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Episode #18

What AI Knows About You (And What It Can't Find)

If the information you feed AI stays locked in a private project, neither AI nor your potential customers can find, cite, or recommend you.

9 min 15s

Key takeaways

  • Move your expert identity from a private AI project to your public domain - that is the only place AI can read, cite, and recommend you from.
  • Ask three questions about your website: can AI find it, can AI read all of it, and what does AI tell others about you when it does?
  • Publish content in your tone of voice on your domain - not your tone of voice as a setting, but content that carries your perspective, values, and the weight of who you are.
  • Treat SEO as a declining asset: Google click-through is falling every month as users shift to AI conversations, and recommendation replaces ranking.
  • Understand the Rings of Entity: Ring 1 (your domain) is where AI goes first. Rings 2 and 3 amplify it, but nothing works without Ring 1 being solid.

Timestamps

00:00The closed-door problem: AI knows your business, not you
00:39Why feeding AI only business data produces generic content
01:59Changing the form, not creating from scratch
03:00Local vs. public: why your private project is not enough
04:07Three questions to ask about your website right now
05:57SEO traffic is declining every month - what replaces it
07:54Rings of Entity: where AI actually gets its information

Read the blog article

Why AI Can't Recommend You If Your Best Content Is Behind a Closed Door

Show notes

Core argument

Feeding AI your business details inside a private project feels like progress. It is not enough. That data is behind a closed door. AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Perplexity and Gemini cannot reach it, which means they cannot cite you or recommend you to potential customers who are already asking those systems for help.

The three questions to ask about your website

  • Can an AI system find your website at all?
  • Can it read everything on your website?
  • What does it actually tell other people about you and your business?

A flat story about what problems you solve is not enough. AI and humans need to understand you are a real person with a real solution for a real problem. A few pages and some blog articles are no longer doing that task.

Why SEO traffic is declining

People are shifting to AI conversations instead of clicking links on Google. According to Paul Veth, organic click-through from Google is declining every month as this shift accelerates. A page that ranks well today will see that traffic erode until AI recommendation replaces it entirely. The next stage is not just recommendation: it is transacting directly through AI interfaces like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.

Rings of Entity - where AI gets its information

The Rings of Entity framework from Identity First Marketing describes four layers of entity authority:

  • Ring 0: What lives in your head and inside private AI projects - not publicly accessible
  • Ring 1: Your own domain - full control, the primary source AI reads
  • Ring 2: Your social channels - you control the content, not the algorithm
  • Ring 3: Other people talking about you - the highest-trust signal

AI pulls information from Ring 1. The combination of Rings 1, 2, and 3 determines whether you get recommended. Everything starts with getting your domain right: structured, publicly readable, and carrying the right weight about who you actually are.

What Identity First Marketing builds

Identity First Marketing provides the strategy. Identity First Media builds the infrastructure: a domain-based system that makes expert identity findable by humans and readable by AI. More at identityfirstmarketing.com.

Topics

AI visibility for expertsentity buildingRings of EntityLLM citation strategyAI recommendationAnswer Engine Optimizationexpert domain strategyIdentity First MarketingAI findabilityentity gap

Full transcript

View full transcript
0:00
0If AI doesn't know who you are, your potential customer also doesn't know who you are. And that's a big problem. A lot of people understand that they have to feed AI with their offers, with their target audience, with their tone of voice, stuff like that, what your business is. Okay? A lot of people are doing that right now.
0:21
0They are feeding a project all the data from their business, but what they forget, and I hope you don't forget this, is to tell AI who you are. What is your tone of voice? What are your values? What are you standing for? What's your vision?
0:39
0If you don't do that, AI only knows a business part. Well, that's almost always generic. Of course, you can be unique with your target audience or your tone of voice can be slightly different. But still, if you don't insert this into your project, AI will make generic content for you because a lot of people use AI to create content, blog articles, social posts, even emails, personal emails, personal emails, or email automation. Everybody use uses AI to write it.
1:21
0There are exceptions. Some people say, okay, this email is 100% written by a human. Yeah, that's great. I use AI a lot for writing and for redirecting, but I use it in a way that I say, okay, I insert my whole person and business and then I insert my tone of voice and I create content with one video, for example. And from that video, AI will change the form into a blog post, social post, emails, and stuff like that.
1:59
0So it's not creating the content, it's just changing the form of the content. And that's amazing. But you have to understand that if you feed your AI model, because first the first thing a lot of people do, okay, they give them the business details. What they forget is to give them the personal details. AI also needs that to create the right things or to think with you about the right content.
2:30
0It needs to know a lot more, but still it's only locally in your project. So if your potential customer opens ChatGPT and starts typing something, it has hasn't the door. There's no door to to your data, to your business, to your values. So therefore you need your own domain. That's why I've built Identity First Marketing and Identity First Media to build the domain.
3:00
0Identity First Marketing helps you with the strategy like I'm doing right now and Identity First Media builds it for you. So what I just told you, what I do with AI is build inside the platform. That's amazing. That's a really intelligence from AI we need nowadays. But Identity First Marketing, I'm helping you to understand that if you feed AI all the context, you feel it's really what you feel like, okay, we're making progress.
3:31
0But then all the time when you start to talk to AI, you have to tweak things and you have to update things and still it's only locally in your project. It's not out there. It's not findable by humans or AI, so you cannot be recommended recommended by AI to your potential customers because it's it's behind the closed door. So that's what you have to understand. If you insert your business details and your personal details, still you have to place it on your own domain, on your website.
4:07
0So AI can find you, cite you, and recommend you to the right customers. And even when customers talk to AI, they can ask questions about you and your business if all this information is on your website. You don't have to put your tone of voice on your website, you have to put content on your website that's in your tone of voice. That's what I mean, and AI gets this. So for for you to ask yourself is, okay, what kind of information did you give to AI?
4:41
0What felt really nice like, okay, I'm making progress, but is not available to the public. And what is available to the public? Is it possible for, for example, Claude or ChatGPT to find your website? That's the first question. And to read everything from your website?
5:02
0That's the second question. But then the third question is what does it read? What does it tell other people about you and your business? Because if that's just some flat story about a business and what kind of problems you solve, it's empty, man. It's it's really empty.
5:22
0It's it's not deep enough. It's not carrying the right weight for AI and humans to understand you are a real person with a real business, with a real solution for their real problem. That's what you have to connect to. And if your website is just a few pages and some blog blog articles, it's not doing the task anymore. It's not enough anymore.
5:57
0Only because of mouth to mouth people can come to your website or some people still click links on Google. Every month it's it's much less. So less people every month again click links on Google because everyone will start talking to AI and they don't click links. So they they don't enter your website. So if your SEO is really wonderful for one page, great.
6:30
0A lot of traffic came to your website because of that blog article or page, but it will go down and down till it dies. That's it. You have to be recommended by AI in the future and in the in the near future, it will change the game because it's not about recommendations anymore, but almost like buying from ChatGPT your product or service that will that will be the Thing or Cloth or Gemini or Perplexity or Grok. We are lucky lucky we have five five different AI models because they will start competing with each other with these things, so that's good for the market, I believe. But for you, it's really important to understand if you feed AI your details, you must make it public so your potential customer can find it as human and AI can find it as an AI robot and AI needs to recommend you to people, but it only can do that if that information you have from you and your business is on your own domain because that's where AI gets all the information from.
7:54
0Yes. The other rings of entity are important, so what's living in your head and even lives behind closed doors in your project is ring zero. Ring one is your own domain. You have full control over your own domain. Ring two are your social channels.
8:13
0You have control over what you place on these social channels, but you don't have control over the algorithm. And ring three ring three are people talking about you. And all rings are even important, but AI picks the information from ring one, from your own domain. So that's amazing. If AI recommends you, depends on the information on ring one and the combination of entities in ring one, two, and three, but it will take information from ring one.
8:51
0So make sure that all the information you feed to AI behind the closed door, not all not the private privacy sensitive information, but the information that needs to be out there that's that's on your website. It needs to be on your website publicly readable by human, but also readable by AI, the right structured data.

Frequently asked questions

Why isn't feeding AI my business details inside a project enough?

Because that data is behind a closed door. AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity cannot access private projects. They can only read, cite, and recommend you based on what is publicly available on your own domain.

What should actually be on my website for AI to recommend me?

Content that carries your perspective, values, and real expertise - not a flat description of your services. AI needs enough signal to understand you are a real person with a real solution. A few pages are no longer sufficient to carry that weight.

What is Ring 1 in the Rings of Entity framework?

Ring 1 is your own domain - the layer you fully control and the primary source AI systems read. Ring 0 is your private knowledge, Ring 2 is your social channels, and Ring 3 is third parties talking about you. AI citation starts at Ring 1.

Is SEO still worth investing in?

It is a declining asset. Google organic click-through drops every month as users shift to AI conversations. A page that ranks well today will lose traffic as AI recommendation replaces traditional search. The future is being cited by AI, not ranked by Google.

What is the difference between Identity First Marketing and Identity First Media?

Identity First Marketing provides the strategy - helping you understand what needs to be in place and why. Identity First Media is the infrastructure that builds it: a domain-based system that makes your expert identity findable by humans and readable by AI systems.

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