Hey AEO Crew!! A member of the Smart Marketer mastermind is interested in hiring a Digital PR Agency. Obviously, I came here first!! If that's you, please drop a link to your best "proof" below. These folks trust us to come back to them with vetted options so help me help you by making it easy to see who actually knows what they're doing so I can be confident making an introduction. I appreciate y'all :-)

Hey everyone, we've noticed low attendance due to various reasons. I personally would like to take a time off the calls to review the current Community structure under one frame: -------------------------------------------------- - The success of a community depends on the success of it's members implementing what they learn. ---------------------------------------------------------- This came up in our monday coaching calls with Mr @Ron Nedd whose unlimited generosity has enabled me to understand this idea and put it at the center. That's -to be honest- one of the bigger blockers of the Courses being published, how to create content that is useful and actionable if there's so many use cases, knowledge levels and also the technology is shifting so fast. It's been a challenge to keep up with what's happening in this field, the things that don't work, the new approaches that we're discovering while we build our service to turn that into education that will last more than a couple of weeks. So I'm cancelling this call to listen up openly, and building the community again, I'm moving teammates to help me on this endeavor to be able to be present and active and identify what it is that the community needs to thrive, and for that I need your input: - For your specific use case (what is your category), what is the bigger challenge that you're facing in this new area of "Marketing Through AI" that you'd like some light on, guidance and what would be the ultimate outcome of coming every week to these calls. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All feedback and input is valuable, You'd be doing me a favour and we'll be able to build this up and focus on the bigger needle movers to get you to -Be The Answer-.

Join Us tomorrow on our Thursday call of the State of AEO! We will be addressing the elephant in the room: ...are we really using AI? Link In the community calendar: Call Timezones: - Eastern Daylight Time (EDT): 1:00 PM (e.g., New York, NY) - Central Daylight Time (CDT): 12:00 PM (e.g., Chicago, IL) - Mountain Daylight Time (MDT): 11:00 AM (e.g., Denver, CO) - Pacific Daylight Time (PDT): 10:00 AM (e.g., Los Angeles, CA)

from the desk of Matt Diamanté ' - Hey Tony Google just dropped some massive updates to their review guidelines… and people are pissed. TLDR: • you can’t give an incentive to leave a review • customers can’t leave staff names in reviews • you have to ask everyone for reviews. Not just happy customers • you can’t ask for reviews while someone is at your business • you can’t ask them to leave a specific review or mention a product or service Here’s what Google has to say: Contributions to Google Maps should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business. Rating Manipulation includes Incentivized or Biased Reviews, which are not allowed and will be removed from Maps. This includes: • Content that has been posted due to an incentive offered by a business - such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services. • This includes content posted following requests for revision or removal of a review or rating in exchange for an incentive. • Content exhibiting unusual volumes or patterns of review contributions that are indicative of efforts to manipulate a place’s rating • Content that is based on a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest may include current or former employment, a contractual or consultory relationship, or other professional or personal affiliations that demonstrate a conflict of interest (such as industry competitors, familial relationships, etc.). We do not allow merchants to: • Offer incentives – such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services - in exchange for posting any review or revision or removal of a negative review. • Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers • When soliciting reviews, merchants should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, nor should they request that specific content be included. This includes: • Merchants requesting that staff solicit a certain number of reviews • Merchants requesting that staff solicit reviews that include specific content, including content that identifies a staff member.

This article has some great stats that can help potential clients see the value in implementing AEO: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/16/ai-traffic-to-us-retailers-rose-393-in-q1-and-its-boosting-their-revenue-too/