How to Shape Your Personal Brand in the Age of AI Search
How to Shape Your Personal Brand in the Age of AI Search
Published on Forbes August 27, 2025 by Jason Barnard
Your online reputation is the story that gets told about you when you’re not in the room. I learned the hard way that when Google and AI are the storytellers, you’d better provide them with a script.
In 2012, my problem was my outdated Google business presence. I had what felt like the perfect meeting for sealing a business deal. But the deal died.
Months later, I found out why. After our meeting, the CEO had Googled my name. He didn’t see “Jason Barnard, serial entrepreneur and digital marketing expert.” Instead, the summary of my career he found was simply: “Jason Barnard, the voice of Boowa the blue dog.”
The digital ghost of my past career - voicing a blue cartoon dog for a kids’ TV series - was completely overshadowing my professional present as a digital marketing strategist. What I found most frustrating, other than the lost money, was that I had the credentials of an authority on digital marketing, but they weren’t being highlighted in a Google search.
Over a couple of years, I lost major deals because my online narrative was stuck in the past. But I did have a card up my sleeve. I spent a few months using my digital marketing knowledge to change Google’s story about me. I designed the search result for my name so that it would inspire confidence, rather than cartoon confusion.
Your Problem Today: AI Could Be Making the Verdict.
That was a simple Google search a decade ago; people took it as an overview of my personal brand. It lost me deals, but not every time. Today, the AI-driven verdict about you from platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google makes the stakes infinitely higher for every business leader. Why? The machines are no longer just showing a list of links. They write summaries. They craft what I call your “AI resume.”
AI platforms are increasingly becoming many people’s first stop for search. These AI platforms can autonomously compile a narrative about you based on every scrap of information they can find: the good, the bad and the wildly out of date. They don’t care about your current reality; they write their version of your resume with the data they can find. That means if your digital footprint is fragmented, dominated by a past venture, contains an old piece of negative press or is confused with someone who shares your name, it can become the story AI tells prospects at the most critical moment of their journey.
The Solution: Don’t Fight the Machine. Teach It.
My knee-jerk reaction back in 2012 was to fight back with traditional online reputation management - try to delete my past and “drown the story.” But I knew that wouldn’t work. Then I realized I wasn’t in a fight with an algorithm. I was in a classroom. And Google’s algorithm was my student - a very powerful, very literal-minded child that needed to be taught.
You teach a machine the same way you teach a child: with absolute clarity, unwavering consistency and patient repetition. I set out to proactively educate Google about who I am today. The strategy is simple in concept:
1. Claim the truth. Establish a central, authoritative source of truth about yourself. For me, this was the “About” page on my personal website. This became my “entity home,” where I clearly and simply stated the facts of who I am and what I do.
2. Frame the narrative. Meticulously update every online profile you control - such as LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), author bios, etc. - to echo that exact message. This helped me create a consistent narrative frame that the algorithms could see from every angle.
3. Prove it with corroboration. Ensure that when you appear on podcasts or are mentioned in the press, the biography used is the one you provide. This allowed me to build a web of trusted, third-party sources all repeating and proving the same story.
Within a few months, Google learned. My brand search engine results page - what you see when you search my name - began to reflect my current expertise, the blue dog faded into the background and the right deals started closing.
The real proof of this strategy’s power came a decade later. When the new wave of AI assistants appeared, they all gave me an accurate and current AI resume right out of the box. I believe that’s because the “teach the child” approach works even more powerfully on today’s AI, since they all learn from the same curriculum - the open web - and crave the same clarity, consistency and corroboration to feel confident in the story they tell about you.
Maintain Your AI Resume.
Your AI resume is a living narrative that requires constant care because AI, your brand and the world are constantly evolving. Here are the three non-negotiable rules for maintaining it.
1. Track your AI resume. Conduct quarterly AI audits by asking platforms like ChatGPT and Google AI about yourself. Identify and fix factual errors, outdated narratives and brand ambiguity before a potential partner or investor finds them.
2. Update your narrative as you evolve. As your career changes, so should your AI resume. Update your “entity home” first to reflect your new reality and then update off-site sources you control. This ensures the AI learns your current story and doesn’t leave your brand stuck in the past.
3. Keep a steady flow of fresh proof. AI systems need a slow and steady flow of current information from you. Consistently appear on podcasts, publish articles and speak at events. Each new appearance is a time-stamped proof point that corroborates your personal brand narrative, keeping your AI resume accurate and preventing digital ghosts from re-emerging.
Shape Your Own Legacy.
For any business leader today, a misaligned AI resume could be a direct threat to your legacy and future opportunities. Before an investor writes a check, before a board offers you a seat or before a strategic partner signs a deal, their first act of due diligence could be happening inside an AI. The machines are constantly telling a story about you, with or without your input. The only question is whether you will be the one to write the script.
