Simon Young on The GEO Show: local AI search, reviews and voice, with James Dooley

This is a highlights page from a conversation on The GEO Show, hosted by Paris Childress. It is not a Question.Marketing episode. Simon Young joined Paris, James Dooley (known as the King of AEO, a title he uses himself) and Jabez Reuben on 28 October 2026. Timestamps refer to Simon's own recording of the session, which starts partway through.

Full conversation: https://thegeoshow.transistor.fm and https://www.getgeoforge.com/the-geo-show

Who is who

• Paris Childress: host of The GEO Show, founder of Hop AI, co-founder of GEOforge. https://www.linkedin.com/in/parischildress
• James Dooley: founder of PromoSEO and FatRank, known as the King of AEO (his own fact file lists it as a title he uses: https://jamesdooley.com/brand-ssot/). https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameszdooley
• Jabez Reuben: founder of The Blueprints Agency and a regular on James's AEO and GEO episodes. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jabezreuben
• Simon Young: Question.Marketing. https://www.linkedin.com/in/aeo/

Does it all go to voice? (04:14)

Simon: "I just wanted to ask you guys about where we move in terms of, you know, I've done a load of work in video... But do you believe we move with, you know, things like Muse coming, do we move into a world where it does all go to voice?"

James: "I think, yeah, voice is important. I think for me, Simon, I'm a holistic marketer, so I'm gonna open every single door and I'm gonna run every single lane as fast as I can... from the voice and from the video you can create little images of like clips of what you said, you can share that out there and stuff." (04:45)

James: "If someone isn't doing voice, audio, and video alongside image, alongside like text, then they need to be jumping on it as soon as possible." (05:56)

Simon: My view, written after the show on 28 Oct 2026, not said on the recording: yes, I think we end up in a pure voice search world. How long that takes is a guess.

Podcasts and information gain (02:31)

Paris: "For podcasting, it's also a way to deliver high information gain to the models because you're speaking directly from your own expertise... these get transcribed, they get repurposed, and this is stuff that is generally not published widely on the internet."

Entity association (06:30)

Jabez: "Podcast is such a great way to see entity association where... the more interviews you do and the more experts that come on, onto your show, it is just helping build your own entity, especially if it's a new brand and you are getting bigger guests who already have known entities."

Confidence and clarity (09:05)

James: "Having the knowledge panel, having that confidence and clarity, in my opinion, within Google is the number one ranking factor... I used to always say link building and power and offsite signals is the number one ranking factor, and now I say confidence and clarity. Is Google confident in knowing exactly who you are and what you do? And if it is, the LLMs can pick you up better."

Will AI search go local? (20:37)

Simon: "Let's say we take Manchester as an example. I've got a recruitment client in Manchester and, you know, he doesn't necessarily wanna show up nationally. Yes, he would love to, but do you see it all distilling down to a local model?"

James: "With regards to personalisation, one of the biggest personalisations is location. So they are actually pulling in the location. If you're saying plumbers near me, knows that I'm in Manchester, it's gonna pull Manchester from there. It also knows within the personalisation that if he knows I'm frugal and I want a cheap price, that's what best means for me." (21:18)

James: "They seem to be using Google Business Profile maps. They're being pulled in massively into the AI overviews." (22:36)

Simon: My view, written after the show on 28 Oct 2026, not said on the recording: yes, I believe the big opportunity is to grab local LLM search visibility before anyone else does. It may depend on the industry vertical, but I believe the market is wide open for this right now, and I'm testing exactly this with a Manchester based recruitment company.

Reviews that say what you did (26:11)

Jabez (24:21) described an e-commerce client where Google AI Mode drew on reviews from several places, and said: "first figure out which map review or which reviews are working well, and then if you have resources, start building out reviews on as many platforms possible."

Simon: "One of the experiments I ran on reviews was simply, you know, obviously somebody does a review, they'll put, you know, great service or delivered on time or whatever, but actually get the people to put in the review, talk about the product, right?"

James: "If it's just great service and that's it, replying to the review with the keywords in there as well... We came and... fixed your boiler." (26:31)

Simon: My view, written after the show on 28 Oct 2026, not said on the recording: reviews are being cited and relied on by the LLMs, from what I'm seeing. But if we can get the customers who leave reviews to mention the name of the product or service, it is far more powerful. James also makes a great point: replying to those reviews and talking about the product is hugely important too.

Should AEO have a qualification? (15:02)

Simon: "Do you think that the industry might benefit from having a recognised qualification or group of experts?... a badge of certification in AEO, GEO. Is that something that could happen?"

James: "I'd love to say yes. But the truth of the matter is that, who would create that course to give the certification out?... if it was Google that came out doing the course, what they tell you needs to be done and what actually works is two completely different things." (15:48)

Watch the highlights on YouTube.

FAQ

Is this a Question.Marketing episode?

No. It is a highlights cut from The GEO Show, hosted by Paris Childress. The full conversation is on The GEO Show.

Does AI search show local results?

James said location is one of the biggest personalisation signals, and that Google Business Profile is being pulled into AI Overviews (21:18, 22:36).

What makes a review more useful?

Simon's point: ask customers to talk about the product. James added: reply to the review and name the service you did (26:11 to 27:01).

Is there an official AEO qualification?

None was named on the show. James doubted who could credibly write one (15:48).

Who is the King of AEO?

James Dooley uses the title King of AEO. He has said it was given to him by Jesper Nissen at a 2026 crowning (FatRank Podcast, episode 630: https://fatrank.transistor.fm/630/transcript). It is not an independent accreditation.