No. UK search demand for buying SEO is at its highest point in four years. “seo agency”, “seo company” and “seo services” together averaged 18,055 monthly UK searches in 2023 and 32,442 in the first seven months of 2026. The AI search vocabulary that is supposed to be replacing it, “generative engine optimisation”, “ai visibility” and “geo agency” combined, averaged 2,721 over the same seven months. That is a ratio of about twelve to one.
There is a caveat that weakens the size of the rise. It is set out below rather than left in a footnote. What it does not weaken is the direction. Not one month since December 2024 sits below the 2023 average.
This is the first question in buying AI search work, which also covers what an audit costs, who sells it and what the tools do.
Where do these figures come from?
Method. Ahrefs keywords-explorer-volume-history, GB market, monthly, January 2023 to July 2026, pulled on 10 August 2026. Six keywords: three that mean somebody is buying SEO, three that mean somebody is buying the thing said to replace it.
August 2026 is excluded from every figure. A third-party traffic or volume series has not settled in its current month. A percentage calculated against it will change under you. The series runs to 31 July.
What does the demand actually look like?
| Term | 2023 avg | 2024 avg | 2025 avg | 2026 Jan-Jul avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| seo agency | 8,062 | 9,140 | 14,850 | 16,249 |
| seo company | 4,144 | 4,978 | 7,234 | 7,349 |
| seo services | 5,848 | 6,837 | 9,895 | 8,844 |
| Buying SEO, combined | 18,055 | 20,955 | 31,979 | 32,442 |
| generative engine optimisation | 2 | 163 | 1,156 | 1,156 |
| ai visibility | 4 | 15 | 215 | 970 |
| geo agency | 21 | 20 | 429 | 595 |
| Buying AI search, combined | 27 | 198 | 1,800 | 2,721 |
The second block is the one people write about. It has grown from effectively nothing, which is genuinely the fastest-growing thing in this market. It is also 8% the size of the first block.
Both of those sentences are true at once. Which one you hear depends entirely on whether the speaker quotes a growth rate or a volume.
What is the caveat?
All three SEO terms step up sharply in the same eight-week window in early 2025.
Between February and April 2025, “seo agency” rose 14%, “seo services” 43% and “seo company” 70%. A whole basket moving together in one quarter is the signature of a change in how the source estimates volume, not of the UK suddenly buying half as much SEO again. Ahrefs does not publish revisions to its volume model, so this cannot be separated from real demand with the data available.
So treat the headline size with suspicion. A methodology change would inflate the 2023 to 2026 comparison and there is no way from outside to say by how much.
Three things survive it.
Direction. A methodology change adds level. It does not manufacture the absence of a fall. The lowest month for “seo agency” across the whole of 2025 and 2026 is 9,780, against a 2023 average of 8,062. There is no month in nineteen where demand for hiring an SEO agency in the UK came in under its 2023 baseline.
The within-2026 picture, which is immune to a 2025 step. “seo agency” has run 16,518, 16,185, 15,904, 15,771, 16,182, 16,272 and 16,914 from January to July. Flat, at the top of the series.
The ratio. Both baskets are estimated by the same model on the same day, so whatever bias applies to one applies to the other. Twelve to one is the most defensible number on this page.
Then why does everyone say it is dead?
Look at what sits on the search results for the question.
On the UK SERP for “is seo dead”, crawled by Ahrefs on 18 July 2026, an AI Overview occupies position one and cites ten sources. Beneath it are seven organic results. Three of the ten cited sources also rank. The rest of page one is Forbes, Entrepreneur, Neil Patel, Backlinko and a Reddit thread. Almost every one of them is written by somebody who sells a service on the answer.
That is the mechanism. “SEO is dead” is a headline that has been reliably profitable to write since roughly 2009. It is now also the fastest way to open a conversation about a new budget line. Neither of those makes it false. It does mean the claim arrives pre-loaded. The demand data is the cheapest available check on it.
What is genuinely changing?
The click, not the demand. Those are different questions and they get answered as if they were one.
Demand for buying SEO is holding. What has moved is how much of a search ends in a visit, which is a separate measurement with its own problems. Ten UK agencies over 24 months produces two opposite headlines from the same table depending on the start month, which is worth reading before accepting any figure about falling traffic, including a pessimistic one.
The other change is where the naming happens. Across twelve UK search results we measured, 54% of the sources an AI Overview cited did not rank in the organic top ten beneath it. So there is now a second place to be present on the same page. Roughly half of it is not won by ranking.
That is a real change and it is not the same claim as “SEO is dead”. It is closer to: the results page grew a second half. Most people are only measuring the first one.
One number we cannot explain
“geo agency” ran at 1,141 monthly UK searches in March 2026, then 300 in April. It has stayed between 300 and 407 every month since. A 74% step down with no recovery over four months.
We do not know what caused it. The series is internally consistent, since a trailing twelve-month average from these monthly figures comes to 665 against Ahrefs’ own headline volume of 700 for the same term. So this is what the source reports rather than a pull error. It is recorded here unexplained, because a term losing three quarters of its demand inside one month is exactly the sort of figure that gets quoted as a trend by whoever it suits.
So should you keep doing it?
Two questions decide it. Neither is answered by the word “dead”.
- Do your buyers still search? The demand data above is for people buying SEO, not for your market. Pull your own terms before deciding anything. If the queries that bring you enquiries are flat or growing, the channel has not gone anywhere.
- Is anything you would fix for search also a citation problem? Crawl access, an answer in the opening lines, being named on the third-party pages other people read. All three serve both halves of the page. Work that only serves one half is where the budget question actually sits.
For what the AI half costs to buy, every published UK price we could verify is on one page. For measuring your own position before spending anything, the afternoon method needs a spreadsheet and no budget.
Data in this article: Ahrefs keywords-explorer-volume-history, country=gb, monthly, January 2023 to July 2026, pulled 10 August 2026. August 2026 excluded as an unsettled month. Headline volume for “geo agency” from Ahrefs keywords-explorer-overview, GB. SERP composition for “is seo dead” from Ahrefs serp-overview, GB, SERP crawled 18 July 2026. Search volume measures people looking to buy a service, which is a proxy for the health of that service rather than a measurement of it.