SEO visibility of US arts institutions. Lessons from the data, 2025-26
We wanted to understand how visible some of the most significant US arts and culture organizations are in Google search.
To do this, we picked a group of 100 major cultural institutions and used data from SISTRIX to see how performance shifted between the start of 2025 and 2026.
The results were almost evenly divided between organizations gaining visibility and those losing it.
The performing arts organizations in our sample were more likely to have gained ground, with stronger gains and more pronounced swings from one year to the next than museums and galleries. At the same time, a notable cluster of major institutions saw visibility drop by more than 50 per cent, showing just how quickly search momentum can change.
How we measured search visibility
Our sample of 100 major US arts organizations included a mix of museums, galleries, orchestras, multi-arts venues, and theaters from across the country.
The metric we used was SISTRIX’s Visibility Index. It’s a widely recognised measure of how prominent a website is in Google’s search results. It doesn’t track search traffic directly; instead, it acts more like a measure of ‘share of visibility’. This helps to control for fluctuations in overall search demand.
A single metric isn’t enough to fully capture SEO successes or failures, but the Visibility Index provides a strong indicator of overall search performance and, importantly, how that performance shifts over time. In short, it’s good enough for our purposes.
It’s also important to remember that this analysis is based on a point-in-time snapshot. Using data over a calendar year helps to reduce seasonal distortions and short-term external factors.
The top 10: who’s most visible heading into 2026?
These were the organizations with the highest visibility in Google in January 2026:
Smithsonian Institution
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum of Modern Art
American Museum of Natural History
National Gallery of Art
National WWII Museum
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Art Institute of Chicago
Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
The top 10 is dominated by large museums and art galleries. This comes as no surprise. These institutions have large, well-established websites with plenty of enduring content (including online collections and educational resources) and domain authority built over many years. They also present notable programmes of exhibitions and events,
These factors will only help improve the search profile of these institutions.
However, what stood out from the data is that, even at this level, positions aren’t fixed and can’t be taken for granted. Only a small number of the top 10 increased their level of search visibility between 2025 and 2026, and most saw modest declines.
The biggest improvements
The strongest gains mostly came from the performing arts sector:
Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library
Los Angeles Opera
Walton Arts Center
Segerstrom Center for the Arts
San Francisco Symphony
Lincoln Center Theater
The Public Theater
Shakespeare Theatre Company
Houston Grand Opera
New-York Historical Society
Some of these gains follow dips in 2025, suggesting recovery after technical or content-related issues. Others reflect steady upward momentum across multiple years.
The most dramatic percentage growth between 2025 and 2026 came from the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, which increased its visibility by 984%. Although that’s because it was starting from such a low position. As the library gears up for its scheduled opening this year, it only makes sense for its profile to have risen.
Another organization worth noting for recent growth is the Trump-Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, which increased visibility by +113% across 2025 and 2026, consolidating an already strong position. That performance is particularly notable given the institution’s recent prominence in the news: in December 2025, its board voted to rename the venue the “Trump-Kennedy Centre”, and in February 2026, President Donald Trump announced plans to close the centre for roughly two years from 4 July 2026 for a major redevelopment and reconstruction project (Time, 2026).
(We should add a graph from Sistrix here, showing this statistic visually)
Performing arts versus GLAM: a tale of two sectors
We saw a clear contrast between the two sectors in our data.
The majority of performing arts organizations increased their visibility between 2025 and 2026, with an average uplift of around +20%.
Results weren’t so good for museums and galleries. Performance across 2025 was flatter overall. Many of the largest institutions saw declines, and only a small number of major museums generated growth year-on-year.
Why might this be? Well, we’ve not done a deep dive on this, but we know from experience that traffic to performing arts organizations can be more volatile, being more closely tied to live programming and event-driven demand. An especially high-interest show (rave reviews, celebrity casting, etc) can get everyone talking and drive large amounts of traffic.
Whereas, museums typically operate vast, content-rich websites built around collections, research and educational material that make for a relatively steady search footprint. So, comparatively speaking, a bestselling exhibition might not make such a splash.
In short, the two sectors tend to operate under different search dynamics. Although we also can’t rule out particular circumstances among the organizations in our sample throwing out the data.
The institutions that struggled
Ten organizations saw their visibility drop by more than 50% between 2025 and 2026. We’re not naming names here, but they included:
A science museum (–97%)
An art museum (–96%)
An orchestra (–69%)
An orchestra (–64%)
An opera company (–63%)
An art museum (–58%)
A performing arts centre (–100%)
A ballet company (–67%)
A performing arts organization (–50%)
A performing arts organization (–50%)
Those are some sharp-looking drops, and they’re worth digging into (hopefully it hasn’t gone unnoticed at those organizations).
In some cases, 2025 was an unusually strong year driven by a blockbuster exhibition, anniversary, touring production or major programme that temporarily lifted visibility, and we’re just seeing it return to more typical levels.
A couple of those institutions changed their names and also their domain names. That explains the bigger drops. We’d like to follow up next year and see how well those migrations were handled.
The main thing to look for is something more structural going on. For instance:
A decline in rankings for high-volume non-branded searches
Weakening performance across long-tail collection or programme pages
Crawl or indexation issues, or a site migration that did not fully preserve redirects and on-page authority
Those can all lead to pronounced year-on-year losses unless action is taken to reverse the decline.
What this means for US arts institutions
Search is likely one of your most important sources of website traffic. It often accounts for anything between 40–60% of total visits.
When your visibility shifts, it can have a tangible effect. It can influence how easily new audiences discover you and how widely your collections and educational resources are accessed. Everything is a little bit easier when you’re more easily discoverable.
It’s true that the organic search landscape is becoming more complex, with changing user behaviour and AI-generated summaries.
Search traffic can’t be taken for granted the way it has been for the past 20 years or so, and institutions may need to think slightly differently about their approach.
The answer isn’t to step back from creating informational content, but to be more deliberate with it. Focus on depth and originality. Bring your expertise to the fore. Make sure your technical foundations are strong. Protect the evergreen pages that consistently attract search demand.
Search will keep on evolving. The organizations that regularly review their performance, understand where visibility is growing or declining, and adjust appropriately will be best placed to sustain their reach over time.
How One Further can help
We help arts and cultural organizations understand and improve their search visibility. Whether your rankings have dipped, are growing, or you simply want to know where you stand, we can help you identify what’s driving performance and where the opportunities lie.
Search can feel complicated, but it doesn’t have to be mysterious.
If you’d like a clear, sensible view of your position and your options, get in touch.
This post was researched and written by Dariia Blyznyuk.