AI Visibility Podcast with Jason T Wade of BackTier

Barry Schwartz on AI Search, Reddit, and the Future of SEOBarry Schwartz joins Jason AI Wade for a conversation about how AI is changing search, what still matters in SEO, and how businesses can remain discoverable as more users get answers without visiting a website.Barry discusses the balance between firsthand experiences on Reddit and information from qualified experts, the accuracy problems with AI Overviews, and why brand recognition may matter even when a search produces no immediate click. He also shares his concerns about fabricated information and shortcuts built around mass-produced AI content.The conversation explores agentic commerce, website usability, and Barry’s own AI project: a tool that analyzes screenshots of search features and checks whether he has covered them before.Topics include:From Yahoo’s directory to modern AI search.SEO, GEO, and the debate over terminology.Reddit, expert sources, and trust.AI Overviews, attribution errors, and brand discovery.AI-assisted development and content quality.Commerce agents and website integrations.Building a searchable archive of search-feature screenshots.Guest bioBarry Schwartz is a search-industry journalist, founder of Search Engine Roundtable, and a longtime writer for Search Engine Land. He is also CEO of RustyBrick, a web technology and software development company. His work covers search engine updates, industry developments, and the experiences of website owners and search marketers.Host bioJason AI Wade is the founder of BackTier and host of the AI Visibility Podcast. His work focuses on how businesses are discovered, understood, cited, and selected across search engines, AI answers, and emerging agentic systems.LinksBarry Schwartz / RustyBrickSearch Engine RoundtableSearch Engine LandBarry on XBarry on YouTubeBarry on LinkedInBackTierJason WadeJason’s bio video

Lake Wales Is Building a Startup Economy. But Who's Building the Startups?Podcast: Lake Wales Startups / BackTierHost: Jason T AI WadeEstimated runtime: 10–12 minutesFormat: Commentary, local economic development, entrepreneurship, and AIEpisode description: Google AI says Lake Wales, Florida, has a growing entrepreneurship ecosystem, supported by business incubators, government incentives, youth programs, and downtown redevelopment. But what does that actually mean for someone trying to start a business? We examine the organizations, the money, the opportunities, and the missing connections between economic development and entrepreneurship.

https://youtu.be/nlmdSnHQrikTitle: Lake Wales Startup Night: Startup Legal Strategy with Denise Tessier, Esq.Starting a business creates questions that a website, logo, or AI-generated business plan cannot settle. Who owns what? What should partners agree on? What belongs in a client contract? When should you bring in an attorney?In this episode of the AI Visibility Podcast, Jason Wade previews the next Lake Wales Startup Night, featuring Startup Legal Strategy with Denise Tessier, Esq. The free gathering offers an opportunity to meet fellow entrepreneurs and bring questions about starting or growing a business.Whether you’re exploring an idea, building a side business, or already serving customers, come with a question you want to sort out.Event detailsWednesday, October 21, 2026 · 6 PMThe Thirsty Dragon126 N 1st St, Lake Wales, FLFree to attendReserve your seat and submit a question for the attorneyTopics in this episodeQuestions to ask before starting a business with a partner.Clarifying ownership, responsibilities, and expectations.Preparing questions about client agreements and contractor work.Using AI to organize your questions before speaking with an attorney.Building connections with founders and neighbors in Lake Wales.About Denise Tessier, Esq.Denise Tessier is an attorney with Tessier Law Firm and the featured speaker for Lake Wales Startup Night’s Startup Legal Strategy event. Learn more at TessierLawFirm.com.About Jason WadeJason Wade is an AI Visibility strategist and the founder of BackTier. He is the host of the AI Visibility Podcast. His work focuses on AI Visibility, Generative Engine Optimization, Answer Engine Optimization, entity authority, and the infrastructure behind machine-generated recommendations. He is also conducting an ongoing name-ambiguity and entity-resolution experiment using the names Jason T Wade and Jason AI Wade to study how AI systems distinguish, merge, classify, and resolve identities across the web. Learn more at BackTier.com and JasonWade.com.LinksLake Wales Startup Night — RSVPTessier Law FirmStartup Night articles and past-event contentBackTierJason WadeLake Wales GuideFlorida SliceContact the organizers: [email protected] · 321.946.5569

AI Search Is Rewriting SEO: Identity, Zero-Click & Who AI Recommends | Jeff DeutschSearch is changing from a list of links into a recommendation system.In this episode of the AI Visibility Podcast, Jason AI Wade talks with Jeff Deutsch, fractional Head of Growth at That’s Heaps, about what happens when Google, ChatGPT and other AI systems stop simply ranking pages and start deciding which companies, people and resources deserve to be recommended.Jeff breaks down what he has learned from scaling organic search at companies including Superpower and ContactOut, why traditional rankings matter differently in an AI-search environment, and why zero-click search does not necessarily mean zero commercial value.The conversation moves into a larger problem: identity.Jason and Jeff test how AI currently understands Jason’s name, work and identity in real time, including the Jason AI Wade name experiment. They discuss why verified and corroborated sources matter, why AI systems increasingly need a “chain of custody” before trusting claims, and how podcasts, transcripts and distributed mentions can reinforce what an entity is actually known for.They also discuss:Google AI Overviews and the transition away from ten blue linksWhy being recommended may matter more than ranking #1Zero-click search versus high-intent searchesAI search personalization and invisible background queriesHow user context may shape future product recommendationsAmazon, Google and AI assistants competing on who knows the user bestWhy scaled AI content is likely to face increasing trust problemsEntity resolution and name disambiguationLinkedIn, Reddit and source credibilityJason’s experiment with Jason AI WadeHow easily niche AI search results can currently be influencedWhy corroboration across independent sources will become more importantPodcasts and transcripts as machine-readable authority signalsBuilding a digital “second brain” for a companyWhat companies should actually be known for before trying to optimize AI visibilityThe central idea is simple: AI visibility is becoming less about getting a page ranked and more about building a trustworthy digital representation that machines can identify, verify and confidently recommend.Jeff Deutsch is a fractional Head of Growth and the founder of That’s Heaps, a Sydney-based growth and marketing consultancy.Jeff has spent approximately 16 years working in SEO and growth. His experience includes growth roles with Superpower, ContactOut, VIPKid and Longtail UX, spanning SEO, acquisition, automation and AI search.His current work focuses heavily on how companies are represented inside AI-driven search systems: defining what an organization should be known for, creating structured digital knowledge around the company, and making that information discoverable and credible enough to appear in AI-generated answers and recommendations.Jeff is also scheduled to speak at the Sydney SEO Conference in March 2027 about the SEO, growth and AI-search work behind Superpower and ContactOut.Jeff Deutsch / That’s HeapsThat’s HeapsThat’s Heaps on LinkedInThat’s Heaps — LinkedInJeff Deutsch on LinkedInJeff Deutsch — LinkedIn search/profile resultsShow NotesGuest BioLinksSydney SEO Conference 2027Sydney SEO Conference

SEO is not disappearing. The systems doing the discovering, interpreting, and recommending are changing.Andrew Shotland, founder and CEO of Local SEO Guide, joins Jason AI Wade for a practical conversation about what happens when traditional SEO collides with ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, local search, citations, entity signals, and agentic automation.Andrew’s core framing is simple: SEO has always been about making it easy for a machine to understand what a business does and when it should be recommended. That part has not changed. The machines have.The conversation moves quickly into what that means in practice.For local businesses, Andrew argues that merely repeating “we are a plumber” is not enough. The stronger opportunity is to distribute specific attributes—water heater replacement, storm drains, service areas, specialties—across the business’s own site and the third-party pages that AI systems may use as evidence.He shares a particularly useful experiment involving a 160-location company. His team identified a search-intent gap around construction job-site bathrooms, added that concept to the Google Business Profiles and citation ecosystem for 20 test locations, and saw visibility move in Google AI Mode within days. Later, the same test group began gaining visibility in ChatGPT, while the untouched locations initially remained flat.Then something more interesting happened: roughly a month later, visibility began increasing across the wider location network as well. Andrew’s working theory was that enough pages had associated the brand with the concept that the relationship began applying more broadly to the entity.The episode also covers competitor-adjacent content, conversational search paths, local citations, corroboration, automation, content gaps, and why the right operating model for AI-era search is not a perfect master plan.It is testing.Andrew compares it to baseball: even elite hitters fail most of the time. The advantage comes from taking enough intelligent swings to discover what actually moves visibility.Andrew ShotlandFounder and CEO of Local SEO Guide. Andrew has worked in search for roughly two decades and focuses on local SEO, AEO, multi-location search, and how Google and AI systems understand and recommend businesses.He describes the current moment as one of the most interesting periods in search in at least a decade, driven by the rapid shift from traditional search-result ranking toward AI-mediated discovery and recommendation.The current state of SEOSEO vs. AI VisibilityLocal SEO in ChatGPT and Google AI ModeEntity understanding and corroborationLocal citations as AI signalsService and attribute distributionContent-gap analysisCompetitor-adjacent contentAgentic SEO and automationMulti-location experimentationWhy AI visibility requires testingHow search behavior is becoming conversationalLocal SEO Guidehttps://www.localseoguide.com/Andrew Shotland on LinkedInSearch Andrew Shotland on LinkedIn — he identifies it as his primary social platform and the place where he publishes most frequently.AI Visibility PodcastBackTier