Events

Pat Reinhart’s January 3030 started off with the December 2025 Core Update, which lasted 18 days, significantly impacted YMYL sites by favoring established institutions over content aggregators. While Mayo Clinic saw a 3% increase and Investing.com gained 13% in Page 1 visibility, aggregators like WebMD and Investopedia dropped 21% and 16% respectively. Additionally, AI Overview visibility surged from 25% to 40% during this period, and a distinct recovery for U.S. publishers emerged as sites like TechCrunch rose 15% while India-based TheHindu.com fell 16%.

How does your AI stack up against competitors in your industry? Learn how leading brands are building game-changing AI agents with Model Context Protocol (MCP) and how Conductor can help future-proof your digital strategy.

For 2026, Pat predicted ads "Will Be Introduced Into LLms + Al Overviews"; "MCP Servers Will Become More Prevalent" , calling it a universal adapter for agents to interact with data ; and LLM referral traffic "Will Not Exceed 20%". He also predicted "LLMS.txt Will Become An Adopted Web Standard". Pat concluded the "only algorithm that matters is the heart, mind and soul of your customer".

The search landscape is experiencing a period of low volatility, reinforcing the view that AI search is still an emerging channel despite its slow growth. The industry review showed mixed stability, with sectors like Health Insurance seeing volatile swings and Staffing & Recruiting seeing strong positive movement =, while Shipping & Transportation remained largely flat.

How does your AI referral traffic stack up against competitors in your industry? Learn how many website visitors you can expect from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and other AI sources with key findings from Conductor’s 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report.

Join CEO Seth Besmertnik and CPO Wei Zheng as they unpack the fundamental shift in how customers find information and share the strategic framework brands need to win in the AI era. Learn why the old physics of the web are broken, how to bridge the "Wisdom Gap" that's suffocating AI, and the enterprise platform innovations making scale content creation possible.