Jason Barnard Talks AEO, Reputation, and the Dance Between Humans and Machines in BrightonSEO - April 2019
Brighton, UK - April 12, 2019 - Back at the Brighton Centre on the UK’s south coast, the spring edition of BrightonSEO once again gathered the brightest minds in search.
At a time when “voice search” was being hailed as the next big revolution, Jason was already shaping a different narrative - one that connected brand, reputation, and machine learning. His message: Google is a recommendation engine, and the way your brand appears across its ecosystem defines your trust and authority.
BrightonSEO spring edition was hosted at the iconic Brighton Centre, a sprawling venue overlooking the seafront. Jason stayed at the Old Ship Hotel, a charming English landmark with sea views - the perfect base for a few days of seaside learning, conversation, and (of course) fish and chips by the pier.
The Interviews: AEO in Conversation
During BrightonSEO 2019, Jason recorded a special #SEOisAEO podcast series, sitting down with some of the industry’s most brilliant minds - each exploring where SEO was heading in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Here’s who joined him at the Brighton Centre that April:
- Patrick Reinhart - Where Is the War on New Hardware Technologies?
A lively discussion about the growing role of emerging tech and how brands can stay adaptive. - Chris Liversidge - The Truth About Attribution (Hint: Use Machine Learning)
Jason found this session particularly fascinating - a conversation about data extrapolation and attribution modeling through machine learning, long before it became mainstream. - Fili Wiese - Google Penalties Explained
An inside look from an ex-Googler who once worked in the webspam team. Fili shared what used to happen behind the scenes with manual actions - and how, even then, automation was taking over. - Emily Potter - Google Is the Enemy
A spirited exploration of how creators and SEOs must learn to coexist (and sometimes compete) with the giant search ecosystem. - Kenichi Suzuki - Structured Data and Google
A respected SEO voice from Japan, Kenichi discussed the growing importance of structured data and its role in shaping search visibility and entity understanding. - Alina Ghost - Content Creation for Voice
In 2019, voice was predicted to dominate search. Alina’s session explored strategies for optimizing for voice - a hot topic at the time. Jason later reflected on how the “voice revolution” didn’t unfold quite as expected, but the lessons on natural language remain relevant today. - Dawn Anderson - Context Clouds, Co-occurrence, Relatedness, and BERT
Jason and Dawn shared deep insights into contextual understanding. Their off-stage conversations with Fabrice Canel (Bing) even touched on how Bing’s crawling patterns adapt to seasonal trends - from Christmas to Easter - based on search signals and content behavior. - Felipe Bazon - The Lowdown on International SEO
A practical and global perspective on scaling search strategies across markets. - Lily Ray - E-A-T: The How, the Why, and the What to Do!
Long before E-E-A-T became a buzzword, Lily and Jason discussed what it meant for brands to earn trust, expertise, and authority. - Nils de Moor - SEO on the Edge
The founder of WooRank, Nils spoke with Jason about technical SEO innovation. This conversation marked the beginning of a working relationship - Jason later visited WooRank’s offices in Belgium to collaborate on Brand SERP analysis and data insights.
Collaborations with WooRank - Data Meets Brand Strategy
In parallel with BrightonSEO, Jason was also collaborating with WooRank, leveraging their datasets to analyze the anatomy of Brand SERPs. WooRank featured his work on their website, crediting him for using their data to extract structured, meaningful insights about how brands appear in search results.
In another WooRank article, “SEO Advantages Over PPC,” Jason was cited as a partner, underscoring his view that Google’s organic results act as implicit recommendations of credibility and authority - an idea that remains central to Kalicube’s philosophy of Brand SERP optimization.
This acknowledgment further positioned him among the key global voices shaping SEO’s evolution into entity-based, reputation-driven search.
Jason later recalled:
“WooRank were going to be a data provider for Kalicube. It didn’t end up happening, but it was fascinating to experiment with their data and see how Brand SERPs could be viewed from a reputation perspective.”
Key Themes: “Dancing with the machine”
It was also the year he met Andrea Volpini from WordLift - what he calls the start of a friendship built on a shared obsession: teaching machines how to understand brands. Together, they explored how data, meaning, and structured clarity could transform visibility. The idea of “dancing with Google” began here: the rhythm between human creativity and algorithmic logic.
From those early chats came an idea Jason still uses today: the dance between humans and machines.
He describes it like this:
“AI gives you content, you correct it and give it back. The AI improves and returns it again. You correct it once more. It’s a dance - a back-and-forth where the human-in-the-loop remains essential.
It’s the concept now known as The Human in the Loop. At Kalicube, we call it dancing with the machine - the iterative loop that turns raw data into understanding.
His idea was simple yet visionary: search engines are recommendation engines, and brands must actively train them through consistent, structured, and truthful data across the web.
That vision became the core of Kalicube’s educational mission - teaching Google and AI who you are.
SEO at a Crossroads: Brighton 2019 and the Shift Toward Entities
Looking back, BrightonSEO April 2019 stands out as a defining snapshot of where the search industry was heading. Voice search was poised to take off, machine learning was just beginning to shape Google’s understanding of intent, and “entity-based optimization” was quietly emerging as the next big shift.
For Jason Barnard, it was more than an industry milestone - it was a personal turning point. His work on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) began evolving into a broader philosophy: Brand SERP Optimization, where visibility, reputation, and structured understanding converge. That evolution would eventually crystallize into The Kalicube Process™, built on one enduring idea - that teaching Google who you are is the key to digital trust.
