356 pages43 chapters10 partsUkrainian edition available
SEO 2026 Search in the AI Era
How organic search works in the age of Google AI Mode, LLMs and agents.
Mykhailo Oplakanets aka Werter
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Manifesto
Search has changed.
So has SEO.
This is not a book about “what SEO is”
In 2026, SEO does not end with a URL’s position in Google. Search now has several layers: URL discovery, crawling, rendering, canonicalization, indexing, retrieval for a query, ranking, the generated answer, citation — and only then a click or an action. If you only look at rankings, part of the system simply disappears from view.
This book explains the whole chain from URL to business outcome. No magic, no “secret ranking factors”, and no attempt to sell a new label in place of SEO. AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Bing/Copilot, GEO, AEO and LLMO are treated not as a separate universe but as new ways of retrieving information that partly rely on the same fundamentals: document accessibility, relevance, authority, site structure, links, entities and data quality.
More about the book →Four distinct layers of search visibility
ranking≠
position in the results
retrieval≠
selected to ground an answer
citation≠
credited as a source
click
a visit or an action
The whole chain from URL to outcome, in one book.
The method
Evidence first, opinions later
Step 1 of 6: Understand the system.
Topic map
Seven territories of modern search
Each topic links to real chapters of the book.
- AI Search22RAG, query fan-out and grounding23Citation26Measuring AI visibility
- Technical SEO05URL discovery06Crawling
- Affiliate SEO21Affiliate SEO
- Measurement32Google Search Console33Server logs
- Automation30SEO automation
- Risk37Spam-fighting systems, updates and manual actions38Expired domains, PBNs, paid links, parasite SEO and redirects
- Agentic Web42AI agents, machine-readable business and transactions without the classic SERP43The role of SEO after classic search
From the contents
10 parts. 43 chapters.
Audience
Who this book is for
Written for people who no longer need canonical tags explained.
The core reader is a mid-level or senior SEO, an SEO Lead or a Head of SEO: someone who already works in Search Console, knows why robots.txt and sitemaps exist, understands the basics of link building and keyword research, and wants to move from executing tasks to understanding the system.
It is also for technical SEOs, SEO product managers, affiliate SEOs, in-house and agency teams, and anyone responsible for large content sites, e-commerce, marketplaces, SaaS or international sites. It is most useful where SEO has stopped being a set of pages and become a system of thousands or millions of URLs, several markets, templates, teams and dependencies.
Free digital edition
The full Ukrainian digital edition is free — no sign-up, no subscription, no payment. The English edition is being prepared and will be published here once it is ready.
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Ukrainian print edition · 170 × 240 mm
Buy the print edition
Print copies are currently handled directly by the author. The print edition available today is the Ukrainian edition.