For twenty years the game was simple enough: rank on Google, get the click, win the customer. That front door is closing, and most businesses haven't noticed because the numbers that would tell them are buried in a traffic report nobody reads closely. Customers are increasingly starting with ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and AI Overviews, describing their problem in plain language, and getting a shortlist of two or three recommended businesses without ever visiting a search results page. If you're not on that shortlist, you don't get a second look, and unlike a poor Google ranking there's no dashboard telling you that you lost.

In this session, Simon Gould, founder of Sydney Digital Marketing and a HubSpot Gold Partner of more than seven years, breaks down what has genuinely changed, what hasn't, and what to do about it. It's built for owners and marketing leads of service-based businesses who've already invested in SEO and a decent website, and who want a clear-eyed view of whether that investment still works rather than another session telling them AI is coming.

Simon will walk through three things. First, what's actually changed in how people search and buy, including why your traffic can fall while your enquiries hold steady, or the reverse, and what those signals really mean. Second, how answer engines and generative search decide which businesses to name, covering the role of structured content, third-party mentions, reviews, expertise signals and the technical fundamentals that quietly determine whether you're even readable by an AI. Third, a practical set of moves you can start on straight away, with an honest split between the quick wins you can knock over in a fortnight and the work that genuinely takes a few months.

You'll leave with a plain-English understanding of AEO and GEO and where they sit alongside the SEO you're already doing, a way to sanity-check whether your business currently appears in AI answers for the questions your customers actually ask, a checklist of the content and technical changes that make the biggest difference, and a realistic sense of what to do in-house versus where you'll want help.

There'll be time for questions at the end, and Simon and the Sydney Digital Marketing team will be around after the session if you want to talk through your own situation.