One of the confirmed sessions at MozCon’s New York date is titled “Preparing for the Death of the Open Web.” The speaker is Mike King, founder of digital marketing agency iPullRank.
It is not the most alarming talk title on the 2026 conference calendar. It might be the most honest.
The backdrop is not easy to ignore. At Google I/O 2026, the company announced the most significant overhaul of its search product in more than two decades.
It replaced the traditional search box with AI-powered information agents, rebuilding the experience around generative responses rather than ranked links.
According to a recent TNW analysis, zero-click searches now account for 60 per cent of all Google queries, and organic traffic from search to publishers has fallen 33 per cent globally.
