| 13.03.2026 | 06 min |
SMX (Search Marketing Expo) is one of the most important international conferences for SEO, SEA, digital marketing, and search innovation. Every year, experts from the search and marketing industry meet here to discuss the latest developments in Google, AI search, performance marketing, and content strategies.
SMX Munich 2026 took place at the International Congress Center Munich (ICM) and once again brought numerous international speakers to the stage. This year’s focus was primarily on AI search, brand visibility, new SEO strategies, and the future of marketing KPIs.
In this recap, you will find the most important insights from selected presentations—summarized in a compact format.
Dr. Beatrice Eiring on stage and the eology team as supporting speakers at SMX 2026
In her presentation, Dr. Beatrice Eiring showed that traffic losses are often only a symptom. The real change lies in new consumer and search behavior.
More and more people are using AI systems, social media, or platforms such as YouTube to gather information before making a purchase decision. As a result, a large part of the research is shifting to before the website visit.
A common problem is that much of the content focuses heavily on traffic and reach, while important elements of the sales process are missing—such as objection handling or concrete decision-making aids.
Key insights for content strategy
For a successful content strategy in 2026, content must be more closely aligned with the customer journey and purchasing motives. This includes, for example:
At the same time, multi-channel content continues to gain importance. YouTube and short-form content in particular are increasingly being integrated into AI responses and AI overviews.
The most important point: AI does not discover new brands—it selects from known entities.
In his presentation “Beyond the AI Hype: Hard-Won Lessons from Enterprise Deployments,” Boaz Ashkenazy (Augmented AI Labs) showed that there is a huge difference between AI demos and real-world applications.
Many companies build impressive prototypes—but they often fail to actually use them in their businesses.
Another important factor is the so-called adoption paradox:
Even tools that work are not used if they do not offer clear added value in everyday work.
Two factors determine adoption
The most important point: AI does not discover new brands—it selects from known entities.
Carolyn Shelby explained in “Inside Google’s Head” why classic SEO strategies are becoming less and less effective. The most important point: Google is not changing direction—it is just accelerating. Google’s goal: Reduce friction
“Friction” describes the number of steps required to get an answer. Google is continuously working to reduce these steps.
The result:
A decisive change: It is no longer entire pages that compete with each other, but individual content fragments.
In order for content to be extracted by Google, it must be clearly structured:
The most important point: AI does not discover new brands—it selects from known entities.
In his presentation, Aaron Levy (Optmyzr) analyzed what really works in Google Ads at the moment. Many marketers find PPC more complex rather than simpler due to automation.
The biggest challenges
Bid strategies
Responsive Search Ads
Successful patterns:
PMAX and automation
Performance Max remains controversial:
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
The most important point: AI does not discover new brands—it selects from known entities.
Thomas Pelham (OtterlyAI) and Mathias Ptacek (Rankscale) addressed the question of how visibility can be measured in AI systems.
A surprising result: Less than 1% of users visit websites directly via ChatGPT. AI search therefore functions more like brand marketing than traditional SEO.
The focus is thus shifting from traffic optimization to brand presence in AI responses.
Shannon McGuirk demonstrated that digital PR is becoming more important than ever in the AI era.
Why?
Content that is frequently cited by LLMs is particularly relevant.
Formats with high AI visibility
The most important point: AI does not discover new brands—it selects from known entities.
Jono Alderson put forward a provocative thesis: “Clicks never measured what really mattered.” SEO dashboards often measure interface artifacts such as rankings or traffic—but not the actual impact.
Future-oriented marketing KPIs should cover six areas:
The most important point: AI does not discover new brands—it selects from known entities.
Amanda King highlighted the increasing activity of LLM bots such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. An interesting ratio: 1,500 crawls lead to an average of only one visit to the website.
The most important point: AI does not discover new brands—it selects from known entities.
Emily Grossman explained why search is evolving from “strings to things.” This means that search engines increasingly understand content through entities rather than keywords.
For a brand to be recognized, the following questions must be clearly answered:
The most important point: AI does not discover new brands—it selects from known entities.
SMX 2026 has made it clear that SEO and marketing are undergoing a profound transformation.
Key trends:
For companies, this means that SEO is once again evolving toward holistic marketing. If you want to remain visible in the long term, you need to integrate your brand, content, PR, and technical SEO more closely with each other.
Antonios Smyrnaios is part of the SEO department at eology. With previous experience in content creation, he analyzes clients' websites on a content and technical level and develops recommendations for measures to increase visibility in search engines.
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