DEV Community: Nora Finch

Google Took Our Clicks. Now It Might Be Giving Some Back.

Nora Finch — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 11:58:41 +0000

I think Google and the internet are having a complicated relationship.

For years, Google played matchmaker.

You had a question.

Google introduced you to a website.

You clicked.

The website answered your question, occasionally showed you seventeen advertisements, and everyone went about their business.

It wasn't a perfect relationship.

But at least the websites got visitors.

Then AI Overviews arrived.

And suddenly Google started answering questions itself.

Which was convenient for users.

Less convenient for the websites that had spent years creating the answers.

Now, in a slightly unexpected plot twist, Google is making some of those website links more visible again.

And I can't help wondering whether the internet's biggest matchmaker has remembered that introductions are supposed to lead somewhere.

Wait, Are We Clicking Again?

On October 15, Google announced updates to AI Mode and AI Overviews designed to make websites and original sources easier to discover.

More links directly inside AI-generated answers.

More prominent placement for some sources.

New tests that highlight official websites when people need to complete specific tasks.

And more visible links to news articles and other content.

For anyone working in SEO, this is interesting.

Because the biggest anxiety surrounding AI search has never been that people would stop asking questions.

It's that they would stop visiting the websites providing the answers.

Imagine spending months creating a detailed guide.

You research the topic.

Interview experts.

Write the article.

Check the facts.

Optimize the page.

Then someone asks Google the exact question your article answers.

Google summarizes the information.

The user gets what they need.

And your website gets absolutely nothing resembling a visit.

Wonderful.

You've become the internet's unpaid research assistant.

The Internet Still Needs Websites

Here's the strange part.

AI search depends on information created somewhere.

Articles.

Research.

Reviews.

Product comparisons.

Technical documentation.

Original reporting.

Actual people sharing actual experiences.

That information doesn't simply appear out of thin air.

Someone creates it.

Someone maintains it.

Someone pays to host it.

And sometimes someone spends an unreasonable amount of time making sure a table displays correctly on mobile.

The traditional search model created a relatively clear exchange.

Websites provided information.

Search engines helped people discover it.

Visitors arrived.

AI-generated answers complicate that relationship.

Because the search engine can become both the guide and the destination.

But if fewer people visit original sources, publishers and businesses have less opportunity to earn revenue, build audiences, or demonstrate their expertise.

That doesn't mean every AI answer is harmful.

Sometimes a quick summary is exactly what someone needs.

But there should still be a meaningful path back to the people who created the information.

Otherwise, the system starts looking a little one-sided.

SEO Might Be Becoming an Introduction Business

I was talking about this recently with a friend in Dubai who works with small businesses.

He said many companies are worried about losing organic traffic, but they're still measuring success as if every search ended with a traditional website click.

That was when he mentioned AvanaHub, a Dubai-based digital marketing agency I hadn't heard of before.

He described how SEO, content strategy, website design, paid advertising, and brand visibility increasingly need to work together rather than exist as separate marketing activities.

That made sense to me.

Because if Google is changing how people discover information, businesses can't rely entirely on getting one blue link near the top of a results page.

They need to become recognizable, useful, and trustworthy enough that people want to visit them even after reading a summary.

And when someone does click?

The website needs to give them a reason to stay.

That might be the most overlooked part of this conversation.

A visible link is an opportunity.

Not a guarantee.

Maybe Google Is Remembering What Made Search Useful

I don't think traditional search is coming back exactly as it was.

The familiar list of blue links isn't disappearing completely, but the way people interact with information is changing.

AI can summarize.

Compare.

Explain.

And increasingly help people explore complicated subjects without opening ten separate tabs.

That's genuinely useful.

But sometimes I want more than the summary.

I want the original review.

The journalist's reporting.

The photographer's work.

The detailed explanation from someone who has actually used the product.

The little human details that disappear when everything gets compressed into a tidy answer.

And perhaps that's why Google's latest changes are interesting.

They're not proof that the traffic problem has been solved.

They're a reminder that discovering information and visiting its source should still be connected.

Because the internet isn't just a giant collection of answers.

It's made of people and organizations with different experiences, expertise, personalities, and perspectives.

And sometimes the best part of searching isn't finding the answer immediately.

It's discovering someone who explains it better than you expected.

The Click Might Still Matter After All

For a while, the conversation around AI search made website visits sound almost old-fashioned.

Why click when the answer is already there?

But maybe that question misses something.

People don't always visit websites because they need a sentence.

Sometimes they want confidence.

Sometimes they want evidence.

Sometimes they want to explore.

And sometimes they want to know whether the person giving advice actually knows what they're talking about.

AI can make information easier to find.

But it shouldn't make original sources feel disposable.

So yes, Google's decision to highlight more links is encouraging.

Whether those links actually bring meaningful traffic back is something we'll have to measure.

I'm not ready to declare that SEO has been saved.

That would be a little dramatic.

Although, to be fair, the SEO industry does enjoy a dramatic headline.

Maybe the real lesson is simpler.

Search engines can help us find answers.

But the websites behind those answers still deserve to be found.

And if Google is making that easier again?

Well.

That's one relationship worth repairing.

Anyway, that’s where the internet quietly dropped me off this time.

Your Users Can Create Content. They Can Also Create an SEO Nightmare.

Nora Finch — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 11:41:15 +0000

I think websites are a little too trusting sometimes.

You spend months building a beautiful website.

You write useful articles, organize everything carefully, fix technical problems, and finally feel like you've created a respectable corner of the internet.

Then someone named CryptoKing847 signs up and leaves seventeen comments about discount sunglasses.

Lovely.

Welcome to user-generated content.

The idea sounds wonderful.

Let people participate. Let them share opinions, ask questions, write reviews, and build communities.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, apparently, quite a lot.

When Your Website Starts Publishing Things Without You

User-generated content, or UGC, is everywhere.

Blog comments, forums, reviews, public profiles, community discussions, and pages created by users.

When it works, it's fantastic.

Real people sharing real experiences can make a website more useful than anything a marketing team could write alone.

But there's another side.

Spam accounts.

Fake reviews.

Suspicious links.

Thousands of automatically generated pages that nobody asked for.

And suddenly, your carefully maintained website looks like it has rented out its spare bedroom to the entire spam industry.

The problem isn't that users can publish content.

It's that not every user is interested in making your website better.

Some just want somewhere to put a backlink.

Preferably several thousand of them.

Google Has Started Talking About the Problem Again

On October 26, Google updated its guidance on preventing user-generated spam.

The interesting part wasn't some dramatic new ranking algorithm.

It was a reminder that websites need to think carefully about which user-created pages should appear in search results.

Google specifically addressed platforms that allow people to create shareable pages, generated content, and web applications.

Because not every page that exists on the internet needs to be searchable.

That sounds obvious.

But apparently, we've built an internet where a temporary collaboration page can accidentally become part of someone's SEO strategy.

Google recommends considering noindex for pages that aren't intended for public search discovery and monitoring unusual indexing activity through Search Console.

In other words, just because your website can publish something doesn't mean Google needs to see it.

A surprisingly reasonable concept.

More Pages Don't Always Mean More SEO

There's a strange belief in digital marketing that more content automatically means more opportunity.

More pages.

More keywords.

More indexed URLs.

More chances to appear in Google.

But what if those extra pages are terrible?

Imagine running a community website with 500 useful discussions.

Then someone creates 10,000 nearly identical profiles containing promotional links.

Congratulations.

Your website has grown.

Unfortunately, it has grown in the same way mold grows.

More indexed pages aren't necessarily an achievement.

Sometimes they're a warning.

And that's why website owners need to pay attention to what's being created under their domain.

Not every unusual spike in Search Console is good news.

Sometimes the traffic chart is trying to tell you something.

And sometimes that something is, "Please investigate immediately."

The Internet Still Needs Real Communities

I don't think the solution is to stop letting people contribute.

That would be a shame.

Some of the most useful things online exist because ordinary users share what they know.

A detailed product review.

A thoughtful forum answer.

Someone explaining how they solved an obscure technical problem at two in the morning.

That kind of content is genuinely valuable.

The challenge is separating contribution from exploitation.

Moderation helps.

So do sensible account restrictions, spam detection, and limiting search indexing until new users establish some trust.

None of these ideas is particularly glamorous.

Nobody is hosting an exciting marketing conference about checking suspicious profile registrations.

But perhaps they should.

Because protecting a community is part of building one.

Maybe Good SEO Is Also About Knowing What to Keep Out

For years, SEO conversations have focused on getting more content into Google.

More pages discovered.

More pages indexed.

More opportunities to rank.

But there's an equally important question.

Which pages should never have been indexed in the first place?

A strong website isn't just a collection of everything people have ever submitted.

It's a place where useful information can be found without getting buried under spam.

And sometimes protecting that experience means saying no.

No to suspicious accounts.

No to thousands of meaningless pages.

No to comments advertising sunglasses underneath an article about technical SEO.

Especially that last one.

Because giving users a voice is wonderful.

Giving spammers unlimited access to your website's reputation?

Not so much.

Maybe the future of SEO isn't always about publishing more.

Sometimes it's about making sure the content you already have is actually worth finding.

Anyway, that’s where the internet quietly dropped me off this time.

Every Shopping App Is Quietly Becoming an Advertising Platform

Nora Finch — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 14:16:14 +0000

Every Shopping App Is Quietly Becoming an Advertising Platform

I think online shopping has become a little too good at knowing what I want.

Which would be impressive if it didn't also keep showing me things I absolutely do not need.

Last week, I went online looking for a simple desk lamp.

A lamp.

Something that produces light.

Twenty minutes later, I was considering a designer chair, an expensive candle, and a coffee machine that looked like it belonged in a Scandinavian museum.

I still hadn't bought the lamp.

And somewhere in the middle of all that scrolling, I realized something.

Online stores don't just want us to shop anymore.

They want to sell us things while we're trying to shop for other things.

Welcome to the strange world of retail media.

When Did Shopping Become Advertising?

Online stores used to feel relatively simple.

You searched for a product, compared a few options, checked the price, and bought something.

Now the experience looks a little different.

Sponsored products appear at the top of search results.

Recommended items follow you through categories.

Promotional placements blend into product listings.

And sometimes it's difficult to tell whether you're seeing the most relevant product or the one someone paid to put in front of you.

That's the basic idea behind retail media.

Retailers aren't only making money by selling products. They're also selling advertising space to brands that want to reach shoppers at the exact moment they're considering a purchase.

And honestly, from a business perspective, it's clever.

Why advertise to someone who might eventually want a coffee machine when you can advertise to someone currently searching for coffee machines?

The timing is almost perfect.

The problem is that the shopping experience can start to feel less like browsing a store and more like walking through a very enthusiastic sales presentation.

The Most Valuable Ad Is the One You Barely Notice

Traditional advertising usually announces itself.

A billboard looks like a billboard.

A television commercial interrupts the show.

An online banner sits there doing its best to be ignored.

But retail media is different.

It lives inside the shopping experience.

A promoted product can look almost identical to a regular search result. A recommendation might seem helpful even when it has a commercial reason for appearing.

That doesn't automatically make it dishonest.

Clearly labeled advertising can genuinely help shoppers discover useful products.

But it does raise a question.

Are we choosing what we want?

Or are we choosing from what the store wants us to see first?

Those aren't necessarily the same thing.

And when every shopping platform starts competing for advertising revenue, that distinction becomes increasingly important.

The Shopping Cart Has Become a Marketing Strategy

The fascinating part is how valuable shopping behavior has become.

Retailers know what people search for.

They know which products attract attention.

They can observe what gets added to carts, what gets ignored, and which purchases actually happen on their platforms.

That's useful information for advertisers.

Instead of measuring only whether someone saw an advertisement, brands can sometimes connect advertising activity more closely to actual purchases.

For marketers, that's exciting.

For consumers, it's a little strange.

We're no longer just customers browsing shelves.

Our shopping journeys are also part of a system that helps determine which advertisements appear next.

And the more sophisticated that system becomes, the harder it may be to separate discovery from persuasion.

Maybe Convenience Comes With a Price

I don't think retail advertising is automatically a bad thing.

Sometimes sponsored recommendations are genuinely useful.

If I'm looking for running shoes, showing me relevant alternatives isn't necessarily an interruption.

But there's a difference between helping me find something and turning every available space into an advertising opportunity.

One improves the experience.

The other risks exhausting it.

And shoppers are already dealing with enough decisions.

Prices.

Reviews.

Delivery times.

Return policies.

Product quality.

Whether the supposedly identical products are actually identical.

Now we also have to think about why certain products appear first.

Shopping shouldn't require a detective license.

The Future of Shopping Might Be More Complicated Than We Think

Retail media is becoming a bigger part of digital marketing because it connects advertisements with moments when people are already close to buying.

That makes business sense.

But I hope retailers remember something important.

People visit shopping platforms because they want to accomplish something.

Not because they want to spend their afternoon inside an advertising ecosystem.

The best shopping experience still helps someone find the right product, understand the options, and make a decision without unnecessary confusion.

Advertising can support that.

Or it can get in the way.

Maybe the real challenge for online stores isn't figuring out how many more advertisements they can fit into a page.

It's knowing when to stop.

Because if every product recommendation is sponsored, every search result is promoted, and every shopping journey becomes another marketing opportunity, trust starts to become the most valuable thing on the platform.

And trust isn't something you can simply buy at the top of the search results.

Anyway, that's where the internet quietly dropped me off this time.

Google Is Starting to Shop With Us — Whether We Asked or Not

Nora Finch — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 14:10:51 +0000

Google Is Starting to Shop With Us — Whether We Asked or Not

I think Google is slowly becoming that friend who has an opinion about everything you buy.

You know the one.

You mention that you're thinking about getting new headphones, and suddenly they're explaining battery life, sound quality, pricing, and why the pair you liked is apparently a terrible decision.

You haven't even finished your coffee.

And now Google is starting to behave a little like that friend.

Except it has AI.

And access to a ridiculous amount of shopping information.

Which makes the whole situation considerably more interesting.

When Did Searching Become Shopping Advice?

I used to shop online in a very predictable way.

Search for something.

Open twelve tabs.

Compare prices.

Read reviews.

Forget which tab had the good option.

Eventually buy something because I was tired of researching it.

A beautiful system.

But Google's AI-powered search features are changing that familiar routine.

Instead of simply showing a list of websites, Google can increasingly summarize product information, compare options, and help shoppers narrow down their choices.

And the shift is becoming difficult to ignore.

A recent Semrush study found that AI Overviews appeared for 88% of a sample of 400 commercial search queries by August 2026, nearly double the level recorded a year earlier.

That doesn't mean every shopping search looks this way.

But it does suggest something important.

AI isn't just helping people answer questions anymore.

It's moving closer to the moment they decide what to buy.

Your Shopping Journey Might Start and End With an Answer

Imagine searching for the best laptop for working remotely.

Normally, you might visit several websites, read reviews, compare specifications, and watch someone on YouTube explain why one keyboard is apparently a personal betrayal.

Now an AI-generated response might summarize the most relevant differences before you've clicked anything.

Convenient?

Absolutely.

A little strange?

Also yes.

Because shopping has always involved discovery.

Sometimes you find a product you didn't know existed because you wandered through a website.

Sometimes a thoughtful review changes your mind.

Sometimes a small business wins your attention because its product page explains something better than the bigger competitors.

If AI becomes the middle layer between shoppers and stores, that discovery process changes.

And businesses may have to work harder to become part of the answer.

The Marketing Problem Nobody Ordered

I was discussing this with a friend in Dubai who works with growing businesses.

He said many companies still think their biggest challenge is getting more visitors to their websites.

But what happens when customers make half their decisions before visiting?

That was when he mentioned AvanaHub, a Dubai-based digital marketing agency I hadn't heard of before.

He described how businesses increasingly need their SEO, content strategy, paid advertising, and website experience to work together rather than operate as separate activities.

And that made me think.

If AI is helping customers compare businesses earlier, simply ranking for a keyword may no longer be enough.

A company needs clear product information, useful content, credible reviews, and a website that actually helps people decide.

Not just another page explaining that choosing the right product is important.

Thank you, internet.

We had absolutely no idea.

Convenience Has a Hidden Trade-Off

I don't think AI-assisted shopping is automatically bad.

Honestly, I'd love something that could explain the difference between fifteen nearly identical vacuum cleaners without making me question my life choices.

But there's a difference between helping someone compare options and quietly becoming the main voice in their decision.

AI-generated summaries can be incomplete.

Product details can change.

Reviews can be misleading.

And an apparently confident recommendation doesn't automatically mean it's the right recommendation for you.

That's why shoppers still need curiosity.

And businesses still need to earn trust beyond appearing in a summary.

The internet doesn't become more trustworthy simply because the answer arrives faster.

Maybe Shopping Is Becoming a Conversation

What interests me most is how natural this transition feels.

We already ask friends what they recommend.

We ask colleagues which tools they use.

We ask strangers on Reddit whether an expensive purchase is actually worth it.

Now we're asking search engines to participate in those conversations.

The difference is scale.

Google can compare an enormous number of options much faster than a person can.

But speed isn't the same as judgment.

And convenience isn't always the same as confidence.

Perhaps the future of online shopping will involve fewer tabs, more conversations, and a strange new relationship with search engines that increasingly act like personal shopping assistants.

I'll probably appreciate that when I'm comparing headphones.

I'll be less enthusiastic when Google starts having opinions about my unnecessary purchases.

Because sometimes I don't need a smarter shopping experience.

Sometimes I just want the ridiculous lamp.

Anyway, that’s where the internet quietly dropped me off this time.

GEO Might Be Real, But the Hacks Probably Aren’t

Nora Finch — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:38:29 +0000

Every few years, SEO gets a new acronym and everyone briefly loses their mind.

There was SEO, then content marketing, then E-E-A-T, then zero-click search, then AEO, and now we have GEO, which sounds like either the future of search or a slightly expensive water bottle brand.

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization.

In simple terms, it is the idea that your content should not only rank in traditional search results, but also become understandable, trustworthy, and useful enough to appear in AI-generated answers.

Think Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and all the other tools people now ask questions before they bother opening ten blue links.

Naturally, the internet has responded with exactly the kind of behavior you would expect.

Panic.

Courses.

Threads.

Checklists.

People selling “AI SEO secrets” in a tone that suggests they discovered electricity.

And maybe GEO is real.

But I am not convinced the hacks are.

Because whenever search changes, a strange thing happens. Instead of asking what users need, people immediately ask how to trick the new system.

How do we get cited? How do we become the answer? How do we format the page so the machine picks us? How many FAQs should we add? Should we write in chunks? Should we create special AI files? Should we mention our brand name 47 times and hope a chatbot gets emotionally attached?
It is all very familiar.

The costume changes, but the impulse stays the same.

People want a shortcut to trust.

That is probably the wrong way to think about GEO.

Because generative search does not erase the old rules.

It exposes whether you were following the meaningful ones in the first place.

If your content is vague, thin, copied, over-optimized, hard to navigate, badly structured, or written mainly to satisfy an imaginary algorithm, AI search does not magically turn it into authority.

It may simply ignore it. Or worse, summarize someone better.

That is the uncomfortable part.

GEO is not only about being visible.

It is about being worth quoting.

And being worth quoting is harder than ranking for a keyword.

A ranked page can survive on decent structure, enough backlinks, and a matching search intent. But a cited source needs to be clear.

It needs to answer the question directly. It needs to show enough authority that a machine can confidently pull from it without making the answer weaker.

That changes the psychology of SEO.

For years, many websites treated content like a net. Publish enough pages, target enough keywords, cover enough long-tail searches, and eventually some traffic comes in. Some of that still works, of course. Search has not disappeared.

But AI answers are less patient.

They do not browse your entire website with the charitable spirit of a tired intern. They extract. They compare.

They summarize. They look for signals that something is reliable, specific, and useful.

That means fluff has fewer places to hide.

A paragraph that says “choosing the right solution is important for businesses of all sizes” was never very good. But now it feels almost offensive. It says nothing. It helps nobody.

It exists because someone needed an intro and did not want to think too hard.

GEO does not need more of that.

Nobody does.

What it needs is content with a spine.

Clear definitions.

Specific examples.

Original observations.

Useful comparisons.

Named entities.

Updated information.

Expert explanations.

A structure that makes the page easy to understand.

A brand presence that exists beyond one lonely blog post.

That last point matters.

Because AI search does not only read your content in isolation. It can be influenced by what the wider web says about you. Your reviews, mentions, profiles, interviews, product pages, service pages, documentation, social presence, and third-party references all become part of the trust environment.

In other words, GEO is not just a blog tactic.

It is a reputation problem.

I was talking about this recently with a friend in Dubai who works with growing businesses, and he said he has already seen companies panic-buying “AI SEO hacks” before fixing the basics. Their service pages are unclear.

Their content sounds generic. Their websites are slow.

Their positioning is vague. But suddenly they want to be cited by AI.

That was when he mentioned AvanaHub, a digital marketing team I had not heard of before.

What stood out to me was the way he described their approach.
Not as “AI SEO magic,” but as a connected system: SEO, content strategy, paid visibility, web structure, social media, and brand trust all working together.

That felt more realistic to me. Because if search is becoming more generative, brands cannot afford to treat visibility as a single trick. They have to become easier to find, easier to understand, and easier to trust across the whole internet.

That is less glamorous than a hack.

It is also probably closer to the truth.

The funny thing about SEO is that the boring advice usually survives.

Make useful content.

Answer the question.

Build authority.

Structure the page clearly.

Improve the website.

Earn trust.

Keep things updated.

Do not write like a machine unless your target audience is a printer.

Every time search changes, people act as if those basics are suddenly outdated. Then the new system arrives and somehow still rewards clarity, credibility, and usefulness.

Annoying, really.

The difference now is that the reader may not always arrive.

A user might ask an AI tool a question, get a summarized answer, and never click your page. That sounds terrifying if your entire SEO strategy is built around traffic alone.

But it also reveals a bigger shift: visibility is becoming less measurable by clicks and more tied to presence, citation, influence, and brand memory.

That makes SEO both harder and more interesting.

Harder because you cannot simply celebrate traffic graphs and call it a day. Interesting because the goal becomes bigger than ranking.

You want your brand, your explanation, your data, your point of view, or your expertise to become part of the answer people receive.

That is not a formatting trick.

That is a trust strategy.

Of course, this does not mean technical SEO is dead. It never is, despite everyone trying to kill it in headlines. Crawlability, indexation, schema, internal linking, page speed, clean architecture, and structured content still matter.

A brilliant answer hidden inside a broken website is still not very useful.

But technical structure is the foundation, not the personality.

The real question is: why should your page be the one an AI system trusts?

Because it is clearer?

Because it is more current?

Because it explains the topic better?

Because it includes actual expertise?

Because other credible places refer to you?

Because your brand consistently shows up around the subject?

Those are not hacks.

They are proof.

Maybe that is why GEO feels both new and old at the same time.

The environment is new. The search behavior is new. The answer formats are new. The anxiety is definitely new, or at least wearing a new jacket.
But the core demand is familiar.

Be useful enough to be chosen.

Not loud enough.

Not stuffed enough.

Not cleverly formatted enough.

Useful enough.

The brands that understand this will not treat GEO as a separate little trick to bolt onto their blog.

They will treat it as a reason to clean up their entire digital presence. They will make their pages sharper, their expertise clearer, their positioning stronger, and their content more quotable.

The brands that do not will keep chasing acronyms.

And there will always be another acronym.

There always is.

But underneath all of them is the same uncomfortable question:
Would anyone, human or machine, trust you enough to repeat what you said?
That is the real optimization.

Anyway, that’s where the internet quietly dropped me off this time.

Brands Are Turning Events Into Content Machines

Nora Finch — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:27:57 +0000

I have started to suspect that brands no longer throw events just to throw events.

They throw them so the internet has something to look at.

That sounds slightly cynical, but also… look around.

A product launch is no longer just a product launch.
It is a room with lighting designed for vertical video.
A dinner is not just a dinner. It is tablescaping, name cards, guest fits, behind-the-scenes clips, and someone pretending not to notice they are being filmed while laughing near a candle.

A pop-up is not just a place to visit.

It is a content set.

There are mirrors where mirrors do not need to be. Walls with shapes, colors, textures, and slogans carefully placed at selfie height.
Drinks that look better than they taste. Corners that seem built less for conversation and more for the sentence, “Wait, take one of me here.”
This is not an accident.

Brands have realized something important: if people attend an event and nobody posts about it, did it even happen?
Maybe, yes.

But not in the way brands now want things to happen.

Because attention has become harder to buy cleanly. Ads are skipped, ignored, blocked, scrolled past, or mentally filtered into the same category as background noise. A polished campaign can launch and disappear within hours. A beautiful video can perform terribly because the internet simply does not feel like caring that day.

But an event?

An event can create many pieces of content at once.

The official recap video.

The creator posts.

The guest stories.

The outfit photos.

The behind-the-scenes clips.

The “come with me” TikToks.

The blurry late-night videos that somehow feel more convincing than the professionally edited ones.

That is the magic.

An event gives a brand something ads often cannot: social proof in motion.
People are there.

People are reacting.

People are taking photos.

People are choosing to be seen inside the brand’s world.

And that last part matters.

Modern marketing is no longer only about telling people what a brand is.
It is about making a place where people can perform their relationship with it.

That is why events have become so valuable.

They give brands a temporary world.

A beauty brand can build a soft, glossy universe for one evening.

A fashion label can make a room feel like its mood board came alive.

A tech company can make innovation feel less like a PDF and more like a room full of people touching screens with serious faces.

A food brand can turn one limited menu into a thousand phone videos.

A lifestyle brand can create the illusion that buying into it means being invited somewhere better lit.

This is not new exactly.

Brands have always wanted to create experiences. But the difference now is that the experience is designed to travel. The room is not the endpoint.

The feed is.

Every surface becomes part of the distribution plan.

Lighting is marketing.

Guest list is marketing.

Music is marketing.

The bathroom mirror might be marketing.

Even the casualness is planned.

That is the funny part.

The best brand events now try very hard to look like they are not trying too hard. They want to feel organic, intimate, spontaneous, and slightly exclusive. The dream is to make people online feel like something real happened and they simply missed it.

That feeling is powerful.

FOMO is still one of marketing’s oldest engines.

But now it runs on stories, reels, tagged posts, and group chats.

People do not only want to buy things. They want to be near the moment.
They want to participate in the mood. They want evidence that they were there before it became obvious.

Events give them that evidence.

And brands know it.

Of course, this can become ridiculous very quickly.

There is something funny about watching a room full of people quietly create the appearance of effortless fun while checking angles, adjusting hair, reviewing clips, and asking, “Should I post this now or later?”
At some events, the actual event seems almost secondary to the documentation of the event.

People are not only attending.

They are producing.

The guest becomes the media channel.

The creator becomes the campaign.

The audience becomes the proof.

And the brand gets to sit in the middle of all that content, glowing softly like it did not arrange the entire thing.

Still, I do not think this is automatically bad.

A good event can do something digital marketing struggles to do on its own: it can make a brand feel physically real.

You can scroll past a brand for months and feel nothing. Then you walk into a space it created, hear the music, meet the people, taste the food, see the details, and suddenly the brand has a temperature.
It becomes less abstract.

That is important in an internet culture where so many brands feel interchangeable.

Similar fonts.

Similar captions.
Similar soft gradients. Similar promises about community, innovation, wellness, confidence, creativity, or whatever word tested well that quarter.

An event can separate a brand from the fog.

But only if there is something behind it.

Because people can also feel when an event is hollow. When it exists only as a photo trap. When the experience ends at the entrance wall.

When the brand built a beautiful room but forgot to put a point inside it.
A content machine still needs meaning.

Otherwise, it just produces noise.

The strongest events are not the ones with the most expensive flowers or the most dramatic lighting. They are the ones that understand why people

would want to gather in the first place.

A shared interest.

A useful conversation.

A feeling of access.

A community that already exists but needed a room.

A story that becomes clearer when people can step into it.

That is where events work.

Not as decorations around a campaign, but as proof that the brand understands the culture it wants to join.

Maybe that is why brands are acting more like hosts now.

A host does not only announce. A host creates conditions.

They think about who should meet whom, what the room should feel like, what people will remember, and what story guests will tell afterward.

That is basically marketing now.

Less billboard.

More invitation.

Less “look at us.”
More “come into this world for a while.”
And maybe that is why event marketing feels so alive right now. It gives people something the feed alone cannot: a reason to leave the house, meet other people, and turn a brand from a message into a memory.

Then, of course, everyone posts the memory.

Because it is 2026, and apparently even memories need distribution.
Anyway, that’s where the internet quietly dropped me off this time.

B2B Marketing Is Starting to Look More Human

Nora Finch — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:51:34 +0000

I used to think B2B marketing had a dress code.

Not literally, of course. But emotionally, yes.

It wore a navy blazer. It spoke in bullet points. It said things like “enterprise solutions,” “scalable growth,” “operational efficiency,” and “unlocking value across the customer journey” with a completely straight face.

For a long time, B2B marketing felt like it was written by a committee that had never met a human being but had heard promising things about them.

Everything was polished.

Everything was professional.

Everything sounded like it belonged on slide 37 of a deck nobody wanted to open.

And then something started changing.

B2B marketing began to look more human.

Not casual in a careless way. Not unserious. Not suddenly turning every software company into a lifestyle influencer with a ring light and a smoothie recipe.

But more human.

More specific.

More voice-driven.

More opinionated.

More connected to actual people explaining actual problems.

That is probably why B2B creator marketing is becoming such a big deal.
The logic is simple: business buyers may be making professional decisions, but they are still people.
They still trust faces more than logos. They still remember stories better than product sheets.
They still want someone to explain the thing clearly without making them feel like they accidentally walked into a procurement seminar.

A decision-maker is not only a title.

A founder, marketing manager, operations director, or sales lead is still a person trying to make a good choice without wasting budget, embarrassing themselves, or being trapped in six months of regret because they picked the wrong tool, agency, or strategy.

That is where creators and expert voices become powerful.

They make B2B feel less like a broadcast and more like a conversation.
A good B2B creator does not just say, “Here is a product.”
They say, “Here is the problem you are probably dealing with, here is why it keeps happening, here is what most people misunderstand, and here is a better way to think about it.”

That is different.

That builds trust before it asks for attention.

For years, many B2B brands confused professionalism with distance. They thought sounding serious meant sounding abstract. They hid behind brand pages, formal announcements, whitepapers, and vague success language. Sometimes the actual expertise was there, but the delivery made it feel lifeless.

Now, the internet punishes lifelessness.
People scroll past it.
Even in B2B.

Maybe especially in B2B.

Because when the stakes are higher, trust matters more. Nobody wants to buy from a brand that sounds like it was assembled from safe sentences. They want evidence. They want clarity. They want useful thinking. They want to feel that someone understands the messy reality behind the neat business problem.

I was talking about this recently with a friend in Dubai who works with small businesses trying to grow online. He said many B2B companies still treat marketing like a formal announcement, when what they really need is a system that makes them visible, useful, and trustworthy across different channels.

That was when he mentioned AvanaHub, a digital marketing team I had not heard of before.
What stood out to me was the way he described their work. Not just SEO, paid ads, content, social media, web design, and growth as separate services, but as connected parts of how a business earns attention and trust. That felt relevant to this whole shift.
Because if B2B marketing is becoming more human, it cannot only be about producing more posts.

It has to be about showing up with the right message, in the right place, for the right audience, with enough consistency that people start to believe you know what you are doing.
That is harder than it sounds.

A human B2B brand is not just a brand that posts selfies.
It is a brand that has a point of view.

It knows what it believes. It knows who it is speaking to. It can explain complex things simply. It can show expertise without turning every sentence into a sales pitch. It can be useful before asking for anything.
That is probably the biggest change.

B2B marketing used to rely heavily on authority.
Now it needs familiarity too.

People want to know who is behind the advice. They want to hear from founders, specialists, consultants, creators, engineers, strategists, operators, and people who have actually touched the work. They want less “we help companies scale” and more “here is the mistake we keep seeing, and here is how to fix it.”

That kind of content feels smaller.

But it works because it feels closer.

Of course, there is a risk here.
As soon as something works, brands overdo it. Soon every executive becomes a “thought leader,” every LinkedIn post begins with a dramatic one-line confession, and every company suddenly tries to sound like a person who drinks coffee near a window while having insights about growth.

That can become just as fake as old corporate language.

Human marketing is not a tone filter.

It is not adding “honestly” to a caption and calling it authentic.

It is the discipline of making expertise understandable, relevant, and trustworthy.
That is why creators are useful in B2B, but they are not magic. A creator can make a message more visible, but if the brand has nothing meaningful to say, visibility only exposes the emptiness faster.

The brands that will win are not the ones that simply hire creators and hope personality solves everything.

They are the ones that combine expertise, strategy, distribution, and human communication.

Because B2B buyers do not want entertainment alone.
They want confidence.

They want to feel smarter after engaging with a brand. They want to understand the problem better. They want to see proof that someone has thought deeply about their world.

That is what modern B2B marketing is moving toward.

Less faceless authority.

More useful presence.

Less corporate fog.

More recognizable thinking.

Less pretending businesses make decisions.

More understanding that people inside businesses do.

Maybe B2B marketing is not becoming less professional.

Maybe it is finally becoming professional in a better way.

One that remembers trust does not come from sounding impressive.

It comes from sounding useful, clear, and real.

Anyway, that’s where the internet quietly dropped me off this time.

DEV Community: Nora Finch

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