enough that you might as well find it funny. We all know what he means. Enough talks on the schedule and conversations in the hallways circle back to the same topic.

If last year was panic mode (and here forgive me, for I'm using the words and perceptions of people who were actually there rather than my own), then this year feels different. I'm teetering between calling it consolidation mode and processing mode. The "okay, we've all been screaming into the void for enough time, now what do we actually do" mode.

I watch people file into sessions. Some look eager, some look like they're not entirely sure why they're here except that they were told to figure out this AI search thing and come back with answers.

I don't blame them.

Conversations at the booth

I have the pleasure of seeing the Writesonic booth serve its intended purpose, but also become something of a confessional.

People drift over throughout the days, ostensibly to ask about the product, see the dashboard, understand what we're building. But the conversations aren't limited to our (granted, awesome) product. People also want to talk. They want help processing. Maybe they want to find someone who'll help them figure out if they're behind or ahead or if everyone else is as confused as they are.

Between product demos, I ask people what brought them here—how they're feeling, what they're hoping to find in Brighton.

One guy, maybe mid-thirties, eyes alight with playfulness, tells me his boss sent him. "I think he wants me to come back with the answer to AI search. Pretty sure he wants a full-scale presentation.” His parting smile is a bit rueful.

Later, a woman stops by during the afternoon rush. She's juggling a coffee (maybe tea?) and her phone and looks like she's been in back-to-back sessions all day. "I'm testing four different tools right now," she says. "Honestly, I don't even know what I'm looking for anymore."

My personal favorite comes late on Thursday. A head of SEO from a British company leans against our counter, methodically eating the chocolates we'd put out as he pontificates about how Google will eventually win at AI search the same way it won at SEO.

(I can't help but laugh and look at him fondly. I almost tell him he reminds me of the best bits of Monty Python I watched growing up, but manage to hold my tongue).

All in all, the range of sophistication is staggering and it becomes more obvious the more conversations I have. On one end, there are people who already know everything the industry has collectively agreed upon at this point (or at least as much as anyone can agree on something this new). They nod through presentations, validate their approaches, pick up maybe one or two new tactics. They're tired, but they're not lost.

On the opposite end, there are people genuinely in the dark. I don't think that's because they're behind either. It's just a testament to how novel and unsettled most things pertaining to GEO/AEO/AI still are. We're all fumbling toward something and some of us have just been fumbling slightly longer. And that's more than okay. It's par for the course.

I saw some people referring to gestures broadly at everything involving AI as "shiny new toy syndrome." Which I can see. Although a bit too patronizing for my liking, the designation does have some merit.

And yet…and yet. I can't help but drink some of the excitement Kool-Aid as the industry reckons with the fact that things have changed. Not changing. Not about to change.

Changed. Past tense, present reality.

Similar frameworks, different feelings

Thursday afternoon, I'm sitting through a presentation on Google's AI Mode.

Ben Smith, the speaker, mentions how it came straight from the source (i.e., Google) that “if you have an opinion, you will show up in AI mode.” The room goes quiet in that way rooms do when someone says something that should be obvious but isn't.

As I sit there, I find myself thinking, isn't that just E-E-A-T with a shiny coat of “opinion” paint on? Experience and expertise mean you know enough to have a point of view; authority means people trust that point of view. Ipso facto, the framework we've been using to appease Google still applies in the age of the LLMs.

So why does it feel different? Why is there still so much tension around how to actually do this?

Maybe it's because we're being told to do something we were already doing, but now with this additional unsexy layer of technical consideration. We have to think more about structured data and how LLMs parse content differently than search crawlers, even if they ultimately want the same signals of quality.

Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe it just feels different because we're being forced to reconsider things we thought we had locked down. Like whether showing expertise still means the same things it used to or if AI models are reading for expertise differently. Whether “having an opinion” is really just E-E-A-T or if there's something truly new in how AI surfaces and values that opinion.

Our CEO Samanyou Garg presented Friday morning and I think he landed somewhere useful with all of this. He didn't try to answer every question (he couldn't, nobody can), but he shared a playbook—how to figure out which prompts to track, how to estimate AI search volume, how to find your citation gaps. More than that, he made sure everyone in the audience came away with actionable next steps, e.g., outreach strategies and on-page and off-page optimization tips. The kind of stuff you could start working on Monday morning.

People started coming by the booth that afternoon. Some had been to Sam's session and wanted to dig deeper. Others had heard about it secondhand and were eager to know more about what we're rolling out at Writesonic.

Someone actually told me, earnestly, how they usually “never take notes at these talks,” but during Sam’s session they kept “jotting things down.”

That stuck with me. Sam really delivered something that resonated better than conjectures. He'd asked the right questions, ran the experiments, looked at the data. And people could tell the difference between that and someone just theorizing from a distance.

What I think I know

I'm writing this from a cozy café in Brighton on Saturday afternoon. There's a full night's sleep between me and the conference, but my flight back isn't for a few hours. So I've claimed a corner table with good light and now find myself trying to process what I saw, what I heard, what any of it means.

I've filled pages of notes. Observations, quotes, questions I don't have answers to yet. The tea has gone cold twice. Outside, people are walking along the beach and I'm almost envious of how uncomplicated their day looks.

After forty-eight hours of sensory overload, though, three things keep surfacing. Three things I think I believe, or at least believe enough to write down and see if they still feel true tomorrow.

The "SEO is dead" crowd needs to take a breath.

I'm so tired of this conversation. SEO has been pronounced dead so many times I'm surprised we're not collectively haunted by its many-limbed ghost. Every time search changes we get a new flavor of apocalyptic predictions that’s little more than fodder for quickly scribbled, hollow LinkedIn posts.

I feel like the town crier, banging on random doors as I yell about how GEO is additive, how it builds on SEO. It's a new discovery surface and we've adapted to new discovery surfaces before. We'll adapt again.

The people who were good at “traditional” search will, by and large, be good at this too.

The snake oil salesmen got here fast.

They always do, don't they? Anytime something new emerges, you get people shilling their magic bullets. The three-step system to AI dominance! 💪 or The secret prompt formula no one wants you to know about 🤫

My advice, for what it's worth, is to stay curious. Talk to people building in the space and running experiments. The recurring calls I have with our engineers, where we go deep on LLMs and test different approaches and break things, have taught me more than any “course” ever will.

This is still moving really, really fast.

Things are changing weekly, sometimes on the daily. What worked last month might not work this month and what we're testing now might very well be irrelevant by December.

But rapid change doesn't equal collective panic.

It means we stay grounded and keep our tech stack solid. We build relationships with people who are also trying to crack the code. Test things, measure things, learn things. Admit when we're guessing and celebrate when something actually works.

That’s how we’ll figure this out together.

Packing up, heading out

I think it’s time to close my laptop. I've been here for the better part of four hours and the server is giving me that polite look that means I either need to order more or be on my merry way. Outside, Brighton is settling into evening. And somewhere in conference halls across the world, someone is probably writing another presentation about AI search.

That's fine—heck, that's great. We need those presentations. We need the conversations and the chocolate-stealing philosophers and the exhausted agency owners.

This is how industries (and people) evolve. In fits and starts, through trial and error. In conference halls and cozy cafés and late-night Slack messages where people ask the questions they're afraid to ask out loud.

I say goodbye to Brighton with an ember of optimism burning low in my chest. I know the people in this industry are smart and resourceful and have adapted to scary stuff before.

We're going to be okay.

And it's going to be interesting.