People don't search for you any more. They ask.

Edition 9, and a slightly new shape. One thing worth knowing, one worth forgetting and one worth doing, then a quick update from me. Still about two minutes.

One thing worth knowing

People don't just search for things any more. They ask.

The Reuters Institute surveyed around 2,000 people in each of nine countries, the UK included, and 38% of them had used AI to look something up in the past week. Two years ago it was 11%. It's now the main thing people use AI for, ahead of writing, ideas and everything else. And of the people using it, 75% say they trust its answers to factual questions.

(How far to trust it? Pretty far. It's YouGov, big samples, and nobody's flogging a GEO tool off the back of it.)

The UK came bottom of the nine for weekly use, at 42%. So yes, we're a bit slow on the uptake... but that's still four in ten of us.

My take. Your next customer, journalist or investor probably isn't going to search for you. They're going to ask. And three out of four of them will believe whatever they're told.

One thing worth forgetting

Checking whether you're "in the AI answer".

Ahrefs asked the same questions every day for 20 days, and more than half the websites ChatGPT and Google's AI Mode quoted on day one had gone by day two. Most came back. Some never did. (Ahrefs sell AI tracking tools, so they'd quite like you to check every day. But they showed their working.)

So a one-off screenshot, or a score built on a single run, is basically a coin toss. And checking every day just gives you a different coin toss every day. AI is probabilistic (a fancy way of saying it gives you a slightly different answer every time you ask), so the best answer we've got right now is volume: thousands of searches, run over a week or so. That gives you a solid baseline of where you actually are, which is worth far more than tracking it day in, day out.

One thing worth doing

Get your name into the answer, not just your link.

The same study found brand names in AI answers stuck around far longer than the websites cited underneath them. So earn the mentions (PR's day job anyway), and make sure the pages that matter answer the question people actually ask, in the title and the first paragraph.

My GEO guide has the rest, and I keep it updated as the evidence changes: knownandcited.com/geo-guide

Known & Cited update

Yes, I'm back. I'm still on chemo, but I'm working when I can. The eight-country brief for a global tech brand is underway. I did some GEO training with a very cool UK brand, which I'd love to do more with. And I'm talking to a couple of brands in the healthcare and science space, really off the back of what I've been doing with the F Cancer with AI website.

What I'm aiming for is a personal service that isn't just full of the same sh*t everyone else is offering. So if you need a hand with AI search towards the end of the year or early next, whether you're a brand or an agency that needs some support, give me a shout.

Be known. Be cited.

Russ

Sources: Reuters Institute, Generative AI and News Report 2026 (29 Oct 2026): YouGov, about 2,000 people in each of nine countries, fieldwork 14 Aug–28 Sep 2026. · Ahrefs, How stable are AI citations? (29 Oct 2026) · Known & Cited GEO guide.

First published on LinkedIn as Cited, Edition 9, 2 November 2026.