profile

Hey, I'm Amber

Ask ChatGPT to recommend a business like yours. Were you on the list?

Published about 2 months ago • 2 min read
This week's teardown  ·  The AI answer era

In an AI answer, there is no page two.

Hey Reader,

Quick experiment for you. It takes 30 seconds and it might change how you think about your marketing for the rest of the year.

The 30-second experiment
01 Open ChatGPT right now. Go ahead, I'll wait.
02 Ask it to recommend a business in your industry, in your area, for the thing you actually sell.
03 It probably gave you three names. Confidently, instantly, no scrolling required. The uncomfortable question: were you one of them?
You are either named or you are invisible.

This is the shift I'm watching happen in real time. More of your customers are asking AI instead of scrolling Google. They read the AI Overview at the top of the page and never look further. They ask ChatGPT for a short list and take it. We talked about the zero-click side of this a few weeks back; this is the other half of the same story. In an AI answer there's no page two, no position seven, no “almost ranked.”

 

Before you buy someone's shiny AI course: breathe

Here's what the panic merchants won't tell you: AI search runs on fundamentals you already know.

 
What AI search actually runs on
→ Clear content that answers real questions in plain language
→ A fast, crawlable, properly indexed site a machine can actually get through
→ Schema markup that tells AI exactly what your business is
→ A reputation the rest of the web actually agrees with: reviews, mentions, and citations that back up your claims
  The finish line moved. The work did not.

The businesses getting named in AI answers are almost always the ones who did the boring fundamentals well. Not the ones who bought a prompt pack. The engine changed; the physics didn't.

 
 
⚙️ SEO term of the week
GEO: Generative Engine Optimization
By the book

The practice of optimizing your content and web presence so AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews mention, cite, or recommend your business in their generated answers.

In plain English

SEO gets you ranked on a results page. GEO gets you named in the answer itself. You'll see the acronym everywhere right now, usually attached to something expensive, so here's the honest version: it's built on the same foundation as good SEO, with extra weight on machine-readable structure and a reputation other sources confirm. If someone sells you GEO as a replacement for fundamentals instead of an extension of them, keep your wallet in your pocket.
 

Your wrench for the week

So you can see where you stand in about five minutes, I put together a one-page checklist:

 
🏁 Free download
The AI Search Visibility Checklist

Ten checks, an honest score, and a clear picture of what to fix first. One page. About five minutes. No fluff, because you know how I feel about fluff.
Get the AI visibility checklist →
 
→ Ran the experiment and the machine has no idea you exist?

That's not bad news. That's the opportunity, because most of your competitors haven't figured this out either. Reply and tell me what you asked and what the AI said. I'll tell you the first thing I'd fix. Straight answer, no course to buy.

Talk soon,

Amber
Active Media  |  SEO Sidekick  |  Ready For Traction

 

P.S. The new episode of Ready For Traction goes deep on this one, including the four things AI tools look at when deciding who to name, and the one everyone underestimates. Give it a listen.

Listen to Ready For Traction →

Hey, I'm Amber

Let's take control of your growth strategy by learning simple SEO tips each week in my newsletter!

Hey I'm Amber, a seasoned SEO coach specializing in helping marketing professionals learn SEO with ease. With a keen focus on strategy and foundational SEO, I bring a technical approach to the table. My expertise lies in communicating the three foundations of SEO to help you better craft an SEO strategy that will drive impactful results.

Read more from Hey, I'm Amber
The SEO Sidekick is cleaning up dead content from a website

This week's teardown · The undead edition There are zombies shuffling around your website. Hey Reader, It's October, so let's talk about the undead. Specifically, the ones living on your website right now. I call it zombie content. Old blog posts and forgotten pages that get no traffic, rank for nothing, and convert nobody. They're not dead, because Google still has them indexed. They're not alive, because they earn you nothing. They just shuffle along. And they are not harmless: What the...

about 24 hours ago • 3 min read
SEo Sidekick works on the fastest car in the garage

This week's teardown · Claim your lane The map pack is the podium. Three spots, no page one. Hey Reader, Quick one this week, because it's the highest-return hour in local marketing and almost nobody spends it. When someone searches “near me,” Google doesn't lead with ten links. It leads with a map and three businesses. That's the podium. If you're not one of the three, your website never even gets a shot at the click. The good news: getting into that map pack doesn't take a six-month content...

8 days ago • 2 min read
the seo sidekick explains why having multiple websites is slowing down your authority

This week's teardown · One mothership You're splitting your horsepower five ways. Hey Reader, Quick gut check. How many websites does your business actually own? Not how many do you use. How many exist. The main site, sure. But also the course site. The landing page for that webinar. The microsite from the launch two years ago. The blog someone parked on a subdomain. Go count them. I'll wait. The 90-second sprawl count 01 List every domain and subdomain your business owns. Check your...

15 days ago • 3 min read