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ALT SEO Was About Being Found. AEO Is About Being Believed. Pulak Barua Pulak Barua Associate Director | Digital Marketing & MarTech | SEO, Accessibility, Programme Delivery | 25 Years | London August 10, 2026 A friend in India asked me for a favour last week: find a cheap 10-inch Android tablet, just for watching OTT content, with a budget under ₹10,000. I did what most people do now. I asked ChatGPT instead of Googling it. It gave me a solid options on Amazon, then a second suggestion from a site I'd never heard of. The price was noticeably lower than anything on Amazon or Flipkart for the same specs. That gap is usually the first sign something's off, so I asked ChatGPT directly whether the site was legitimate. It told me the site likely wasn't. Payments taken, no product shipped. Fake customer support numbers. Requests for advance UPI payment even when "Cash on Delivery" was displayed at checkout. Multiple Reddit threads warning that the well-known offline electronics retailer the

ALT Disappointed with @British_Airways Customer Relations. I travelled on a **single PNR (DXRSDB)** from **London Heathrow to Hyderabad** via Mumbai. Before travelling, BA customer support advised me to purchase excess baggage at Heathrow because my itinerary involved two airlines. At Heathrow, I informed the BA agent that my final destination was Hyderabad. The agent processed my payment and assured me everything was in order. When I reached Mumbai, Air India informed me the excess baggage had only been processed up to Mumbai. I had no option but to pay approximately **£736** again to continue my journey. Despite multiple emails, BA has simply stated that the baggage was sold only to Mumbai, without explaining **why their Heathrow agent processed it that way or why I was assured there would be no issue.** Case Ref: **12822901** I'm simply asking British Airways to properly investigate what happened at Heathrow and review whether their staff made an error. #BritishAirways #CustomerSe

ALT In 2003, we paid Hyderabad auto rickshaw drivers Rs. 20 each to let us paint slogans on the back of their autos. The slogan said "Pothole on your street? Tell your MLA. www.IndiaDemocracy.org." The Hindu covered it. The headline was "Democracy on three wheels." That was our marketing budget. The back of an auto rickshaw. I had joined V-Empower the year before, a startup registered in Maryland with a development centre in Hyderabad. We had built StateDemocracy.com for the US, a portal where any citizen could enter their zip code and find every lawmaker representing them, with phone, fax, and email. Some Americans used it. Some lawmakers actually replied. It worked. So we tried the same idea for India. IndiaDemocracy.org collected contact details for every MLA and MP we could find. The Andhra Pradesh CM at the time, N. Chandrababu Naidu, launched it for us. Sanchar.net had given every politician an official email address. The problem was that roughly 90% of them never opened those inb

ALT The Search Shift Nobody Briefed You On And why your brand can quietly disappear without you noticing A few weeks ago I ran a simple test. I asked five AI search tools the same question: "What's the best CRM for mid-market B2B companies?" Four gave confident, structured answers. But a product I know well — genuinely competitive, with years of customer success behind it — didn't appear once. Not mentioned. Not compared. Not even as an alternative. It wasn't ranked lower. It just didn't exist. That is the moment it clicks. We have spent years thinking about visibility in one way: if I rank, I get traffic. If I don't rank, I don't. That model is breaking. And most marketing teams haven't been briefed on it yet. What changed and why it matters now The user journey used to look like this: search, see ten links, choose one, visit a site. Now it looks like this: The user asks a question The AI synthesises an answer from sources it trusts The user gets what they need The journey ends — no

ALT He stole 413,793 KitKats. What he got wasn’t profit — it was attention. And attention turned his loot into unsellable evidence. A billion-dollar brand won Easter. He got 12 tons of regret. #Easter #Marketing #Psychology #Viral #Storytelling #Business #KitKat

ALT English to LinkedIn language... #lol Today I practiced high-stakes conflict resolution and emotional intelligence in a domestic setting. I invited my wife to embrace a more regulated emotional state. The result? A masterclass in leadership and de-escalation. Here are 3 things this taught me about B2B sales: 1. Communication is key. 2. Timing is everything. 3. Sometimes, the best response is silence. Agree? 👇 #Leadership #EmotionalIntelligence #GrowthMindset #WorkLifeBalance

ALT The Three Layers of AEO AEO operates across three layers: Training, Retrieval, and Inference. Each layer contributes to how confidently a model can mention and recommend your brand. AEO System Architecture Layer 1: Training The training layer is about long-term brand validation. This is where AI models learn that your brand exists, what it does, and which category it belongs to. This includes structured website content, schema markup, entries in knowledge bases such as Wikipedia and Wikidata, credible media coverage, and authentic customer discussions and reviews. All of these signals help models form a baseline understanding of your brand. If these signals are weak, inconsistent, or missing, the model builds a fragile foundation. And a weak foundation means your brand is less likely to surface confidently in AI-generated answers. This is exactly why I wrote earlier about Reddit deserving a permanent line item in digital strategy. Platforms like Reddit are not just social media cha

ALT The New Frontier in AI Visibility: Why AEO Is Infrastructure On December 31, 2024, I published The Rise of AI-Driven Consumerism: Will Brands Advertise to AI Instead of Humans? It started with a simple experience: I asked ChatGPT what to buy, and the recommendation felt more decisive than anything I had seen in traditional search results. At the time, it seemed like an interesting directional signal. Today, it has become clear that AI is fundamentally changing how consumers discover and interact with brands. It no longer simply assists discovery—it mediates it. And when the way decisions are mediated changes, visibility strategy must evolve alongside it. You can read the blog @ https://puluck.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-rise-of-ai-driven-consumerism-will.html From Ranking to Inclusion For decades, digital visibility meant ranking. Search engine optimization trained marketers to focus on keywords, backlinks, and traffic. Success was measured by your position on a page of links.