How a Stranger Found Me Through AI Search (And Why Your Business Is Invisible)

The new rules of getting found and what I did to make AI recommend me to cold leads who'd never heard my name

Yesterday I jumped on a discovery call with a total stranger.

Not on my mailing list. Never seen my social media. Completely cold.

I asked how they found me.

“I searched for my problem using AI and you came up.”

Think about that.

They were not searching for Deb Szabo. They were not searching for Content Catalyst Marketing Hub. They were searching for their specific problem and AI decided I was the most credible answer.

AI recommended me to someone who had never heard my name.

And that is not a one-off.

Last week someone showed up to my live training. Same story. Found me through AI search. Never heard of me before. Just turned up, ready to learn.

And before that? Two people converted to paid offers. Again, AI search.

All from people who found me because AI decided I was the credible answer to their question.

This is not luck. This is what happens when you understand how AI searches.

Business owners I talk to are concerned they’re not getting found online.

They are not coming up in search like they used to. They are spending more on ads just to stay visible. Enquiries are quieter and they cannot figure out why.

Last week I was doing a website and EEAT audit for a tourism business and we mapped out exactly where their gaps were. They wanted to understand why third party platforms like TripAdvisor and Booking.com were not recommending them. We reviewed their entire digital footprint, found what was costing them visibility, and mapped an action plan to fix it.

Getting discovered online has changed because of AI. We have to adapt, and fast.

In last week’s article, I asked if your business was ready for AI. Today we talk about the biggest shift of all.

The era of writing content just to rank on page one is over. You are no longer competing for rankings. You are competing to be trusted by AI.

What Has Actually Changed with Google Search?

Google is no longer just a search engine. It is an answer engine.

Buyers use twice as many sources before purchasing, but AI is doing the pre-filtering for them. The search journey used to end at a click. Now it ends at an AI generated summary.

If your business is not cited in that summary, you do not exist to that buyer.

What Is AEO and GEO (And Why You Need to Care)

Traditional SEO is still the foundation, but there is now another layer on top of it. Two of them actually.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) means getting your content chosen as the specific answer inside tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) means shaping how AI models consistently understand and represent your brand across the entire internet. Not just on Google. Everywhere AI lives.

Think of it this way. SEO gets you in the phone book. AEO gets you recommended. GEO makes you the only name that comes up, even when someone did not search for you specifically.

How AI Decides Who to Trust

AI does not guess who the experts are. It reads your digital footprint and decides, based on a framework called E-E-A-T.

• Experience: Do you demonstrate real, first-hand expertise in your field?

• Expertise: Is your content genuinely useful, or is it filler?

• Authoritativeness: Are you recognised as a leader and are others referencing you?

• Trustworthiness: Is your platform secure, transparent, and backed by social proof?

If you fail these checks, AI will not recommend you. It will recommend your competitor.

And this applies to every AI tool, not just Google.

ChatGPT and Perplexity do not follow Google’s rulebook directly, but they evaluate your content using almost identical signals. They scan the web, assess your authority and consistency, look for third-party mentions and structured content, and then decide what to cite. Pass Google’s EEAT test and you are almost certainly passing their trust test too. They are all reading the same digital footprint.

I Did the Work. Here Is What Happened.

I don’t just teach this. I install it.

Before any of those cold leads found me, I ran a brutal, unfiltered E-E-A-T audit on my own digital footprint. I evaluated debszabo.com strictly against Google’s guidelines.

I looked at exactly who Google thought I was. I scored my own authority. I found my trust leaks and I fixed them.

That work is paying off. AI is deciding I am worth recommending. It is why I write articles like this one, so that when someone searches for an answer to their problem, I show up as the credible source

Want to Know If AI Can Find You?

On Tuesday 10 March I am presenting a live session of the AI Marketing Glow Up webinar and we are running your business through my Marketing Scorecard. It is a diagnostic tool I created to help my clients identify exactly where they are invisible online across the essential marketing pillars Brand, Product, Offers, Content, and Systems.

Show up live and I will gift you the exact E-E-A-T Audit Prompt I used on my own site. You will walk away knowing:

• Who Google currently thinks you are (your Identity Match)

• Your marketing and digital authority score

• Your single biggest trust leak and exactly how to fix it

Stop being invisible. Find your weak spots. Install the system that makes AI work for you.

👉 Register for the AI Marketing Glow Up here