{"id":1290,"date":"2026-07-24T08:40:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/?p=1290"},"modified":"2026-07-24T08:40:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:40:31","slug":"your-brands-new-job-interview-getting-recommended-by-ai-chatbots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/your-brands-new-job-interview-getting-recommended-by-ai-chatbots\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Brand’s New Job Interview: Getting Recommended by AI Chatbots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your Brand’s New Job Interview: Getting Recommended by AI Chatbots<\/strong><\/h1>\n

You ask ChatGPT (or your preferred AI service) for a decent pair of running shoes. It doesn’t send you a list of links to scroll through \u2014 it just tells you. Three options, a short reason for each, done. You don’t visit a single website. You just buy one.<\/p>\n

For twenty years, the marketing playbook was simple: get your website onto page one of Google, and the customers would follow. Increasingly, a growing share of consumers are skipping that step entirely \u2014 asking an AI assistant instead, and acting on whatever it recommends. Brands are no longer just competing to be found. They’re competing to be recommended.<\/p>\n

So how does a chatbot decide what to recommend? Not through backlinks and keyword density, the traditional currency of SEO. AI systems are trained to trust content that is genuinely useful, clearly structured, and consistently validated across multiple credible sources \u2014 a comparison article, a review site, and a forum thread all quietly agreeing with each other. This emerging discipline has been labelled Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), or AI Engine Optimisation (AEO), depending which corner of the industry you ask.<\/p>\n

The challenge for businesses is that this kind of visibility happens somewhere they can’t easily monitor or control. There is no ranking to check and no dashboard to track in real time. A brand is either mentioned by the AI, or it isn’t \u2014 and there is currently limited visibility into which potential customers were lost to a chatbot’s silence rather than a competitor.<\/p>\n

The reassuring part is that the underlying fundamentals have not changed as much as it first appears. AI models continue to favour brands that are genuinely useful, clearly explained, and well regarded elsewhere \u2014 meaning the businesses being rewarded are, largely, the ones already doing good work.<\/p>\n

The practical response, then, isn’t to chase a new algorithm. It’s to double down on what good marketing has always required, with slightly higher stakes: be genuinely useful, be consistent across every channel where you’re mentioned, and be the kind of business other people speak well of when you’re not in the room.<\/p>\n

Because increasingly, that’s the only interview that matters.<\/p>\n

Are you finding this when you ask your chosen AI provider for advice? And are you happy with their advice? Let me know in the comments below, love to get your viewpoint!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your Brand’s New Job Interview: Getting Recommended by AI Chatbots You ask ChatGPT (or your preferred AI service) for a decent pair of running shoes. It doesn’t send you a list of links to scroll through \u2014 it just tells you. Three options, a short reason for each, done. You don’t visit a single website. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,3,248],"tags":[252,249,256,258,250,251,255,253,254,257],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-technology-trends","category-internet-marketing","category-small-business-tips","tag-aeo","tag-ai-marketing","tag-ai-search","tag-brand-visibility","tag-chatbot-recommendations","tag-chatgpt-marketing","tag-digital-marketing-2026","tag-generative-engine-optimisation","tag-seo-trends","tag-small-business-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1291,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions\/1291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}