SEO is not dead, but the version you learned probably is

I have been working in SEO for 30 years. Before Google.

Back then, optimising a website meant submitting your URLs to AltaVista, paying $300 with no guarantee of being listed in the Yahoo directory, and considering a spot on DMOZ the absolute holy grail.

I watched Google arrive. I witnessed the first backlink wars. I lived through Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird. I saw the Helpful Content updates wiping out businesses built over a decade.

And I can tell you one thing with certainty: what is happening in 2026 is different. Not because Google is more aggressive. Because Google is changing its nature.

An industry that played with fire for too long

Before we talk about solutions, we need to name the problem.

iGaming affiliates have been one of the verticals hardest hit by Google updates over the past two years. And that is not a coincidence.

For years, our industry has massively exploited parasite SEO, publishing gambling content on high-authority domains, news outlets, educational sites and general portals, to benefit from their reputation without having built it.

The practice became so widespread that Google created a dedicated policy in March 2024, the Site Reputation Abuse Policy, explicitly citing medical sites hosting casino content as a prime example. The backlash was swift.

The March 2026 core update reshuffled 80% of top three results, while 24% of pages that were in the top 10 disappeared from the top 100 entirely. Across an analysis of more than 600,000 pages, 71% of affiliate sites experienced measurable ranking declines, with traffic losses ranging between 20 and 35%, and some sites lost over 50% on their best-performing pages.

So it appears that iGaming recorded one of the highest negative impact rates among content categories.

The reason is structural. Affiliate sites lack the trust signals that operators possess by default: licences, brand history and verifiable first-hand product experience. An affiliate publishing comparison content without having tested the products, with no identified author and no brand track record, is exactly what the algorithm now targets.

But SEO is not dead

A word of caution. Confusing the crisis of the SEO-only model with the death of SEO would be a mistake.

Ahrefs data shows 38% of citations in AI Mode responses still come from the top 10 classic SEO results. Google confirmed it officially in May 2026: optimising for generative AI is optimising for search, and therefore, it is still SEO.

The fundamentals – content quality, editorial authority and technical structure – stay the same. What has changed is the objective.

For years, we optimised to rank. Today, we optimise to be cited. These are not the same thing.

Being cited in an AI Mode response means being the source that the AI chooses to present to the user. Around 44% of those citations come from the first third of a page. Direct answers under question-formatted headings are highly extractable.

Since 28 May, Google has integrated Preferred Sources directly into AI Mode. Users are twice as likely to click on a labelled source, and 345,000 unique sources have already been selected by users worldwide.

The battle for visibility has shifted, not disappeared.

The AI accelerator and community channels 

With rapid scaling, affiliates need to manage multiple projects in different geos, which can feel like a daunting task. 

At MoveUp Media, for example, we manage 150 million monthly views across 25 markets, in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, French, Swedish and a dozen other languages. In Brazil with Netflu and The Playoffs, in the UK with ToffeeWeb, in Chile with Prensa Futbol, and across a dozen other markets.

Doing SEO at this scale, the traditional way has become impossible. So we have integrated AI into every step of the process, with agents analysing SERPs in real time across our key markets, identifying content gaps and tracking position fluctuations. Meanwhile, our Tipster Studio tool automatically generates articles calibrated to the search intent of each market. Performance data analysis of metrics such as positions, CTR and traffic by segment happens within hours rather than weeks.

This reflects the distinction the March 2026 Core Update has made clear: while AI is a useful accelerator, human expertise remains the most important trust signal. Sites using AI with human editorial oversight recorded near-zero negative impact, but those built on automated publishing pipelines without any human oversight were penalised. 

Another question is – If Google changed its algorithm tomorrow and wiped out 40% of your organic traffic, what would remain? 

Alongside SEO, it’s worth looking into community channels, where affiliates own the audience directly. Across each of our markets – Brazil, India, Italy, Mexico and France – we are building a presence that does not depend on a Google result. This last April, we launched the 80% AI-automated SuperDicas Telegram tips channel, providing bettors daily free tips with 85% accuracy – those subscribers belong to us, and no algorithm can take them away overnight. 

The data confirms it: users arriving through owned channels have a 30% lower bounce rate and 45% higher page depth compared to those coming from organic search. 

They are not visitors. They are audiences.

The game has changed 

The pressure is threefold.

Algorithm updates specifically target our vertical. AI Mode absorbs informational traffic at the top of the funnel. Regulators in markets like Brazil, India and France are simultaneously tightening their requirements on affiliate operators. 

The majority of iGaming affiliates are still doing SEO the way they did in 2020, and the most vulnerable ones are those who built their model on a single leg. Google has sent a clear message: AI Mode is the default. AI agents are browsing the web on behalf of users. Preferred Sources reward brands that have built a genuine relationship with their audience.

Here’s the good news: users who click through from an AI Mode response carry higher intent. They have already consumed the generic information. They are looking to go further. 

So build fewer 'what is' pages, more 'which one and why' pages, backed by genuine editorial authority. 

For those who adopt AI-augmented SEO, real editorial authority, owned audiences and multi-channel presence now, this is a premium window of opportunity, as the competition is still asleep. 

I have seen many transitions in this industry over the past 30 years. This one is the most profound and the fastest.