Eighty million people use Reddit search every week, Reddit said on its Q4 2025 earnings call last week. The increase followed a major change: Reddit merged its core search with its AI-powered Reddit Answers and began positioning the platform as a place where users can start — and finish — their searches.
Executives framed the move as a response to changing behavior. People are increasingly researching products and making decisions by asking questions within communities rather than relying solely on traditional search engines.
Reddit is betting it can keep more of that intent on-platform, rather than acting mainly as a source of links for elsewhere.
Why we care. Reddit is becoming a place where people start — and complete — their searches without ever touching Google. For brands, that means visibility on Reddit now matters as much as ranking in traditional and AI search for many buying decisions.
Reddit’s search ambitions. CEO Steve Huffman said Reddit made “significant progress” in Q4 by unifying keyword search with Reddit Answers, its AI-driven Q&A experience. Users can now move between standard search results and AI answers in a single interface, with Answers also appearing directly inside search results.
“Reddit is already where people go to find things,” Huffman said, adding the company wants to become an “end-to-end search destination.”
More than 80 million people searched Reddit weekly in Q4, up from 60 million a year earlier, as users increasingly come to the platform to research topics — not just scroll feeds or click through from Google.
Reddit Answers is growing. Reddit Answers is driving much of that growth. Huffman said Answers queries jumped from about 1 million a year ago to 15 million in Q4, while overall search usage rose sharply in parallel.
He said Answers performs best for open-ended questions—what to buy, watch, or try—where people want multiple perspectives instead of a single factual answer. Those queries align naturally with Reddit’s community-driven discussions.
Reddit is also expanding Answers beyond text. Huffman said the company is piloting “dynamic agentic search results” that include media formats, signaling a more interactive and immersive search experience ahead.
Search is a ‘big one’ for Reddit. Huffman said the company is testing new app layouts that give search prominent placement, including versions with a large, always-visible search bar at the top of the home screen.
COO Jennifer Wong said search and Answers represent a major opportunity, even though monetization remains early on some surfaces.
Wong described Reddit search behavior as “incremental and additive” to existing engagement and often tied to high-intent moments, such as researching purchases or comparing options.
AI answers make Reddit more important. Huffman also linked Reddit’s search push to its partnerships with Google and OpenAI. He said Reddit content is now the most-cited source in AI-generated answers, highlighting the platform’s growing influence on how people find information.
Reddit sees AI summaries as an opportunity — to move users from AI answers into Reddit communities, where they can read discussions, ask follow-up questions, and participate.
If someone asks “what the best speaker is,” he said, Reddit wants users to discover not just a summary, but the community where real people are actively debating the topic.
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OpenAI confirmed today that it’s rolling out its first live test of ads in ChatGPT, showing sponsored messages directly inside the app for select users.
The details. The ads will appear in a clearly labeled section beneath the chat interface, not inside responses, keeping them visually separate from ChatGPT’s answers.
OpenAI will show ads to logged-in users on the free tier and its lower-cost Go subscription.
Advertisers won’t see user conversations or influence ChatGPT’s responses, even though ads will be tailored based on what OpenAI believes will be helpful to each user, the company said.
How ads are selected. During the test, OpenAI matches ads to conversation topics, past chats, and prior ad interactions.
For example: A user researching recipes might see ads for meal kits or grocery delivery. If multiple advertisers qualify, OpenAI shows the most relevant option first.
User controls. Users get granular controls over the experience. They can dismiss ads, view and delete separate ad history and interest data, and toggle personalization on or off.
Turning personalization off limits ads to the current chat.
Free users can also opt out of ads in exchange for fewer daily messages or upgrade to a paid plan.
Why we care. ChatGPT is one of the world’s largest consumer AI platforms. Even a limited ad rollout could mark a major shift in how conversational AI gets monetized — and how brands reach users.
Bottom line. OpenAI is officially moving into ads inside ChatGPT, testing how sponsored content can coexist with conversational AI at massive scale.
Google’s AI Mode isn’t more likely to cite content that appears “above the fold,” according to a study from SALT.agency, a technical SEO and content agency.
After analyzing more than 2,000 URLs cited in AI Mode responses, researchers found no correlation between how high text appears on a page and whether Google’s AI selects it for citation.
Pixel depth doesn’t matter. AI Mode cited text from across entire pages, including content buried thousands of pixels down.
Citation depth showed no meaningful relationship to visibility.
Average depth varied by vertical, from about 2,400 pixels in travel to 4,600 pixels in SaaS, with many citations far below the traditional “above the fold” area.
Page layout affects depth, not visibility. Templates and design choices influenced how far down the cited text appeared, but not whether it was cited.
Pages with large hero images or narrative layouts pushed cited text deeper, while simpler blog or FAQ-style pages surfaced citations earlier.
No layout type showed a visibility advantage in AI Mode.
Descriptive subheadings matter. One consistent pattern emerged: AI Mode frequently highlighted a subheading and the sentence that followed it.
This suggests Google uses heading structures to navigate content, then samples opening lines to assess relevance, behavior consistent with long-standing search practices, according to SALT.
What Google is likely doing. SALT believes AI Mode relies on the same fragment indexing technology Google has used for years. Pages are broken into sections, and the most relevant fragment is retrieved regardless of where it appears on the page.
What they’re saying. While the study examined only one structural factor and one AI model, the takeaway is clear: there’s no magic formula for AI Mode visibility. Dan Taylor, partner and head of innovation (organic and AI) at SALT.agency, said:
“Our study confirms that there is no magic template or formula for increased visibility in AI Mode responses – and that AI Mode is not more likely to cite text from ‘above the fold.’ Instead, the best approach mirrors what’s worked in search for years: create well-structured, authoritative content that genuinely addresses the needs of your ideal customers.
“…the data clearly debunks the idea that where the information sits within a page has an impact on whether it will be cited.”
Why we care. The findings challenge the idea that AI-specific templates or rigid page structures drive better AI Mode visibility. Chasing “AI-optimized” layouts may distract from work that actually matters.
About the research. SALT analyzed 2,318 unique URLs cited in AI Mode responses for high-value queries across travel, ecommerce, and SaaS. Using a Chrome bookmarklet and a 1920×1080 viewport, researchers recorded the vertical pixel position of the first highlighted character in each AI-cited fragment. They also cataloged layouts and elements, such as hero sections, FAQs, accordions, and tables of contents.
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While most direct-to-consumer brands are maximizing their social media presence with polished content and paid ads, many business-to-business companies (B2Bs) are still stuck in broadcast mode. They treat social like a checkbox or, worse, avoid it altogether. That’s a miss.
Your buyers are on these platforms every day, scrolling LinkedIn between meetings, watching YouTube explainers, and even picking up insights on TikTok.
The good news is that most of your competitors aren’t doing this well. And B2B social follows different rules. It’s less about selling, more about showing up with value and building trust over time.
This guide breaks down the platforms, strategy, and mistakes to avoid so you can stop blending in and start building something that drives real results.
Key Takeaways
Most B2B brands underperform on social because they focus on broadcasting, not solving problems or creating value.
LinkedIn leads for B2B, but platforms like YouTube, X, and even TikTok can work if you match the content to your audience.
B2B social content should educate, not sell. Use it to build trust and stay relevant throughout long sales cycles.
Build a strategy around real personas, funnel stages, and platform-specific content—not random posting or vanity metrics.
Avoid common mistakes like generic messaging and chasing impressions over actions like clicks or demo signups.
Why B2B Social Media Is (Still) Underrated
Many B2B companies still treat social media as an afterthought. They post a few updates, maybe recycle some blog content, and call it a day. But here’s the truth: social media isn’t just about brand awareness anymore. It plays a fundamental role in demand gen, and even sales.
Your buyers are on these platforms every day. LinkedIn? Still essential. YouTube? Massive for education. Twitter (X)? Great for thought leadership. Even TikTok is becoming a serious B2B player in some niches.
If you’re only thinking top-of-funnel, you’re missing the bigger picture. Social gives you direct access to influence buying decisions, build relationships, and stay top of mind during long sales cycles. It’s also a powerful signal for search. That’s why smart B2B brands treat social like a core channel, right alongside their email, paid, and B2B SEO strategies.
So yes, B2B social still flies under the radar but that’s your opportunity. While your competitors play it safe, you can build a strategy that actually drives the pipeline.
Top B2B Social Platforms
Not all platforms are worth your time, but these are a good starting point. Here’s a breakdown of the top B2B social channels and how to use each one to actually move the needle.
LinkedIn
B2B marketers love LinkedIn, with 97% of them using it for their content marketing strategy.
There’s a reason for this: LinkedIn is effective at securing leads.
The social goal of most B2Bs isn’t just traffic. It’s the right kind of traffic. More specifically, it’s leads from that traffic. That’s why LinkedIn has been the social media sweet spot of most B2Bs.
LinkedIn does for B2Bs what Facebook, X, and Pinterest have all failed to do. It forms professional connections based on a single goal.
It’s not that Facebook, X, and all the rest are more personal and less professional than LinkedIn. LinkedIn brands itself as a professional networking site. On LinkedIn, you see fewer baby pictures, fewer cat videos, and nothing about “Dave just checked in at Downtown Bar.”
LinkedIn, devoid as it is of issues like “relationship status” and “favorite TV shows,” is much more appealing to the world of B2B exchanges.
X still punches above its weight for B2B if you use it right. It’s built for real-time conversations. That makes it great for PR moments and quick interactions with your audience or peers.
If you’re in tech or SaaS, this is where your buyers and early adopters are already talking. Threads and hot takes can build credibility fast, as long as you’re consistent and actually say something worth engaging with.
Just don’t expect conversions. X is a conversation starter, not a closer. Use it to build visibility, shape perception, and stay in the mix.
YouTube is a goldmine for B2B content that keeps working long after you hit publish. Think product demos, how-to explainers, or customer stories, anything that helps prospects see your value in action.
It’s perfect for long-form content with high evergreen potential. A solid video can rank in search, appear in recommended feeds, and continue to drive traffic for months (or even years). And because Google owns YouTube, it plays nice with your overall SEO strategy.
Use it to educate, build trust, and answer the questions your audience is already Googling. Just keep the production clean and the content useful.
These aren’t just playgrounds for influencers anymore. TikTok and Instagram can actually work for B2B if you play to their strengths. Short-form video is perfect for showing off your brand personality, simplifying complex ideas, or giving a behind-the-scenes look at your team.
They’re especially useful for building an audience that sees your brand as more than just a logo. Quick explainers and team moments go a long way here.
The key is to be intentional. You don’t need to chase every trend, but you do need to show up as a genuine person, not a corporate account.
Most B2B social strategies fall flat because they treat platforms like a digital brochure. Too much product pushing. Not enough problem-solving.
Your buyers don’t scroll through LinkedIn or YouTube looking for a sales pitch; they’re looking for answers. That’s your opportunity. When you lead with value, you earn attention. And in B2B, attention is the first step toward trust.
This isn’t about trying to “go viral.” It’s about consistently showing up with content that solves real problems. That might look like a short video explaining a common pain point or a post breaking down industry trends.
Educational content works because it positions you as a guide, not just a vendor. It says, “We get your world. Here’s how to navigate it better.” That’s way more powerful than just listing your features.
You also need to show up like a human. Buyers are smart. They can sniff out polished sales copy in seconds. What they actually want is an honest perspective, clear thinking, and content that feels like it came from someone who’s done the work. That’s how you build an audience that actually wants to hear from you, and buyers who remember your name when it’s time to act.
Building a B2B Social Media Strategy That Works
A solid B2B social strategy doesn’t mean posting constantly. It means making smarter posts. Here’s how to build a plan that actually drives results across the funnel.
Know Your Customer Profiles
Before planning content, you need to be clear about who you’re actually talking to. Who’s following you now, and who do you want to attract?
B2B audiences aren’t one-size-fits-all. A CMO wants high-level insights and strategic trends. A sales manager cares more about tactics and results. Founders might look for big-picture thinking or lessons from the trenches. If you post the same content to all of them, you’ll miss the mark every time.
Start by segmenting your audience. Review your analytics and consult with your sales team, then map out which personas matter most for your business and what they care about.
Also, know where they hang out. Your audience might be active on LinkedIn and totally absent on Instagram. Or maybe they’re watching explainers on YouTube but ignoring X. Match your platform and content format to what your ideal customer actually uses and engages with. That’s how you create content that lands.
Set The Right Goals/KPIs
If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, it’s easy to waste time chasing the wrong metrics. Start by defining what success actually looks like for your brand.
Is your focus on awareness? Then you’re tracking reach, impressions, and follower growth. Want to drive engagement? Look at comments, shares, and saves, not just likes. If lead gen is the goal, prioritize CTRs or traffic to high-intent landing pages.
You might also be building community or educating users on your product. In those cases, qualitative feedback can be a stronger signal than raw numbers.
The key is to tie your content back to goals that matter for the business—and track the right KPIs for each. Don’t get distracted by vanity metrics that look good but don’t move the needle. Set benchmarks, track consistently, and optimize based on what’s actually working.
Build A Content Marketing Calendar
An effective content calendar maps content to each stage of the funnel, so you’re guiding prospects from awareness to action and making the most of your b2b content strategy.
At the top of the funnel (TOFU), focus on educational content. Think industry stats and quick tips that stop the scroll and add value fast. For the middle (MOFU), shift to case studies and testimonials that build trust and show proof. Bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) content should drive action—think offers and clear (call to actions) CTAs.
A well-planned calendar also helps you stay consistent without burning out your team. You can batch content and avoid that last-minute “what do we post today?” panic.
Turn Employees and Executives Into Advocates
People trust people, not brands. That’s why employee advocacy is one of the most powerful (and underused) tools in B2B social.
When your team shares content, adds their take, or shows up in the comments, it expands your reach and adds credibility. Their networks are often full of the exact decision-makers you’re trying to reach. And posts from real people perform better than anything coming from a company page.
The same goes for your leadership team. Help your CEO or founder post in their own voice, not just polished PR copy. A short LinkedIn post sharing a real insight or lesson learned often lands better than a glossy video.
Make it easy for your team to participate. Share post templates, content ideas, or just ask them to weigh in on relevant threads. The goal isn’t to turn everyone into a creator—it’s to activate your people as trusted voices for your brand. The image above shows how to do this versus something to the effect of “helping your CEO or founder.”
Measure, Learn, Optimize
If you’re not measuring, you’re just guessing. The best B2B social strategies are built on real data, not hunches.
Start with the basics: engagement rate, impressions, and click-throughs. Track how often people interact with your content and where they go next. Are they hitting your demo page? Signing up for a webinar? Those are signals your content is working.
Use tools like GA4 and each social platform’s native analytics to connect the dots. Don’t just track what performs best. Look at why. Was it the topic? The format? The tone?
Speaking of format, test everything. Short videos. Carousels. Polls. First-person posts. What works on LinkedIn might fall flat on X. What drives DMs might not drive clicks. The only way to know is to try.
Then optimize. Double down on what works. Cut what doesn’t. Keep tweaking until your content not only earns attention but drives action.
Additional Strategies For B2B Social Media
Once your core strategy’s in place, these advanced plays can help you scale faster, get more mileage from your content, and squeeze more value out of every post.
Figure Out a Non-boring Angle
A lot of B2Bs feel like they’re boring, and this perception of being a boring company becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because they think they are boring, they write boring articles and make boring social media posts.
Let’s look at a company that sells project management software. On the surface, nothing is exciting about that product or industry, but when you start to look at how the product can help your customer, things become unboring very quickly.
A new project management platform can include cool features for collaboration. It could also increase productivity or help business teams achieve goals that previously seemed out of reach.
Your job is to “sell the sizzle.” Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and brainstorm the solutions your product or service can provide their business that will get them excited!
Each B2B with an unintelligible product or service needs to develop an angle that is both understandable and appealing to a broader audience. This will allow them to create an initiative or idea that can gain traction on social media.
You can find an unboring angle. Once you do, you’re ready to roll forward with your social media efforts.
Feature A Human Aspect
One of the major shortcomings of many B2Bs, is the lack of a genuine human backing their efforts.
The lack of real people makes the B2B company seem so distant and unreal. It’s like talking to a robot. It just doesn’t feel right.
Every B2B needs to make an intense effort to humanize their brand tone and voice on social media and content marketing. Here’s what this looks like in practice:
Using first-person voice when writing updates and articles
Using a brand front person to tweet, post updates, and write articles
Using real people with their names in customer service
Initiating engagement and outreach from a real person
B2Bs are often challenged in social media because they don’t hire the right person to manage their social media efforts.
Here are a few tips to help a B2B hire the right person for social media:
Hire an expert in social media. Look for someone who has social media success in a similar niche, but not necessarily in your own niche.
Hire a social media consulting company or agency, not just an individual. Companies often have more resources at their disposal. For a lower price, they can help you engage on multiple levels, such as creating social media graphics and writing content.
Anyone leading a social media initiative must have familiarity with the industry. But B2Bs also need someone who is a social media ninja. Why? Because B2B social media is a hard nut to crack. It’s not inherently sexy or awesome. It doesn’t automatically generate buzz. It takes a social media expert to really unleash the hidden power in B2B social media.
Brands need someone who can develop a social media movement, shaping the brand’s voice and expanding its reach. It’s not just status updates. It’s an entire identity creation.
If the first objective of social media is leads, then things have gotten off on the wrong foot. Leads don’t come first. Engagement and presence come first. Leads are a byproduct. This goes back to the “unboring angle” I mentioned above.
Back Your Social Media With Content Marketing
There is no such thing as a successful social media campaign without a successful content marketing campaign. They’re like two links in an indestructible chain.
Fortunately, about half of B2B companies understand the importance of content marketing, according to Statista. They realize it’s essential for customers to trust their brand, and they know how far content marketing can go in solidifying that trust.
I’m convinced that the better a B2B company is at content marketing, the more effective they will be at social media.
This article is not the place to discuss the ins and outs of B2B content marketing. Instead, I’ll point out that the company should find the most engaging form of content and share it on social media.
Common B2B Social Mistakes
Most B2B social feeds feel like a wall of noise. Why? Because too many brands treat social like a megaphone instead of a conversation. Here are some of the biggest mistakes I see with B2B social accounts:
Constantly pushing products and making salesy updates, treating your account like a billboard. If your posts aren’t solving a problem or offering insight, don’t expect engagement.
Posting just to stay “active.” If your content calendar is driven by days of the week instead of strategy, your audience will feel it. Every post should aim to educate, engage, or move someone closer to buying.
The platform dilemma. What works on LinkedIn won’t work on TikTok. You need to adapt your message, tone, and format based on where you’re showing up and who you’re trying to reach.
Tracking the wrong metrics. Chasing impressions or vanity metrics won’t tell you what’s driving value. Prioritize metrics like click-throughs and demo page visits—things that tie back to real business outcomes.
Avoid these traps, and you’ll be in much better shape than most of your competition.
FAQs
Which social media platform is best for B2B marketing?
LinkedIn is the go-to platform for most B2B brands. It’s built for professional networking and decision-maker engagement, making it ideal for thought leadership and brand awareness. But depending on your audience, YouTube, X (Twitter), and even TikTok can play a role too.
How to use social media for B2B marketing?
Start by sharing content that solves real problems—think educational posts, customer stories, and product demos. Focus on building trust and staying visible across the buyer journey, not just selling. Then measure what works and keep improving.
What is B2B social media marketing?
B2B social media marketing uses platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and X to connect with business buyers. It’s about building relationships and sharing valuable insights as you guide potential customers through the sales funnel.
Conclusion
In the next few years, I predict that we’ll see more and more B2B markets focus more time and energy on their social media skills. Already, there are a few bright spots in the B2B social horizon.
Using these tips are a great way to optimize your cross-channel marketing efforts. Becoming a platform ninja who understands social media trends, and can incorporate them into the B2B marketing sales funnel, is the clear path forward for today’s marketers.
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AI content generation for SEO can be a game-changer if you use it the right way.
AI tools help increase the speed of your content production, from brainstorming to drafting. And yes, we’ve built our own AI writer into Ubersuggest to make that process easier.
But here’s the thing: AI isn’t a shortcut to rankings. Without the right prompts and a human touch, AI content can actually hurt your traffic. Google’s recent updates and the rise of AI Overviews in search show just how important quality and clarity are.
So no, AI-generated content isn’t bad, but you need a strategy. Otherwise, it’s just more noise.
Key Takeaways
LLMs won’t cite your content unless it’s structured, trustworthy, and answers real user questions.
AI content generation for SEO works, but only with the right strategy and human oversight.
AI can speed up all stages of content production, but publishing without reviewing will tank your results.
Prompts matter. Clear direction on content structure and audience and strong keyword targeting separate ranking content from noise.
Human elements like originality, firsthand insights, and strong E-E-A-T signals are still non-negotiable.
AI VS Humans: Pros & Cons
With AI, we found that you can’t just publish the content it generates and go off to the races.
It still takes time to use AI.
From modifying the content to putting it in your CMS to adjusting the format, creating content takes time whether you use AI or not.
Here’s how long it takes to create content using AI versus a human.
When using AI we found that you can write content, post it into a CMS, and publish it all within 16 minutes.
Humans on the other hand took an average of 69 minutes.
But there are some issues that most people don’t talk about.
The first is AI takes what’s on the web and “regurgitates” the same old info.
People want to read something new…
The second is we found that 94.12% of the time human written content outranked AI-created content.
With that said, there is still a role for AI-generated content in an SEO strategy.
<h2>Does AI-Generated Content Support SEO? </h2>
Our findings aren’t all “doom and gloom” for AI, especially as platforms and LLMs evolve. It can absolutely support your SEO strategy, especially when it comes to scaling content or repurposing existing assets, but AI needs direction. If you feed it a vague prompt like “write a blog post about SEO,” you’ll get generic, surface-level content that won’t rank or convert.
Your prompt is essential in making AI-generated content SEO-friendly. You need to tell the tool exactly what keywords to target, what questions to answer, what structure to follow, and who the audience is. Doing that requires real marketing experience.
This is where human input and oversight still matter. You need to choose the right keywords and guide the AI to meet quality standards. AI is just guessing without that input, and that rarely ends well for SEO.
It’s also worth noting that while AI can help draft content, it won’t replace human editing. You still need someone to review for tone and voice accuracy, and depth.
<h3>Does AI-Generated Content Help with LLM Presence? </h3>
AI content won’t magically get picked up by LLMs. But with smart prompting and a clear optimization strategy, it can absolutely improve your chances.
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini pull from indexed content to generate answers. This process is known as retrieval augmented generation (RAG)
If your content is well-structured and authoritative, it has a better shot of getting cited or referenced in those answers, but generic content won’t cut it. These models are picky.
To actually earn LLM visibility, you need to create content that matches how LLMs surface information. That means answering specific questions, using structured data where it makes sense, and writing in a way that’s clear, concise, and trustworthy.
AI tools can help here, but again, prompting is key. If your AI-generated content isn’t shaped around real user questions or lacks structure that aligns with LLM output patterns, it’s unlikely to perform.
Digging deeper and learning more about LLM SEO and LLM optimization is a great way to improve your skills in this area. By understanding these concepts, you’ll learn exactly what to include in your content and how to use AI to get there.
Integrating AI Into Your Content Approach (The Right Way)
Used well, AI can help you move faster but it’s the human touches that drive results. You need to start thinking of AI as a starting point, not the whole process.
We ran an experiment across 68 sites, publishing 744 articles—half written by humans, half by AI. Five months in, the average AI article brought in 52 visitors a month. Human-written articles? 283.
Now, sure, you could scale faster with AI, but pumping out a ton of mediocre content does more harm than good. In fact, when we pruned low-quality posts, we saw an 11 to 12 percent traffic lift.
If you’re going to use a GenAI tool to do your writing, do it with intention:
Start with smart prompts. Include keyword targets and content goals.
Feed the tool solid references like existing content, credible sources, or structured outlines.
Don’t just hit publish. Run a full human review: fact-check, rewrite weak sections, fix tone issues, and make sure it aligns with your brand.
And here’s the secret sauce: add manual value. Include firsthand insights via screenshots or updated data. Layer in trust-building elements like personal experience or expert sourcing. That’s how you build E-E-A-T—Google’s framework for judging helpful, credible content.
FAQs
Is AI-generated content good for SEO?
It can be, if you do it right. AI can help you scale content creation, but you still need a human touch to make sure it’s high-quality and helpful. Google rewards useful content, not mass-produced fluff.
Does AI-generated content affect SEO?
Yes, but how it affects your SEO depends on what you publish. If your AI content adds value and matches search intent, it can help you rank. If it’s generic or purely written for keywords, it’ll likely hurt you.
Will Google penalize SEO content generated by AI?
Google will not penalize you for using AI alone. Google doesn’t care how content is made as long as it’s useful and trustworthy. But if the content is spammy or misleading, that’s where penalties come in.
Case Study: How We Use AI
AI’s biggest impact on our content writing process isn’t even the writing part.
It’s the research part.
For example, at NP Digital, we used AI to help UTI boost its traffic.
Instead of relying on AI to write extensive content, we leveraged it to create select drafts (which then undergo our human editing process) and assist us in conducting research for all the cities in which UTI has campuses.
This allowed us to scale the creation of their local pages and ensure high quality by leveraging our human content staff to incorporate other elements that would be useful for someone performing a local search.
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If 2025 taught us anything, it’s that AI is no longer just a side tool. It’s the engine running campaigns and reshaping how people discover brands.
At the same time, platforms have declared war on the “click.” We’re seeing an aggressive push for native conversions, where the goal isn’t to drive traffic to the website but to close the deal right in the feed.
That shift toward “frictionless” experiences, combined with the saturation of AI-generated noise, has forced another major change. Content with deep educational value is starting to outperform the high-volume, “101-level” content that simply fills space.
As we get deeper into the new year, those shifts are accelerating.
The top digital marketing trends for 2026 reflect this reality: Automation handles execution, while human elements like strategy and storytelling set the winners apart.
If you want to stay relevant, abandon the old metrics of “rankings” and “reach.” They no longer guarantee relevance. Here’s what’s actually moving the needle in 2026 (and how the best digital marketers are keeping up).
Key Takeaways
With the rise of agentic AI, machines can now handle the lifecycle and campaigns, but human oversight is essential.
User discovery spans platforms like TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, and Meta. Each one requires unique formats, signals, and intent-based optimization.
Funnels are no longer static. AI personalizes journeys in real time based on user behavior, replacing manual segmentation and drip campaigns.
Chat assistants recommend brands based on trust and content relevance. Consistency and large language model optimization (LLMO) are key to inclusion.
Google’s traditional and AI systems (PMax, AI Overviews, Demand Gen, and Search) now operate as one. Aligning creative and goals across all touchpoints boosts results.
AI Agents Take Over Execution
We’re already seeing AI streamline much of a marketing team’s content production. But the new flex is agentic AI. We’re talking about autonomous “team members” that can now handle your entire campaign workflow.
According to PwC, nearly 80 percent of organizations have already adopted AI agents to some degree. And most plan to expand use as these systems move from experimentation into day-to-day operations.
This goes far beyond production and publishing. Large language models (LLMs) have advanced to the point that they can manage the full lifecycle. We’re talking about agents embedded into tools that can help:
Manage your customer relationship management (CRM) data
Analyze data performance
Provide campaign insights
Adjust ad bids for paid campaigns in real time
This year, AI is going from writing your content to autonomous operations. It handles the execution while you focus on strategy and oversight.
Search Everywhere Optimization Becomes Mandatory
For the last few years, “search everywhere” has been a catchy conference buzzword. In 2026, it’s a baseline for survival.
The era of the “Google-default” mindset is over. Discovery now happens across platforms, feeds, and AI systems. Today’s SEO is drifting more and more toward search everywhere optimization and less search engine optimization.
Your audience isn’t just “Googling it” anymore. They’re asking questions and validating purchases on the platforms they trust most. And each has its own algorithm, formats, and user behavior.
Pinterest needs eye-catching visuals with keyword-rich descriptions.
YouTube demands longer, high-value content with tight intros and strong engagement.
The most disruptive shift, however, is happening outside traditional feeds. Voice assistants like Alexa and Siri, and generative chat tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude are increasingly acting as answer engines.
Digital marketers no longer need full engineering cycles to test new ideas.
Prompt-driven tools now make it possible to prototype calculators, quizzes, internal tools, and campaign utilities in hours instead of weeks.
Tools like Cursor and Replit let marketers translate plain-language instructions into working interfaces, lowering the barrier to experimentation. You still need engineering for production-scale products, but prompts now handle much of the early build and validation work.
Base44 is another example of a “vibe coding” platform that can turn your detailed descriptions into functional tools, reinforcing the same idea: Prompts are becoming a new control layer.
Everyone’s an engineer now. Look out, Silicon Valley!
The game has changed. You can now test fast, learn faster, and skip the bottlenecks that used to slow everything down.
Funnels Become Dynamic and Self-Optimizing
Static funnels are out. In 2026, customer journeys are becoming shorter and increasingly influenced in real time by AI systems.
It may seem shocking at first, but it makes sense when you zoom out and think about it. We are no longer pushing users through a pre-set funnel. We’re letting AI agents build the funnel around the user in real time.
In the early days of Google (and online shopping), a customer would have to visit several sites to research and read reviews—and, eventually, make a purchase. This is the classic marketing funnel we’re all familiar with. There’s a clearly defined top-of-funnel, mid-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel.
With generative AI tools now offering in-platform purchases, that funnel shrinks significantly. Your typical user can now research, build trust, and make a purchase all within an LLM like ChatGPT.
We’ve even begun to see major retailers like Walmart and Amazon move toward this model.
Walmart Sparky can answer user queries and pull in product recommendations to answer deeper questions. It even leads you to check out when you’re ready to purchase.
The same setup applies to Amazon Rufus, enabling customers to get details, get suggestions, get help, and get inspiration (and ultimately get stuff) all within one platform.
The result is higher engagement and faster conversions with way less manual work. These tools provide a hyper-personalized shopping experience faster than ever before. Platforms like Shopify and Etsy have also partnered with ChatGPT to purchase products directly in the LLM.
AI Attribution Connects Content to Revenue
Attribution isn’t new, but it’s getting more accurate. AI-powered attribution now connects every touchpoint—from the first video view to the final click—with real revenue outcomes.
Platforms like Wicked Reports are enabling marketers to tie initial ad clicks to lifetime purchases and provide “first click” and “time decay” tools to help you pinpoint the most successful starting point for your customers’ buying journeys. This app also provides revenue forecasting to help B2C and e-commerce businesses reliably predict and scale their growth.
Your latest blog post may not have converted immediately, but it made the visitor trust you enough to subscribe for email updates. That email is the next stop in their journey, pushing them to check out your pricing page. AI sees it all and assigns value accordingly.
With these new insights, you finally know which content moves the needle.
And it’s having a real financial impact. Teams using AI-driven marketing analytics report return on investment (ROI) improvements of roughly 300 percent and customer acquisition costs dropping by more than 30 percent.
Chat Assistants Reshape Discovery
We mentioned earlier how people’s search has evolved into asking AI chat tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to answer their product questions. These platforms now include brand recommendations built right into the response, as well as the ability to shop for Shopify and Etsy products.
This is the same dynamic powering tools like Walmart Sparky and Amazon Rufus, where research and recommendations happen within a single AI experience.
These assistants don’t list 10 “sponsored” links, a la Google. They summarize what they trust. If they don’t mention your brand, you’re invisible in this new layer of discovery.
It takes more than gaming keywords to show up on these platforms. It’s all about relevance and consistency.
The more helpful, high-quality content you create around a topic, the more citations you’ll receive from users sharing it across the internet. Signals like structured content, schema markup, and consistent third-party validation help AI systems interpret your authority and decide when your brand is worth referencing.
This shift has given rise to large language model optimization (LLMO), a new branch of SEO focused on training AI to recognize and recommend your brand. If you’re not already thinking about LLMO, it’s time to get caught up.
The big takeaway here is that usefulness matters more than volume as discovery moves into AI systems. Provide enough high-quality answers to your audience’s questions, and the bots will start to bring your name up first.
Content Structure Becomes Even More Important
Old-school SEO was all about keywords. In 2026, performance increasingly comes from covering topics in depth and structuring content so both people and machines can understand it.
As we mentioned in the last section, search engines and AI assistants care more about how well you answer a question than how many times you use a keyword. That means your content needs to be thorough and easy to interpret at a glance, no matter who (or what) is doing the glancing.
NerdWallet does this well by organizing credit card content into a clear hub, then breaking it into tightly related subtopics that cover a ton of topical ground. It’s no longer a game of relying on individual keyword pages. Notably, Nerdwallet is one of the most frequently cited websites in LLMs.
So, switch your strategy mindset from pages to topic clusters. Cover a topic from every angle across multiple assets. Use headers, FAQs, schema markup, and internal links to connect the dots.
The better you structure your content, the easier it is for AI to find and promote it.
Your target audience is searching across multiple channels in today’s environment. Focusing on individual keywords leaves a lot of opportunity on the table.
Today’s rising search platforms, like social media apps and LLMs, revolve around semantic queries.
People talk to these tools naturally and conversationally (some of them even use ChatGPT’s voice functionality). This means you can’t hone in on a specific keyword. Using a keyword cluster that covers the most popular phrasings customers may use is a much better way to make sure you’re covering what people are asking, increasing your probability of being found.
This query within Perplexity demonstrates how people interact with search tools. They’re not always typing keywords. They’re asking full, conversational questions and expecting a clear answer.
You also have to consider that many users never click through to your site. Zero-click searches are growing fast, which means your content needs to deliver value right in the SERP—or immediately on platforms like social, LLMs, and voice.
If you’re still chasing individual keywords, you’re missing the bigger opportunity: becoming the trusted source on your topic.
Brand Trust Is Measured in Citations and Sentiment
AI doesn’t care how loud you are. It cares how often others talk about you, and what they say when they do.
Large language models prioritize brands with consistent, credible citations across the web. That includes mentions in blog posts, news articles, podcasts, reviews, and Reddit threads. The more quality signals you earn, the more likely AI is to recommend you.
But the mentions are just the beginning. Your performance in 2026 really boils down to your audience’s perception of you. Sentiment analysis now plays a big role in ranking. Positive discussions boost your chances of surfacing in AI results, while negativity can drag you down.
Until recently, this layer of discovery was almost impossible to measure. Traditional analytics don’t show when your brand is cited inside AI-generated answers. But a new class of AI visibility tools now tracks where and how often brands appear across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews (along with the surrounding context). But what types of brands are succeeding using this strategy?
Brands like Patagonia and TOMS are shining examples of this. These companies leverage philanthropy to increase their goodwill and, in turn, their customers’ positive sentiment toward them.
Leveraging elements like philanthropy the right way switches these brands’ audiences from customers to loyal supporters.
This shift rewards brands that build goodwill rather than just backlinks. If your strategy still centers on shouting the loudest, you’ll get buried by brands that are being talked about, and for the right reasons.
Trust is now your most important ranking factor. Earn it or fade out.
Blogs Influence AI Models, Not Just Traffic
If you think blogs don’t “work” like they used to, you’re missing the bigger picture. They still do heavy lifting behind the scenes to shape AI output and position your brand as a go-to source.
In modern search, everything you publish helps shape how AI models understand your brand. When you consistently cover a topic with depth and clarity, models start to associate your name with that subject.
This new reality turns your blogs from content assets into signals of authority.
Even if search traffic dips due to zero-click results or AI summaries, the long-term payoff is still there. The more high-quality content you create, the more likely your brand is to be cited by the higher-profile AI channels and included in trusted content roundups.
Social Platforms Function as Search Engines
As the search everywhere trend shows us, search behavior is spreading. And, according to Statista, nearly a quarter of U.S. adults treat social media as their starting point for search.
People are searching TikTok to see how something works or whether a restaurant’s worth trying.
They’re using YouTube to learn how to install software or compare skincare brands. Considering that this is the largest search engine after Google, it’s a great platform to focus efforts on.
This matters because social search runs on a different logic than traditional SEO or AI answer engines. These platforms reward relevance through engagement.
Each platform has its own discovery logic. TikTok rewards watch time and velocity. YouTube favors relevance and retention. Instagram leans on recency and interaction.
Without optimizing for these platforms, you’re missing a huge part of the search pie. You should be treating social platforms like search engines, because your audience already does.
This is where more traditional on-page SEO comes into play. That means digging into the types of questions your audience is asking and focusing on tried-and-true tactics like using clear, searchable titles and engaging hooks to “stop the scroll” and get your viewers’ attention in the first three seconds.
Content Quality Outperforms Quantity Across Channels
Publishing more content won’t save you in 2026.
Social platforms are flooded, and search is competitive. On top of that, AI is getting better every day at filtering out thin, repetitive, or regurgitated content.
Consequently, original insights and pieces that actually teach something are rising to the top.
We see this in emerging trends. For starters, the average number of posts per day among brands has decreased to 9.5. Engagement is moving in the opposite direction, with inbound interactions increasing by roughly 20 percent year over year.
Instead of posting five times a day, focus on publishing things worth reading and sharing, even if it’s only one well-structured piece of content per week.
A thoughtful video or long-form LinkedIn breakdown that sparks conversation will do much better than 100 pieces of AI-generated blogs that barely scratch the surface of a topic.
Take National Geographic, for example. Rather than posting constantly, it focuses on educational storytelling. Check out its TikTok grid.
Content creators are experiencing the benefits of this strategy in real time.
A recent survey finds that 35 percent of creators say they’re seeing higher potential ROI from longer-form content formats, with 39 percent saying they’re seeing better engagement. And almost half (49 percent) say that the choice to produce longer-form content is helping them reach a wider audience.
If your strategy is still built around churning out content to “stay active,” it’s time to shift. Fewer pieces. Bigger impact. Better outcomes.
That’s what wins in 2026.
Conversion Happens On-Platform, Not On-Site
The platforms people use every day are getting very good at keeping them there.
Think about it: Nearly every social platform has lead forms and lets you shop inside the app. The goal of these features is to help you convert without ever leaving their platform.
Instagram and TikTok, for example, have fully integrated shopping experiences. And it’s working. Sales through social media channels are forecasted to reach nearly 21 percent in 2026.
Google’s even testing AI-generated product recommendations with built-in checkout links, like Etsy and ChatGPT. The whole point is to remove friction and keep the experience seamless.
That shift changes what a “landing page” even means. In many cases, it’s a native form, a product card, or an in-app checkout flow that closes the deal on the spot.
Your website still matters, but forcing every conversion to happen there can introduce unnecessary drop-off. When users are ready to act, the simplest path usually wins.
This shift is giving rise to what some teams now call checkout optimization, and it’s getting some pretty serious results. E-commerce brands with 1,000 to 2,000 orders per month are implementing checkout optimization and seeing measurable gains in shipping revenue and order total.
When you meet users where they are, you lower the barrier to action. No load times. No messy redirects. Just a quick tap or swipe to buy, book, or sign up.
Video Becomes a Primary Search and AI Input
Video is increasingly becoming more than just a distribution format. It’s now a primary way people search—and a growing input for AI systems.
Search engines and AI platforms now index video much like they do written content, pulling from structural signals to generate results. If those signals aren’t there, the video might as well not exist.
What do those signals look like in practice?
Well, because search engines and AI platforms can’t watch your videos, they instead rely on clean transcripts, keyword-rich titles and descriptions, and clear segmentation. Think chapters, not rambles. Structure is what makes video searchable.
The more structured and searchable your video content, the more likely it is to be cited by AI assistants.
Text still matters. But if video isn’t part of your SEO and discovery strategy, you’re leaving serious visibility on the table.
Paid Media Shifts to AI-Led Campaigns
We’ve seen AI-driven paid media campaigns for some time now, but platforms like Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+ are refining and elevating how it’s done. We’re seeing these platforms automatically testing creative and placements to hit performance goals, and even testing the benefits of AI-powered segmentation or ad bidding.
The result is less manual control and more system-led optimization, which is a benefit for many marketers. Retail marketers, for example, have seen a 10 percent to 25 percent lift in their return on ad spend (ROAS) by implementing AI-powered campaign elements.
But “hands-off” doesn’t mean “set it and forget it.”
In this model, your role shifts from managing campaigns to training the system. The better your inputs—creative variety, first-party data, and clear conversion signals—the better your results.
Lazy targeting and generic ads just get ignored.
Want to lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) or increase return on ad spend (ROAS)? Focus on refining your creative and uploading strong first-party data. AI will handle testing and optimization, but it can’t fix bad inputs.
Savvy marketers are shifting their roles from campaign operators to strategy leads. They’re spending less time on dashboards and more time building assets that actually convert, such as a robust content library or unique, impactful insights from proprietary data.
It all comes down to this: AI runs the ads, but you train it. If you’re not giving the algorithm something great to work with, you’re not going to like what it gives back.
FAQs
What are the digital marketing trends for 2026?
In 2026, AI is running full campaigns, dynamic funnels are replacing traditional static ones, and users are increasingly discovering brands across platforms. Chat assistants like ChatGPT now also recommend brands, and SEO is more about structured topics than keywords. Quality content outperforms quantity, and conversion often happens off your site.
How can businesses stay updated on marketing trends?
Follow trusted industry blogs (like NeilPatel.com), subscribe to marketing newsletters, and keep an eye on platform updates from the big players (Google, Meta, and TikTok). Tools like Ubersuggest can also help spot shifts in search behavior. But more than anything, continue testing and tracking, and stay close to what your audience responds to.
Conclusion
Many experts say that marketing is changing, but the fact is that it’s already changed.
AI now drives the full spectrum of content marketing. Platforms prioritize native conversion. Content shapes how machines and people see your brand. If you’re still playing by old rules—keyword-centric strategy, manual funnels, or high-volume posting—you’re going to get left behind.
Winning in 2026 means adapting quickly to emerging digital marketing trends by thinking strategically and building trust across every touchpoint.
If you’re not sure where to start, check out my guide on search engine trends to see how modern discovery actually works today.
The marketers who move first always get the advantage. So, make your move.
Following last year’s content marketing playbook won’t cut it in 2026.
AI is evolving how we create, but human connection still drives what performs. Search behavior is splintering across platforms, and brands are being judged not just on what they publish but also on how it shows up.
To win this year, marketing pros need to be smarter about what they’re doing. That means your content must be rooted in real insights about how people actually buy from your brand.
This complete guide to content marketing breaks down what’s changing, what’s working, and where to focus your time and budget. If you’re serious about growing through content in 2026, you need to understand the shifts shaping the space.
Key Takeaways
AI should speed up execution, not replace strategy. Use it to draft and repurpose content, but rely on human perspective and editing to determine performance.
Content that feels human outperforms content that feels polished. Audiences respond to authentic opinions and usefulness versus brand-safe, committee-written copy.
Thought leadership now requires original insight. Repackaging what already ranks won’t build authority; bold takes, experienced authors, and first party data will. First party/proprietary data also helps your content be more original and unique.
Distribution is half the strategy. Content needs a plan for where and how it gets discovered across platforms, not just published on a blog.
Measure influence, not output. The content that matters most is what changes thinking and earns trust, not what fills a calendar.
AI is great for maximizing your efficiency. It can drastically cut the time you spend on mundane content marketing tasks like researching and building outlines. It can even save you time by helping you repurpose old content into new formats. That kind of scale used to take teams. Now, all it takes is prompts.
But don’t mistake speed for strategy.
AI doesn’t know your customer. It doesn’t understand your brand’s voice or point of view—the elements of your brand or product that actually matter to people. Introducing those elements and ensuring they stay intact is on you.
Use AI to take the grunt work off your plate (i.e., building drafts or summarizing competitor content). But when it comes to telling your story, positioning your offer, or crafting something people want to read and share, human judgment still wins.
You can feel the difference between templated, AI-written content and something with a real perspective. So can your audience. If your content feels robotic or generic, they’re gone. No one shares or converts from content that reads like it came off an assembly line.
So yes, use AI. Just don’t hand it the keys to your content strategy. If you’re not putting in the human effort to edit and elevate what comes out, you’re just publishing noise.
Content Must Feel More Human, Not More Polished
People are tired of content that sounds like it was written by a committee.
You know the type: no strong opinions and so sanitized it could’ve come from any brand in your space. It’s forgettable. This year, forgettable doesn’t work.
Your audience doesn’t want another corporate how-to. They want to hear from someone who gets it. Someone who’s been in their shoes and isn’t afraid to say what actually works—and what doesn’t.
That doesn’t mean being sloppy. It means being real.
Ditch the fluff. Cut the clichés. Talk like a smart peer, not a brand trying to tick SEO boxes. Share what you’ve learned and what surprised you. That’s what builds trust. That’s what gets people to read and come back.
Slite’s piece on “people first” only going so far for parents is a great example. The post comes from a parent on their team, immediately creating expertise on the subject. There’s no promotional content anywhere in the blog, and the focus is on entertaining and educating the readers.
Let me pause a second here and make something clear: authentic doesn’t mean unedited. It means intentional. Sure, edit your pieces for grammar and structure, but don’t sand down the voice. Let the human fingerprints show.
In a world of AI-generated everything, human content stands out, not by being perfect, but by being authentically helpful and worth someone’s time.
Thought Leadership Requires Saying Something New
You don’t become a thought leader by echoing what everyone else is already saying.
Too many blogs and LinkedIn posts are just rewrites of what’s already ranking. They quote the same stats and land on the same safe conclusions. That’s not thought leadership, that’s content recycling.
You need to bring something new to the table if you want people to see you as an authority. That could mean sharing a bold opinion others won’t say out loud. It could be a unique framework you’ve developed through real experience. Or it might be calling out what isn’t working anymore, even if it used to.
Google’s EEAT principles—experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness—favor exactly this kind of content. You’re not just writing for algorithms anymore. You’re writing to earn trust from real people and search engines. Along with this, the style of throwing anonymous blog posts out into the aether isn’t going to cut it either. Adding named authors with credentials to your blog posts is essential for EEAT.
Brand Voice Is a Strategic Asset
AI can write. So can your competitors. Sticking to your unique voice is what’s going to set you apart.
In a sea of content that all sounds the same, brand voice is what makes people recognize you, even without seeing your logo. It’s more than tone or personality. It’s how you show up. And in 2026, it’s one of your biggest strategic advantages.
The best brands sound human. Clear and consistent across platforms—no matter if it’s a blog post, a LinkedIn comment, or a product page. That consistency builds trust and, over time, creates familiarity, which then leads to trust and loyalty—two essential elements of marketing to customers on the modern playing field.
Innocent Drinks is a British brand that’s a great example of a unique tone and voice. They keep customer interactions fun with cheeky British humor and self-deprecating jokes. The laid-back, conversational tone presents their smoothie drinks amidst daily jokes, weather updates, and more that keep their customers coming back.
But the catch is: you have to guard your brand voice with your life.
Well, maybe it’s not that drastic. But you at least have to define it, teach your writers how to use it, and maybe most importantly, defend it—especially when AI starts diluting it with generic phrasing or over-polished outputs.
Think of brand voice like a design system. It should guide every piece of content you publish. The goal isn’t to sound perfect. The goal is to sound unmistakably like you across formats, channels, and teams.
When everything else feels copy-pasted, your voice is what makes people stop scrolling and actually listen.
Video Isn’t Optional in a Content Strategy
If video still feels like “bonus content” to your team, you’re already behind.
Video—short and long-form—is now a core part of how people discover and share information. It’s not just for YouTube or TikTok anymore. It belongs in your blog strategy, your LinkedIn posts, your email sequences, and even your whitepapers. YouTube has risen to be the #2 largest search engine as well as a top source for Google Gemini.
The smartest content teams don’t treat video as a separate effort. They treat it as an extension of what they’re already creating.
Wrote a blog post that’s performing well? Turn it into a 60-second explainer for Instagram. Got a data-packed whitepaper? Break it into a mini-series of clips or animated infographics. Publishing a thought leadership piece? Record a quick POV video that puts a face (and voice) to the ideas.
Here’s an example from my Instagram:’
This isn’t about adding more work. It’s about getting more mileage from what you’ve already built.
People scroll past walls of text. But they’ll pause for a story or a strong hook in motion. Video improves retention and makes your message stick.
In 2026, you should be including video in your strategy from the start.
Distribution Is Just as Important as Creation
If you’re not planning for distribution, you may just be publishing into the void.
Too many marketers hit “publish” and hope for traffic. But in 2026, the real game happens after the content goes live. Distribution is half the strategy.
Every piece you create should have a plan for where it lives and how it spreads. That could mean breaking your blog post into a X thread or syndicating it as a native article on LinkedIn or Medium.
And don’t underestimate the power of partnerships. Influencers, creators, and subject matter experts can extend your reach with the right angle and format.
This is where Search Everywhere Optimization becomes essential. People aren’t just searching on Google anymore. They’re searching across all the major social media platforms, LLMs like Chat GPT and Perplexity, and e-commerce sites like Amazon. You need to meet them where they are, in the format they prefer.
Good content doesn’t go viral by luck. It travels because someone planned the route.
So before you write your next post, ask yourself: how will people actually find this? If you don’t have a solid answer, you’re not done yet.
Content Must Map to the Buyer Journey, Not Just the Funnel
A customer’s actual buying journey is moving away from the classic funnel we all know and love. The funnel itself isn’t changing, but where people go along the funnel is changing. People can shop in ChatGPT, meaning they can follow the entire funnel without ever leaving an LLM.
Real decision-making is messy. People bounce between tabs, skim reviews, watch videos, compare products, and ask peers for input—all before ever booking a demo or hitting “buy.” If your content only speaks to top-of-funnel traffic, you’re leaving serious revenue on the table.
Modern content strategy needs to follow the buyer wherever they go, not just the funnel stages.
That means going beyond how-to posts and SEO guides. You need content that helps buyers decide. Product comparisons. Honest breakdowns of pricing and features. Content that tackles objections head-on. Even onboarding previews and post-purchase FAQs count. They reduce friction and increase trust. This method is useful for appearing in LLMs as we.
Not only does this kind of content help convert, but it also ranks. Buyers search for “[Product A] vs [Product B],” “Is [Brand] worth it?”, and “How hard is it to implement [Tool]?” If you’re not showing up there, your competitor will.
So build for real behavior, not static funnels. Meet your buyer where they are—digging deep into research and looking for clarity before they buy.
Refreshing Existing Content Beats Churning Out New Posts
More content doesn’t always mean more results.
If you’re constantly creating from scratch but ignoring your old posts, you’re missing one of the easiest wins in content marketing: updates.
Refreshing content isn’t just minor changes; it’s making your best-performing or best-potential content even stronger. That could mean improving the structure, adding internal links, expanding thin sections, or aligning it with new search intent.
And it works. Updated content often ranks faster and converts better because it already has history and positive social signals, like backlinks. Google rewards freshness, but it also loves authority.
Instead of publishing five new blog posts next month, what if you refreshed five that are slipping in rankings? Or turned an old listicle into a detailed comparison guide? That’s not less work, it’s smarter work.
Start by running a quick content audit. Identify top traffic drivers and declining or outdated post topics. From there, prioritize updates that align with current search demand and business goals.
New content still matters, but refreshing what you already built often delivers a faster, more predictable ROI. Don’t start from zero when there’s gold in your archives.
User-Generated Content Builds Credibility and Community
Positive product recommendations, reviews, and stories from your customer base are gold for social proof.
That’s the power of user-generated content (UGC). Testimonials and stories or spotlights can build trust faster than anything you write yourself. They’re authentic social proof, and one of the most underused levers in content strategy.
Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign is a great example of this. The company rolled out product with some of the most popular first names on each can or small bottle. Store displays encouraged shoppers to find a can with their name on it, take a picture, and post to social media with the caption “#shareacoke”. The result was social media feeds flooded with posts just like this:
UGC is such a powerful strategy because it reduces your content lift while increasing credibility. Instead of creating everything from scratch, you’re curating voices from your community. A five-minute video from a happy customer or a LinkedIn post from an employee can do more than a polished landing page.
So how do you get it? Ask. Prompt your audience to share their experiences. Feature real users in your blog posts or newsletters. Turn customer feedback into quote graphics or build case studies around standout use cases.
This strategy really gets powerful when you turn it into a system. Create UGC submission forms. Add review prompts to your post-purchase emails. Encourage your team to share behind-the-scenes stories on social.
The more people see themselves in your brand, the more they want to be part of it. UGC turns customers into advocates, and that’s content you can’t fake.
Measurement Is Moving to Influence, Not Just Output
Content volume used to be the metric. How many blogs did we publish? How many posts went live?
Now, it’s about impact.
Smart teams aren’t asking, “How much did we ship?” They’re asking, “What moved the needle?” That means tracking content that supports real business goals, not just filling up a calendar.
Engagement quality matters more than vanity metrics. Are people sharing or talking about it? Did it convert to revenue or reduce friction in the sales process? That’s the kind of content worth doubling down on.
Brand lift and even SEO performance are shifting, too. With AI Overviews reshaping how content appears in search, your content marketing performance hinges on owning the conversation through citations that strengthen brand trust.
Writers play a huge role here. When your content solves a real problem or answers a specific question better than anyone else, it sticks. That influence compounds.
So shift your mindset. Don’t just create content that gets clicks. Create content that changes people’s thinking or provides new insights. That’s the metric that matters now.
FAQs
What is the future of content marketing?
Content in 2026 is shifting toward authenticity. Brands are focusing on aspects like voice and distribution over volume. Repurposing across channels, creating content with real perspective, and measuring influence over output are now core strategies. The new goal is content that actually earns trust and drives action.
Conclusion
Creating a winning content marketing strategy in 2026 will certainly look different. The smart use of AI to scale instead of substitute, while still leaning on human editing and content elevation, will be a huge brand separator. You and your team can do that effectively by building a voice people recognize, creating content that feels human, and aligning it all to authentic buyer journeys and behaviors.
You don’t need to chase every trend. Focus on strategy, quality, and distribution that drives results.
Because in a world full of content, the only stuff that stands out is the kind that actually matters.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2026-02-06 20:00:002026-02-06 20:00:00The Future of Content Marketing: A 2026 Guide
Today we’ve released
the February 2026 Discover core update. This is a broad update to our systems that surface
articles in Discover. Our testing shows that people find the Discover experience more useful and
worthwhile with this update.
January didn’t bring flashy product launches. It brought something more valuable: clarity.
Platforms spent the month explaining how their systems actually work. Google detailed JavaScript indexing rules that matter for modern sites. Reddit opened up automation insights most platforms keep hidden. Amazon positioned itself as a legitimate cross-screen player with first-party data advantages traditional TV can’t match.
Automation kept expanding, but with firmer guardrails. AI continued to compress discovery. Zero-click experiences grew. Brands without clear expertise signals or off-site authority started disappearing from AI-generated answers.
For digital marketers, January reinforced one reality: performance in 2026 depends less on clever tactics and more on getting fundamentals right across channels.
Key Takeaways
Indexing logic must live in base HTML, not JavaScript. Google may skip rendering pages with noindex directives in initial HTML, leaving valuable content invisible even if JavaScript removes the tag later.
Performance Max channel reporting is now essential, not optional. Budget pressure is currently your sharpest lever for managing underperforming surfaces like Display or Discover.
Share of search is becoming a better demand signal than traffic alone. As AI reduces click-through rates, measuring how often people search for your brand versus competitors reveals momentum better than vanishing clicks.
Digital PR now directly impacts AI visibility. Authoritative mentions and credible coverage determine whether AI systems recognize and recommend your brand in zero-click answers.
Influencer marketing reached enterprise maturity in January. Unilever’s 20x creator expansion and 50% social budget shift prove influence at scale is baseline strategy, not experimentation.
Review monitoring must track losses, not just gains. Google’s AI is deleting legitimate reviews without notice, affecting rankings and trust faster than new reviews can rebuild them.
Search, SEO, and Indexing Reality Checks
Search teams started 2026 with clearer rules, not more flexibility. Google spent January confirming how it treats indexing signals on JavaScript-heavy sites.
Google Clarifies Noindex and JavaScript Behavior
Google confirmed that pages with a noindex directive in their initial HTML may not get rendered at all. Any JavaScript meant to remove or modify that directive might never execute.
Indexing intent belongs in base HTML. JavaScript should enhance experiences, not define crawl behavior. For headless stacks and dynamic frameworks, search engines respond to what they see first, not what you hope they’ll see after rendering.
If your site uses React, Next.js, Angular, or Vue with client-side rendering, audit how noindex tags are implemented. Server-side rendering or static generation solves most of these issues.
Google Clarifies JavaScript Canonical Rules
Google detailed how canonical tags work on JavaScript-driven pages. Canonicals can be evaluated twice: once in raw HTML and again after rendering. Conflicts between the two create real indexing problems.
Server-rendered HTML pointing to one canonical while client-side JavaScript points to another forces Google to pick. That choice often hurts rankings quietly, without throwing obvious errors in Search Console.
Teams need to decide where canonicals live and enforce consistency. One canonical after rendering. No ambiguity between server and client.
December Core Algorithm Update Wraps
Google’s December 2025 core update finished after roughly 18 days of volatility. Sites with stale content, weak expertise signals, or unclear intent lost ground. Others gained visibility by being more useful and better aligned with user needs.
Core updates no longer feel disruptive because they’re frequent. Three broad core updates rolled out in 2025 alone. The advantage now comes from consistent execution, not post-update recovery tactics.
Paid Search, Automation, and Audience Control
Paid media keeps moving toward automation. January showed where control still exists and where it doesn’t.
Using Google’s PMax Channel Report More Strategically
You still can’t control bids or exclusions at a granular level. What you can control is budget pressure. One surface consistently underperforming? Budget becomes your corrective lever. Pull back overall spend and PMax reallocates to better-performing channels automatically.
Teams that review this report monthly make better creative and investment decisions. Track this data over time. Patterns emerge. You start understanding which channels deliver at which funnel stages, even inside automation.
Google Drops Audience Size Minimums
Google lowered minimum audience size thresholds to 100 users across Search, Display, and YouTube. Previous minimums ranged from 1,000 users down to a few hundred depending on network and list type.
This opens doors for smaller advertisers and niche segments. Remarketing lists, CRM uploads, and custom audiences that previously failed minimums now become usable.
Smart teams will use this to test tighter segmentation strategies. But don’t chase volume that isn’t there. A 100-user audience won’t scale into a growth channel overnight.
Bing Tests Google-Style Ad Grouping
Bing briefly tested a sponsored results format similar to Google’s recent changes. Multiple ads grouped under a single label, with only the first result carrying an ad marker.
The test ended quickly, but the signal matters. Search platforms are converging on similar layouts. How ads appear now affects click quality and intent, not just click-through rate.
Social Platforms and Performance Content
Social platforms spent January rewarding clarity while punishing shortcuts.
Reddit Launches Max Campaigns
Reddit introduced Max Campaigns, an automated ad product handling targeting, placements, creative, and budget allocation in real-time.
What stands out is visibility. Reddit surfaces audience personas and engagement insights that most automated systems hide. Early testers report 27% more conversions and 17% lower CPA on average.
Testing works best when anchored to existing campaigns. Replicate your best-performing Reddit campaign as a Max Campaign. Let automation prove efficiency gains with known benchmarks.
Instagram Caps Hashtags
Instagram rolled out a five-hashtag limit across posts and reels. This confirms discovery on Instagram is driven by AI-based content understanding, not hashtag volume.
Hashtags now function like keywords. They clarify intent and help Instagram’s systems categorize content. They don’t manufacture reach.
Captions, on-screen text, subtitles, and visuals do the heavy lifting. Choose five hashtags that directly describe your content. Mix specificity levels: one broad category tag, two niche topic tags, one community hashtag, one branded hashtag.
LinkedIn Shares Performance Guidance for 2026
LinkedIn reiterated that human perspective drives performance. Video continues outperforming other formats. Hashtags do not impact distribution. Automated engagement and content pods face increased scrutiny.
Posting two to five times per week remains effective. AI can support thinking, but content still needs lived experience and clear points of view.
Brand Visibility, Authority, and Demand Measurement in an AI Era
AI-driven discovery is reshaping how brands get surfaced and evaluated.
What AI Search Means for Your Business
AI-generated summaries and zero-click experiences shape early discovery now. Users often form opinions before visiting a site. Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT’s SearchGPT, and Perplexity answer questions directly, compressing or eliminating the need to click through.
AI favors brands with clear expertise, structured content, and external validation. Generic explanations get compressed into summaries that strip away brand identity. Thin content disappears entirely.
Optimization now includes being understandable and credible to machines, not just persuasive to human readers. That means structured data markup, clear content hierarchy, author credentials, and topical authority signals.
Share of Search Becomes a Core KPI
As AI reduces click-through rates, traffic becomes a weaker signal of demand. Share of search fills that gap.
It measures how often people look for your brand compared to competitors. That correlates strongly with market share and future growth. Brands with rising share of search typically see revenue growth follow within quarters, even if organic traffic stays flat.
Calculate share of search by tracking branded search volume for your brand and key competitors over time. Tools like Google Trends, Semrush, or Ahrefs make this accessible.
Digital PR Matters More Than Ever
AI systems recommend brands they recognize and trust. That trust is built off-site, not through on-page optimization.
Authoritative mentions, expert commentary, and credible coverage now influence visibility across AI-driven experiences. Links still matter, but reputation matters more.
PR, SEO, and content strategy can no longer operate independently. Authority compounds when they align. If you’re not investing in Digital PR alongside traditional SEO, you’re optimizing for a search ecosystem that’s rapidly shrinking.
Video, CTV, and Cross-Screen Media Strategy
Video buying is consolidating across screens.
Amazon Emerges as a Cross-Screen Advertising Player
Amazon is positioning itself as a unified advertising ecosystem across Prime Video, live sports, audio, and programmatic inventory. Layered with first-party shopper data, this creates a powerful performance and measurement advantage traditional TV buyers can’t match.
Amazon now competes higher in the funnel through premium video and live sports while retaining lower-funnel accountability through its commerce data. Interactive features let you add “add to cart” overlays directly in OTT video ads.
CTV Breaks the 30-Second Format
Streaming dominates TV consumption. Ad formats are finally catching up. Interactive and nontraditional CTV units are gaining traction, supported by early standardization efforts from IAB Tech Lab.
Traditional :15 and :30 second spots still work, but they blend into an increasingly crowded environment. Emerging formats offer differentiation in lower-clutter streaming contexts.
Brands that test early build creative and performance advantages before these formats normalize and competition increases.
Pinterest Acquires tvScientific
Pinterest’s acquisition of tvScientific connects intent-driven discovery with CTV buying. This closes a long-standing measurement gap between inspiration and awareness channels.
For brands rooted in discovery—home decor, fashion, food, travel, DIY, beauty—this creates a clearer path from interest to action.
Brand-Led Attention and Influence at Scale
Attention increasingly flows through people, communities, and culture-driven media.
Unilever’s Influencer Expansion
Unilever announced plans to work with 20 times more influencers and shift half its ad budget to social. This isn’t a test. It’s a structural reallocation signaling influencer marketing has reached enterprise maturity.
Unilever’s SASSY framework now activates nearly 300,000 creators. The company reported category-wide outperformance, attributing significant gains to influencer-driven campaigns.
Brands still treating creators as side projects will struggle to compete against organizations running influencer programs with the same rigor and budget as paid search or programmatic display.
Google’s AI Is Deleting Reviews
Google’s AI moderation is removing reviews at scale, including legitimate ones, often without notice. Business owners report hundreds of reviews disappearing overnight.
That affects rankings, conversion rates, and consumer trust. Reputation strategy now includes monitoring review loss, not just tracking new reviews.
Check your Google Business Profile weekly. Document total review count and average rating. When drops occur, investigate patterns. Better yet, diversify review platforms beyond Google.
Experimentation and Growth Discipline
Sustainable growth depends on knowing why a test exists before judging its outcome.
Growth vs Optimization: Drawing the Line
Growth experiments explore new opportunities. Optimization improves what already works. Blurring the two creates misaligned expectations and poor decision-making.
Clear intent leads to clearer measurement and stronger buy-in. Teams that label tests correctly scale with more confidence.
What Digital Marketers Should Take Forward
Platforms are clarifying rules. AI rewards authority and consistency. Measurement is shifting away from clicks alone.
The advantage in 2026 comes from alignment across teams and channels. Durable signals outperform clever workarounds.
Indexing logic must live in base HTML. Performance Max channel reporting is essential. Share of search reveals momentum. Digital PR impacts AI visibility. Influencer marketing reached enterprise maturity. Review monitoring must track losses.
This is the work we focus on every day at NP Digital.
If you want help aligning fundamentals across SEO, paid media, content, and PR in a way that compounds over time, let’s talk.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2026-02-04 16:46:552026-02-04 16:46:55January 2026 Digital Marketing Roundup: What Changed and What You Should Do About It
AI hallucinations became a headline story when Google’s AI Overviews told people that cats can teleport and suggested eating rocks for health.
Those bizarre moments spread fast because they’re easy to point at and laugh about.
But that’s not the kind of AI hallucination most marketers deal with. The tools you probably use, like ChatGPT or Claude, likely won’t produce anything that bizarre. Their misses are sneakier, like outdated numbers or confident explanations that fall apart once you start looking under the hood.
In a fast-moving industry like digital marketing, it’s easy to miss those subtle errors.
This made us curious: How often is AI actually getting it wrong? What types of questions trip it up? And how are marketers handling the fallout?
To find out, we tested 600 prompts across major large language model (LLM) platforms and surveyed 565 marketers to understand how often AI gets things wrong. You’ll see how these mistakes show up in real workflows and what you can do to catch hallucinations before they hurt your work.
Key Takeaways
Nearly half of marketers (47.1 percent) encounter AI inaccuracies several times a week, and over 70 percent spend hours fact-checking each week.
More than a third (36.5 percent) say hallucinated or incorrect AI content has gone live publicly, most often due to false facts, broken source links, or inappropriate language.
In our LLM test, ChatGPT had the highest accuracy (59.7 percent), but even the best models made errors, especially on multi-part reasoning, niche topics, or real-time questions.
The most common hallucination types were fabrication, omission, outdated info, and misclassification—often delivered with confident language.
Despite knowledge of hallucinations, 23 percent of marketers feel confident using AI outputs without review. Most teams add extra approval layers or assign dedicated fact-checkers to their processes.
What Do We Know About AI Hallucinations and Errors?
An AI hallucination happens when a model gives you an answer that sounds correct but isn’t. We’re talking about made-up facts or claims that don’t stand up to fact-checking or a quick Google search.
And they’re not rare.
In our research, over 43% of marketers say hallucinated or false information has slipped past review and gone public. These errors come in a few common forms:
Fabrication: The AI simply makes something up.
Omission: It skips critical context or details.
Outdated info: It shares data that’s no longer accurate.
Misclassification: It answers the wrong question, or only part of it.
Hallucinations tend to happen when prompts are too vague or require multi-step reasoning. Sometimes the AI model tries to fill the gaps with whatever seems plausible.
AI hallucinations aren’t new, but our dependence on these tools is. As they become part of everyday workflows, the cost of a single incorrect answer increases.
Once you recognize the patterns behind these mistakes, you can catch them early and keep them out of your content.
AI Hallucination Examples
AI hallucinations can be ridiculous or dangerously subtle. These real AI hallucination examples give you a sense of the range:
Fabricated legal citations: Recent reporting shows a growing number of lawyers relying on AI-generated filings, only to learn that the cases or citations don’t exist. Courts are now flagging these hallucinations at an alarming rate.
Health misinformation: Revisiting our example from earlier, Google’s AI Overviews once claimed eating rocks had health benefits in an error that briefly went viral.
Fake academic references: Some LLMs will list fake studies or broken source links if asked for citations. A peer-reviewed Nature study found that ChatGPT frequently produced academic citations that look legitimate but reference papers that don’t exist.
Factual contradictions: Some tools have answered simple yes/no questions with completely contradictory statements in the same paragraph.
Outdated or misattributed data:Models can pull statistics from the wrong year or tie them to the wrong sources. And that creates problems once those numbers sneak into presentations or content.
Our Surveys/Methodology
To get a clear picture of how AI hallucinations show up in real-world marketing work, we pulled data from two original sources:
Marketers survey: We surveyed 565 U.S.-based digital marketers using AI in their workflows. The questions covered how often they spot errors, what kinds of mistakes they see, and how their teams are adjusting to AI-assisted content. We also asked about public slip-ups, trust in AI, and whether they want clearer industry standards.
LLM accuracy test: We built a set of 600 prompts across five categories: SEO/marketing, general business, industry-specific verticals, consumer queries, and control questions with a known correct answer. We then tested them across six major AIplatforms: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Copilot. Humans graded each output, classifying them as fully correct, partially correct, or incorrect. For partially correct or incorrect outputs, we also logged the error type (omission, outdated info, fabrication, or misclassification).
For this report, we focused only on text-based hallucinations and content errors, not visual or video generation. The insights that follow combine both data sets to show how hallucinations happen and what marketers should watch for across tools and task types.
How AI Hallucinations and Errors Impact Digital Marketers
We asked marketers how AI errors show up in their work, and the results were clear: Hallucinations are far from a rarity.
Nearly half of marketers (47.1 percent) encounter AI inaccuracies multiple times a week. And more than 70 percent say they spend one to five hours each week just fact-checking AI-generated output. That’s a lot of time spent fixing “helpful” content.
Those misses don’t always stay hidden.
More than a third (36.5 percent) say hallucinated content has made it all the way to the public. Another 39.8 percent have had close calls where bad AI info almost went live.
And it’s not just teams spotting the problems. More than half of marketers (57.7 percent) say clients or stakeholders have questioned the quality of AI-assisted outputs.
These aren’t minor formatting issues, either. When mistakes make it through, the most common offenders are:
Inappropriate or brand-unsafe content (53.9 percent)
Completely false or hallucinated information (43.5 percent)
Formatting glitches that break the user experience (42.5 percent)
So where does it break down?
AI errors are most common in tasks that require structure or precision. Here are the daily error rates by task:
HTML or schema creation: 46.2 percent
Full content writing: 42.7 percent
Reporting and analytics: 34.2 percent
Brainstorming or idea generation had far fewer issues, with each landing at right about 25 percent.
When we looked at confidence levels, only 23 percent of marketers felt fully comfortable using AI output without review. The rest? They were either cautious or not confident at all.
Teams hit hardest by public-facing AI mistakes include:
Digital PR (33.3 percent)
Content marketing (20.8 percent)
Paid media (17.8 percent)
These are the same departments most likely to face direct brand damage when AI gets it wrong.
AI can save you time, but it also creates a lot of cleanup without checks in place. And most marketers feel the pressure to catch hallucinations before clients or customers do.
AI Hallucinations and Errors: How Do the Top LLMs Stack Up?
To figure out how often leading AI platforms hallucinate, we tested 600 prompts across six major models: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and Copilot.
Each model received the same set of queries across five categories: marketing/SEO, general business, industry-specific use cases, consumer questions, and fact-checkable control prompts. Human reviewers graded each response for accuracy and completeness.
Here’s how they performed:
ChatGPT delivered the highest percentage of fully correct answers at 59.7 percent, with the lowest rate of serious hallucinations. Most of its mistakes were subtle, like misinterpreting the question rather than fabricating facts.
Claude was the most consistent. While it scored slightly lower on fully correct responses (55.1 percent), it had the lowest overall error rate at just 6.2 percent. When it missed, it usually left something out rather than getting it wrong.
Gemini performed well on simple prompts (51.3 percent fully correct) but tended to skip over complex or multi-step answers. Its most common error was omission.
Perplexity showed strength in fast-moving fields like crypto and AI, thanks to its strong real-time retrieval features. But that speed came with risk: 12.2 percent of responses were incorrect, often due to misclassifications or minor fabrications.
Copilot sat in the middle of the pack. It gave safe, brief answers. While that’s good for overviews, it often misses the deeper context.
Grok struggled across the board. It had the highest error rate at 21.8 percent and the lowest percentage of fully correct answers (39.6 percent). Hallucinations, contradictions, and vague outputs were common.
So, what does this mean for marketers?
Well, most teams aren’t expecting perfection. According to our survey, 77.7 percent of marketers will accept some level of AI inaccuracy, likely because the speed and efficiency gains still outweigh the cleanup.
The takeaway isn’t that one model is flawless. It’s that every tool has its strengths and weaknesses. Knowing each platform’s tendencies helps you know when (and how) to pull a human into the loop and what to be on guard against.
What Question Types Gave LLMs The Most Trouble
Some questions are harder for AI to handle than others. In our testing, three prompt types consistently tripped up all the models, regardless of how accurate they were overall:
Multi-part prompts: When asked to explain a concept and give an example, many tools did only half the job. They either defined the term or gave an example, but not both. This was a common source of partial answers and context gaps.
Recently updated or real-time topics: If the ask was about something that changed in the last few months (like a Google algorithm update or an AI model release), responses were often inaccurate or completely fabricated. Some tools made confident claims using outdated info that sounded fresh.
Niche or domain-specific questions: Verticals like crypto, legal, SaaS, or even SEO created problems for most LLMs. In these cases, tools either made up terminology or gave vague responses that missed key industry context.
Even models like Claude and ChatGPT, which scored relatively high for accuracy, showed cracks when asked to handle layered prompts that required nuance or specialized knowledge.
Knowing which types of prompts increase the risk of hallucination is the first step in writing better ones and catching issues before they cost you.
AI Hallucination Tells to Look Out For
AI hallucinations don’t always scream “wrong.” In fact, the most dangerous ones sound reasonable (at least until you check the details). Still, there are patterns worth watching for:
Here are the red flags that showed up most often across the models we tested:
No source, or a broken one: If an AI gives you a link, check it. A lot of hallucinated answers include made-up or outdated citations that don’t exist when you click.
Answers to the wrong questions: Some models misinterpret the prompt and go off in a related (but incorrect) direction. If the response feels slightly off topic, dig deeper.
Big claims with no specifics: Watch for sweeping statements without specific stats or dates. That’s often a sign it’s filling in blanks with plausible-sounding fluff.
Stats with no attribution: Hallucinated numbers are a common issue. If the stat sounds surprising or overly convenient, verify it with a trusted source.
Contradictions inside the same answer: We experienced cases where an AI said one thing in the first paragraph and contradicted itself by the end. That’s a major warning sign.
“Real” examples that don’t exist: Some hallucinations involve fake product names, companies, case studies, or legal precedents. These details feel legit, but a quick search reveals no facts to verify these claims.
The more complex your prompt, the more important it is to sanity-check the output. If something feels even slightly off, assume it’s worth a second look. After all, subtle hallucinations are the ones most likely to slip through the cracks.
Best Practices for Avoiding AI Hallucinations and Errors
You can’t eliminate AI hallucinations completely, but you can make it a lot less likely they slip through. Here’s how to stay ahead of the risk:
Always request and verify sources: Some models will confidently provide links that look legit but don’t exist. Others reference real studies or stats, but take them out of context. Before you copy/paste, click through. This matters even more for AI SEO work, where accuracy and citation quality directly affect rankings and trust.
Fine-tune your prompts: Vague prompts are hallucination magnets, so be clear about what you want the model to reference or avoid. That might mean building prompt template libraries or using follow-up prompts to guide models more effectively. That’s exactly what LLM optimization (LLMO) focuses on.
Assign a dedicated fact-checker: Our survey results showed this to be one of the most effective internal safeguards. Human review might take more time, but it’s how you keep hallucinated claims from damaging trust or a brand’s credibility.
Set clear internal guidelines: Many teams now treat AI like a junior content assistant: It can draft, synthesize, and suggest, but humans own the final version. That means reviewing and fact-checking outputs and correcting anything that doesn’t hold up. This approach lines up with the data. Nearly half (48.3 percent) of marketers support industry-wide standards for responsible AI use.
Add a final review layer every time: Even fast-moving brands are building in one more layer of review for AI-assisted work. In fact, the most common adjustment marketers reported making was adding a new round of content review to catch AI errors. That said, 23 percent of respondents reported skipping human review if they trust the tool enough. That’s a risky move.
Don’t blindly trust brand-safe output: AI can sound polished even when it’s wrong. In our LLM testing, some of the most confidently written outputs were factually incorrect or missing key context. If it feels too clean, double-check it.
FAQs
What are AI hallucinations?
AI hallucinations occur when an AI tool gives you an answer that sounds accurate, but it’s not. These mistakes can include made-up facts, fake citations, or outdated info packaged in confident language.
Why Does AI hallucinate?
AI models don’t “know” facts. They generate responses based on patterns in the data they were trained on. When there’s a gap or ambiguity, the model fills it in with what sounds most likely (even if it’s completely wrong).
What causes AI hallucinations?
Hallucinations usually happen when prompts are vague, complex, or involve topics the model hasn’t seen enough data on. They’re also more common in fast-changing fields like SEO and crypto.
Can you stop AI from hallucinating?
Not entirely. Even the best models make things up sometimes. That’s because LLMs are built to generate language, not verify facts. Occasional hallucinations are baked into how they work.
How can you reduce AI hallucinations?
Use more specific prompts, request citation sources, and always double-check the output for accuracy. Add a human review step before anything goes live. The more structure and context you give the AI, the fewer hallucinations you’ll run into.
Conclusion
AI is powerful, but it’s not perfect.
Our research shows that hallucinations happen regularly, even with the best tools. From made-up stats to misinterpreted prompts, the risks are real. That’s especially the case for fast-moving marketers.
If you’re using AI to create content or guide strategy, knowing where these tools fall short is like a cheat code.
The best defense? Smarter prompts, tighter reviews, and clear internal guidelines that treat AI as a co-pilot (not the driver).
Want help building a more reliable AI workflow? Talk to our team at NP Digital if you’re ready to scale content without compromising accuracy. Also, you can check out the full report here on the NP Digital website.
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