What does the future hold for SEO? - An interview with Patrick Hathaway
Continuing our "What Does the Future Hold for SEO?" interview series — following a fascinating conversation with Aleyda Solis - Geoff Kennedy, SEO & Digital Marketing Consultant, sits down with Patrick Hathaway, Co-founder & CEO at Sitebulb.
In this interview, Patrick shares his perspective on some of the most pressing topics shaping the SEO landscape today, including Google’s market position and how AI is influencing its strategy, the evolving role of technical SEO, and how SEO professionals need to adapt their skills. He also dives into the challenges of client reporting and communication — and what it takes to get it right nowadays.
Enjoy!
The future of Google
Do you think we’ll see Google losing its dominant search market share anytime soon?
Anytime soon? Probably not. I mean, there was some research I saw shared yesterday—can't remember if it was for the UK or the US—but it showed that Google dropped below 90% market share for the first time since 2015 or something like that. So, for the first time in a long time, there’s a real threat on the horizon.
That’s kind of the main takeaway when it comes to what’s happening with Google right now. And obviously, that threat is largely coming from AI crawlers. What’s interesting is that we’re seeing this dynamic of "Google vs. everybody." You've got ChatGPT, Perplexity, and a bunch of other AI-driven chat or search tools—whatever you want to call them—kind of coming at it from all angles.
But no one’s really landed on a dominant alternative yet. It’s still very fragmented—a little bit of this, a little bit of that. So for Google to actually lose its dominant position, one of these players would need to really break through—whether that’s cracking the technology or finding a way to win over a huge audience.
Until that happens, Google’s still pretty safe at the top.
How do you envision Google’s SERPs changing?
In terms of what we’re seeing from Google: obviously, they’re pushing AI wherever they can. But I think it’s really important to remember how they actually make their money.
That DOJ case against Google last year really highlighted just how much they still rely on AdWords. So, how they choose to monetize AI will have a huge impact on the direction they take.
I mean, how do you take something like an AI-powered overview and tie that into something advertisers can bid on? I’m not really sure. The only way I can think of is if they completely replace organic results, so the only clickable links are paid ones—through AdWords. That’s the only real path that makes sense to me right now.
But honestly, that’s still a big unknown. What Google decides to do in terms of monetization will really show how far they’re willing to go with AI.
Are there any particular types of search features or elements that you think will become more prominent? (or less prominent)
So, in terms of search features, I think e-commerce is really where the focus is right now. Google’s made some big changes over the past year, especially around how the Merchant Center works and how product markup is handled. It used to be that all the documentation was bundled into one page, but now they’ve split it out—there’s more specific guidance for merchant feeds and different use cases. That tells me e-commerce is one of the main areas Google’s prioritizing when it comes to rich results.
Right now, Google isn't selling anything directly. They can replace aggregators—like MoneySuperMarket—by showing the best insurance deals or similar options. But they can't ship you a Rubik’s Cube. So, e-commerce is a space they need to stay strong in. Part of that is simply because they don't have physical products to offer. And the other big reason is the obvious competition from Amazon.
Google needs to find ways to prevent people from just skipping search altogether and heading straight to Amazon. Amazon, of course, is doing everything it can to encourage that. Just look at how they use Prime. I mean, I know you're not super into football, but every December they broadcast a set of football games exclusively on Prime—like early December and again on Boxing Day.
And honestly, the only reason I can think of for that move—aside from a general push into live broadcasting—is to get people to sign up for Prime during the holiday season. People join for the football, stick around for the free Christmas delivery, and then end up seeing the value and staying on Prime for the next year (or longer). It's a smart trigger that keeps people in their ecosystem.
So yeah, you can really see Amazon making a land grab in the e-commerce space. A lot of brands now have their own direct-to-consumer websites and an Amazon presence. More and more are realizing they need to be in both places. That has to look like a threat from Google’s perspective—they need to stay in the e-comm game.
And that ties back to our original conversation: how does Google actually make money? When there’s a clear buying signal from a user, when intent is obviously commercial, I think Google’s going to load up those results with as much monetizable content as possible—whether it’s ads, rich results, merchant feeds, whatever. Maybe the AI-generated results will dominate more informational queries, but when someone’s clearly looking to buy, Google’s going to shift gears and show them everything they’ve got.
The Role of SEOs
How do you see the role of SEO professionals changing?
I’m a bit of an AI skeptic, to be honest. I’m not a huge fan. I don’t really use it much. I guess I’m a bit old school when it comes to writing—I like doing things myself, and I think originality really matters.
That said, AI is everywhere right now, and one of the trends I see emerging over the next year or two is optimizing for AI in SEO. I think SEOs will start talking about it more and more. You can already imagine it popping up in LinkedIn bios—“AI SEO Specialist” or even just “AI Prompt Engineer” becoming common job titles. AI SEO could very well become a viable career path.
And this isn’t just about generative AI. More broadly, and going back to your earlier point about Google’s dominance and the rise of AI crawlers, we’re all going to need to learn how to optimize for those crawlers. At some point, SEOs—whether they’re working in-house or consulting—will have to help teams decide: do we even want to be included in AI-generated results? Is that valuable to us?
Because it won’t always be. There will be cases where you don’t want AI crawling your content and using it to train. But if you do, then how do you make sure it’s crawling the right things—and not wasting time on low-value pages?
There was some interesting research published recently by Vercel and MERJ that showed how inefficient AI crawlers currently are. They spend a lot of time on 404 pages and content that doesn't offer much value. So the question becomes: how do you optimize your robots.txt file for AI crawlers? How do you guide them away from the weeds and toward the high-value pages—your product and service pages, for example?
That’s going to become really important—especially if you do want AI to play a role in how people find your business. Getting that technical side right will matter more and more.
Another big piece is how AI interprets your brand and content in the wider web. I think entities are going to become increasingly important. If you’ve got a Wikipedia page, for example, you’ll want to keep it updated and accurate. One of AI’s flaws is relying on outdated information, so making sure your data is fresh is essential—otherwise, you risk having decisions or content generated about you based on stuff that’s no longer true.
There’s a lot coming with AI, and I think most of it is inevitable.
Now, switching hats a bit—I'm coming from the perspective of a technical SEO tool, so that shapes how I see things. But in my view, SEO is getting more technical. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a massive shift toward JavaScript. The web has gone all-in trying to build rich, interactive experiences, and as our devices—phones, tablets, etc.—get more powerful, they’re better able to handle it.
But that shift has created a real skills gap. A lot of SEOs don’t fully understand what’s happening under the hood. There are tools, like Sitebulb for example, that help show what JavaScript is doing to a page, but the more complex things get, the harder it becomes to interpret.
I think there’s going to be a growing need for SEOs to at least identify when an issue is being caused by JavaScript, and then have the understanding—and communication skills—to talk to developers about it clearly. I’m not saying every SEO needs to debug JavaScript themselves, but they do need to know how to have that conversation.
Honestly, I’ve always believed communication is one of the most underrated skills in SEO. And with all the complexity coming from both JavaScript and AI, being able to explain what’s happening—and why it matters—to clients, developers, and stakeholders is going to be more important than ever.
Are there any specific things you've been doing - personally or with the tool - to stay ahead of the game and make sure you’re not falling behind with all these developments?
Personally, I subscribe to a few newsletters that I think do a really good job of keeping you informed, each with a slightly different angle.
One of my favorites is Aleyda’s SEOFOMO — it covers everything. If you were only going to subscribe to one newsletter, that might be the one. It’s packed with information, which is great for coverage — you get this long list of headlines and can pick and choose what you want to dig into. That said, because there’s so much in it, the signal-to-noise ratio can be a bit high. Sometimes it’s hard to pick out the really important stuff.
So, I also like Nick’s SEOforLunch newsletter — it’s more compact and focused. You get fewer links, but they’re often closer to the heart of what matters. It covers a similar range but in a more curated way.
Another good one is the Core Updates newsletter from the team behind AlsoAsked. It’s especially useful for staying on top of changes at Google — really solid for understanding what’s going on from a broad, search-focused perspective.
And then there’s the Rich Snippets newsletter by Jamie Indigo, from Traffic Think Tank. I love Jamie’s perspective — it’s a little different, often thought-provoking. With most newsletters, the value is in the link — I’ll click through to read the article. But with Jamie’s, I genuinely look forward to her take on a topic.
So those are the four I pay the most attention to.
Outside of newsletters, I’ve been more active on LinkedIn this year. I think it’s become the platform for SEOs to share their learnings. There's a lot of good stuff floating around there lately.
As for Sitebulb, we’re still running the structured data updates we set up back when you were working with us Geoff, probably around mid-2021. We're still tracking Google’s documentation changes and reacting to them as needed.
We haven’t really gone all-in on AI within the tool just yet. I’m not convinced it makes sense for us right now, but I’m definitely curious to see how SEO tools in general adapt to it.
What we are doing — and what I think is more important than ever — is talking directly to our customers. We’re spending a lot more time understanding their pain points and how those are evolving. There’s no shortcut for that.
You just don’t get the same insights by only watching social media or reading industry posts from a distance. By having actual conversations, you really get a sense of the impact these challenges are having — and how people are thinking about solving them.
Client demands
Have you seen a shift in what clients are looking for from SEO?
So, I think there are really two sides to this—there's the agency or consultant side, and then there's the in-house side. In-house is often the end client, and now that we have Sitebulb Cloud, I’ve been speaking to more of those folks directly. But let’s start with the agency/consultant perspective.
The big thing they’re trying to do is be more proactive. Agencies in particular are feeling the pressure—it’s been a tough couple of years. In fact, it’s been a bit of a bloodbath. So a major focus for them is figuring out how to clearly demonstrate the value they’re providing to their clients.
From the outside looking in, I’ve always felt that one of the most important things agencies can do is retain their existing clients. I know what a killer churn can be to a subscription business, but I think it's equally true for an agency.
And when I talk to the more successful agencies in terms of tools and solutions they’re looking for—when it comes to our product—it’s about enabling that value. A lot of them have long-term client relationships—10, even 12 years. They’ve built deep understanding, strong trust, and can show real value.
So one of the key technological solutions they’re looking for, from a product like ours, is regular crawling.
For a long time, people got by with desktop crawlers that ran ad hoc. You’d kick off a crawl when you needed one, wait for it to finish, then use it for reporting. Back when I worked at an agency (over a decade ago now), the typical flow was: a client signs on, you do a tech SEO audit, hand over your recommendations, then shift focus to content, link-building, implementation, etc. Re-crawling the site later wasn’t always part of the routine.
But nowadays things have changed. With modern CMS platforms, content is constantly being added or updated by all kinds of people across a company. Websites are living, breathing things—they’re always evolving. The agencies that seem to be most on top of the game are the ones doing regular audits—weekly or monthly crawls.
And they’re not just crawling—they’re visualizing the changes. Looker Studio has pretty much become the go-to reporting platform. So now it’s about using regular crawling, pushing data through to Looker Studio to proactively monitor sites, spot issues before they become big problems, and clearly communicate those findings to clients—both internally and externally—with solid, robust reporting.
That covers the agency side. On the in-house side, the approach is pretty similar—they’re just doing it for themselves.
They’re also focused on regular monitoring and crawling. But what I’m seeing more now is a smarter, more targeted approach. Instead of crawling an entire site every time, they might sample. They’ll use list mode to focus on specific templates or sections of the site, looking at particular features.
Some hot topics they’re focusing on right now? No surprise here:
JavaScript rendering. People want to know the impact JS is having on their site—are there issues being introduced that they need to address?
Structured data is another big one.
And then accessibility is a growing area of interest—especially in-house. In the UK, we’ve got some upcoming legislation on accessibility, so teams are getting ahead of that.
Overall, there’s a more holistic mindset taking shape. In-house teams are thinking not just about SEO, but about broader site health and user experience. That includes Core Web Vitals and general site performance for end users.
And finally, the other trend I’m seeing—again, more on the in-house side, especially with bigger organizations—is the push to own their data. These teams want to get their crawl data into their own data warehouses so they can analyze it alongside internal data.
We recently signed a large in-house SEO customer using Sitebulb Cloud. They’ve got 800 million pages and asked us to build an auto-export feature to S3—which we’ve done and are releasing soon. They’ll be able to drop 10 million rows of crawl data into their S3 bucket, merge it with log files, Google Search Console data, whatever they want, and do their own modeling.
So yeah, this whole "big data" mindset is definitely gaining ground. These companies are building internal teams to manage and analyze it, giving them much more control and insight.
Client reporting and comms
What are the main challenges for SEOs when reporting to clients?
Um, so I think the main challenge when it comes to reporting isn’t about doing the reporting itself—we’ve got great tools for that now. Like I said, Looker Studio has really become the go-to. There are tons of templates out there, and sites like Sitebulb make it even easier.
We’ve also got a Looker Studio connector, and a method for exporting to Sheets, even if you’re working from desktop. So from a tools and setup perspective, things are solid. The bigger challenge is actually the analysis and communication part.
It's not just about producing reports. It’s about what those reports actually mean. Like, sure, you can create this super polished, all-singing, all-dancing monthly client report in Looker Studio. It pulls in data from Sitebulb on technical health, from Google Search Console, or whatever tools you're using. It looks impressive.
But if you’ve spent all that time building the report and then just send it off to the client with no explanation, it’s not doing its job. The report isn’t just a deliverable—it’s supposed to demonstrate value.
The real impact comes from interpreting that data: explaining what it means, what’s causing certain trends, what might be seasonal, or what’s just correlation versus causation. Maybe there’s been a Google update that’s affecting things—whatever the case, you’ve got to connect those dots.
So, in my view, the companies doing this well are the ones that build the report, then schedule the calls—monthly check-ins, catch-ups, whatever—to actually walk through the data with the client. That’s where the value comes through: the explanation, the insight, the context.
At the end of the day, it's about communication. Make sure that when you're talking to clients about SEO efforts and results, you're not just showing them the data—you’re helping them understand the why and the how.
Perceptions of SEO beyond the industry
Who do you think is doing good work in changing perceptions of the SEO industry?
Um, I mean—there was that big sort of flare-up with The Verge article last year, wasn’t there? It was pretty damning. And I know Lily Ray was doing a lot of work trying to, I guess, push back on behalf of SEOs. I think she does a great job in general—she’s a fantastic person to follow. She’s always sharing really useful stuff, and I think she’s a strong voice for the industry.
I’m also always interested in what Mike King is doing. He’s often trying to push the industry forward, getting people to think beyond where we are right now.
As for the impact of SEOs—or maybe this sort of ties back to your last question—I do think these kinds of articles, the ones that go viral or get a lot of attention, really shape how SEOs are perceived. Especially when you look at the recent core updates, and cases like Forbes Advisor and similar sites losing tons of visibility. That was tied to the whole site reputation abuse update, right?
I think that kind of thing reflects poorly on the SEO industry. It paints this picture like, “Oh, this was all an SEO tactic,” even if that’s not actually true. And I’m not necessarily trying to dig into the ethics of whether it’s right for, say, The Telegraph to be giving me advice on the best toaster. Are they the best source? Who knows.
But when major, well-known publications get publicly slammed like that, there’s always a big outcry—and I don’t think that’s good for SEOs. It creates a negative perception. And from the outside, most people don’t understand the context or the nuance. They just see that something bad happened.
So yeah, if I had to guess how people are seeing SEO right now, I’d say these high-profile stories are doing more harm than any quiet, positive work happening behind the scenes—despite the fact that most SEOs are genuinely trying to do good work.
The future of SEO
Can you sum up the future of SEO in one sentence?
It feels like AI is going to have a massive impact on everything. So the future of SEO really depends on how it responds to this AI arms race.
SEO has always been a reactionary game—mostly responding to what Google does. But now, it’s not just about Google. It’s also about what the AI crawlers are doing. That seems to be the new battleground: Google, the AI crawlers, and how that whole space evolves.
Once the dust settles—if it ever does—that’s what will shape the future of SEO. And honestly, it’s kind of always been that way. SEO has always reacted to shifts in the ecosystem, and I think it always will. The difference now is that we’re reacting to this growing AI-everywhere world we’re all living in.
Article by
Patrick Hathaway
Patrick Hathaway is the co-founder of Sitebulb and a leading expert in technical SEO and website auditing. With over a decade of experience, he’s known for breaking down complex SEO challenges into actionable insights. A skilled writer and speaker, Patrick is passionate about solving technical issues like JavaScript and client-side rendering, continuously pushing the boundaries of SEO innovation.
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