The team at Hookflash attended the Women in Tech SEO Conference at the Barbican Centre in London on 5 February. In a day filled with inspiring speakers and meaningful conversations, a number of key themes emerged - from AI search and AI agent experiences to human-centred content, trust, and storytelling.

The event brought together a diverse and inclusive community of SEO professionals, highlighting important conversations around representation, mentorship, leadership, and the future of the industry. It was a pleasure to be part of such an inspiring and valuable space.

Upcoming events will take place in Portland (7 May 2026), Philadelphia (1 October 2026), and London on 19 March 2027.

How AI Agents Are Changing the Way Brands Show Up in Search

Speaker: Crystal Carter

The conference opened with a powerful talk from Crystal Carter on the rise of the agentic web and what it means for brands in the future of search.

Crystal spoke about the fact that agents are no longer just a new channel - they are active participants in the customer journey, researching, validating, and acting on behalf of users.

For example, imagine a user says: “I want to go on a winter holiday.”

An AI agent immediately takes over. It understands their preferences, researches destinations, compares options, checks reviews, and shortlists the best choices. By the time the user arrives on a brand’s website, the decision is almost made.

At that point, the website’s role is not to convince, but to validate, confirming the details, building trust, and enabling a seamless booking.

This is exactly how the agentic web is changing search: agents drive discovery and decision-making, while websites act as the final trust and action layer.

Crystal Carter also shares a deeper look at this shift in her article on the agentic web.

As adoption accelerates, brands must move beyond visibility and begin focusing on compatibility, validation, and actionability. This means building websites that are not only user-friendly, but also machine-readable, structured, and trustworthy.

Success in the agentic web will depend on close collaboration between marketing, development, and product teams, ensuring that every digital touchpoint can be understood and executed by AI systems.

In this new era, the brands that win will be those that empower agents to act with confidence.

AI Search and the Evolution of SEO

Speaker: Aleyda Solis

Another session I really enjoyed was Aleyda Solis’ talk on AI search. She opened her talk by addressing one of the biggest misconceptions around AI search today that AI is replacing search and that SEO is dying.

Over the past year, this narrative has dominated the industry. However, as Aleyda explained, the reality is very different. AI is not replacing search, it is expanding it. While LLMs are growing rapidly, traditional search still dominates, and most users now combine both experiences. The real shift is not replacement, but transformation.

One of the biggest changes is what Solis describes as the “great decoupling” between influence and clicks. In AI-driven environments, users can get answers, compare brands, and form opinions without ever visiting a website. This means traffic is no longer the only measure of success. SEO is evolving from driving clicks to shaping visibility, perception, and trust across the entire journey.

Despite this shift, SEO remains essential. AI systems still rely on web content for grounding and accuracy, meaning websites remain the foundation of AI-generated answers. High-quality, structured, and authoritative content enables brands to appear in AI responses. In simple terms, good SEO equals strong AI visibility.

Five Key Shifts Reshaping Search

Aleyda outlined five key shifts shaping search in the AI era:

Search behaviour – from short keywords to conversational, multi-step, task-based queries
Query handling – from single queries to AI-driven query fan-out
Optimisation target – from page-level relevance to passage-level extraction
Authority signals – from backlinks alone to mentions, citations, and entity authority
Results format – from ranked links to synthesised, cited answers

Each of these shifts changes how brands approach content, authority, and visibility.

How SEO measurement is evolving

If users don’t always click, success can’t be measured by traffic alone.

Traditional metrics: rankings, clicks, traffic
Emerging AI metrics: AI visibility, mentions and citations, sentiment and perception, revenue impact

SEO is no longer just a performance channel, it is also a branding channel.

How to Stay Competitive in AI Search

To stay competitive in an AI-driven search landscape, brands should focus on three core areas:

1. Build full-funnel topical authority
Create structured, intent-driven content across awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase stages.

2. Optimise for extractability
Use clear headings, concise answers, and strong internal structure so AI systems can easily retrieve and use your content.

3. Strengthen off-site authority
Increase positive mentions, citations, and sentiment across trusted third-party platforms. Research shows that a significant share of AI citations come from external sources.

How AI Search Is Expanding Discovery Beyond Google into a Full Search Ecosystem

Search is no longer limited to Google. Users now discover and evaluate brands across AI platforms, social media, and online communities. SEO is no longer about optimising for one platform, but for the entire search ecosystem.

As AI search expands this ecosystem, trust and credibility are becoming just as important as visibility.

How Reddit Is Shaping Trust and Visibility in AI Search

Speaker: Victory Umurhurhu

AI search is reshaping not just how people discover brands, but where they trust them. As zero-click behaviour rises and AI answers become the first touchpoint, visibility increasingly depends on being cited in credible, human-driven sources.

Platforms like Reddit are becoming increasingly important in AI search. With millions of active communities and growing visibility in search results, Reddit is now one of the main places where real user opinions shape how brands are perceived. Partnerships with Google and OpenAI, along with Reddit’s rapid rise in search visibility, mean that these real conversations are now shaping how brands appear in AI search.

Human-first participation beats polished messaging in the AI search era.

Data Storytelling for SEO

Speaker: Tina Reis

Tina showed that data storytelling is not just about informing, but about connecting. Data makes our recommendations credible, but it becomes powerful when it is structured clearly and communicated in a way that resonates with stakeholders.

Simplifying SEO Data

As SEOs, we focus on metrics like traffic and clicks, but stakeholders care about impact. Strong data storytelling translates performance into what matters to them: growth, risk, and revenue. The key is to present only the data that supports the message, reducing noise and guiding attention to the insight that drives action.

Emotional Buy-In

Data alone isn’t enough. A clear narrative helps stakeholders understand why the insight matters and what to do next. When people feel part of the solution, they are more likely to act.

Ultimately, data storytelling turns insight into action by making the message clear, relevant, and meaningful.

Key Takeaways

Across the talks, one message came through clearly: search is evolving, but its core principles remain the same.

AI is reshaping how users discover, evaluate, and choose brands - from ensuring websites are prepared for agentic browsers to appear in AI-generated search answers. As users increasingly get answers without clicking through, visibility is no longer just about rankings or clicks, but about being present, credible, and useful across multiple platforms.

For brands, this means going beyond traditional optimisation. It’s about creating structured, accessible, human-centric content, building authority, and showing up authentically in the spaces where real conversations are already happening like Reddit.

It also means being present across the wider search ecosystem and ensuring seamless, frictionless experiences that support both human users and AI agents throughout the journey.

At Hookflash, we’re excited to take these insights forward and apply them in our work - helping brands stay visible, trusted and relevant as search continues to evolve.

If this is something you’re exploring too, we’d love to continue the conversation.