Beating the Algorithm: How to Build Trust with AI Search Engines - Jason Barnard on the Hustle and Flowchart Podcast

How to Beat Google, ChatGPT, and TikTok At Their Own Game! - Jason Barnard

Published by: Joe Fier. Host: Joe Fier. Guest: Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO of Kalicube®. October 14, 2025

TL;DR: Traditional SEO is obsolete - your strategy must shift from ranking pages to building Algorithmic Authority with AI Assistive Engines. Jason Barnard, CEO of Kalicube®, explains that the goal is no longer the website visit, but the Perfect Click - the pre-conditioned bottom-of-funnel conversion that occurs after AI has rebuilt the entire acquisition funnel in its brain. Success means engineering your brand so algorithms understand, trust, and recommend you as the solution.

Key Strategies Discussed:

• The Kalicube Process™: This system follows the essential sequence of Understandability,Credibility,Deliverability. If the AI doesn’t understand who you are, it can’t trust you; if it doesn’t trust you, it will never deliver you.
• The Entity Home & Corroboration: Your Entity Home (the About Page on your website) must be the single source of truth. This is the starting point for building an Infinite Loop of Self-Corroboration, where every digital asset (LinkedIn, press mentions, Twitter) reinforces the same core narrative, creating repetitive validation across trusted sources.
• Claim, Frame, Prove: Strategically position your brand by claiming your core value, framing it compellingly (like Jason Barnard’s “I started SEO in the year Google was incorporated”), and proving it with corroborated evidence.
• Algorithmic Harmony: This new concept requires three pillars: reduce friction for bots, create “tasty” content that algorithms want to use, and organize your digital presence so AI can connect all the pieces.
• The Urgent Mandate: You have a two-year window to make your brand sufficiently important within your niche. AI will soon have all basic information, meaning only information gaps (new data, fresh insights) and consistently up-to-date content will be seen and valued by the machines.

Transcript: How to Beat Google, ChatGPT, and TikTok At Their Own Game! - Jason Barnard

[00:00:00] Joe Fier: What if Google, ChatGPT, and TikTok already know more about your business than your customers do, and they’re the ones that are actually gonna decide who gets found? In the sea of everybody else out there, is it gonna be you? So I chose to have Jason Barnard here in the podcast today because this is super timely.

He’s gonna break down how to actually take control of your digital identity, how to build trust with AI, and how to position yourself for the future of search. Jason’s been doing this for 27 years, search optimization, so this is extremely timely, very tactical. Let’s dive into it.

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All right, Jason, we’re finally hitting record because already in the pre-chat, it’s always a good thing when we’re relating to people that we know and just getting excited for what’s to come. So thanks for hanging out with me today, Jason. 

[00:01:25] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. Thank you, Joe. And I love the pre-chat. 

[00:01:30] Joe Fier: That’s usually some of the best stuff and I just have to cut it off and be like, I gotta hit record. Gotta go. So we were going down memory lane a little bit. You have 27 years of experience of working with, maybe it wasn’t always called SEO at the time, but basically search and how to optimize things. It’s evolving massively. You said you’re up at 3:00 AM today with fireworks bursting in your mind of like, there’s new stuff.

From White Text to Algorithmic Trust: Jason Barnard’s 27-Year Journey to AI-First Brand Control.

[00:01:57] Jason Barnard: No, a hundred percent. And I started in the year that Google was incorporated, 1998. And I was doing white text in a white background. I was submitting to these different engines, different pages for each engine, for each variant. And I’ve come all the way through now to these machines are sufficiently smart to understand who you are, what you do, who you serve, are you credible and should they actually recommend you as a solution.

And it’s a huge evolution. 

[00:02:30] Joe Fier: And so you’ve done this for 27 years. So well over 20 years, you’ve seen evolution happen. I guess we don’t need to go and step through all of the evolution because it’s changed a ton. But I guess what are the biggest changes that maybe are happening right now and what is to come that people aren’t really realizing what’s happening?

[00:02:49] Jason Barnard: No, I love that question because actually we can basically forget everything that happened before.

[00:02:54] Joe Fier: Okay, that’s good.

Jason Barnard on the Perfect Click: Redefining SEO Success as Bottom-of-Funnel AI Conversion.

[00:02:56] Jason Barnard: Just check it in a bin. And we can look at AI Assistive Engines, which is ChatGPT, Google AI mode, Copilot. These engines are designed to help us as users go from top to bottom of the funnel.

To find the solution to our problem, and it might be paid for, it might be just a conversion for you. And you’re not optimizing for the visit, you are optimizing for the click, and that’s the perfect click, which is the bottom of the funnel. This is the solution that the engine has recommended. 

[00:03:28] Joe Fier: And that’s true engagement when someone’s clicking and taking an action, those are the people you want.

You don’t wanna just be visible in things that aren’t relevant. 

[00:03:36] Jason Barnard: Yeah, and I think as businesses we’re thinking, well, this middle of the funnel, top of funnel content we’ve created, I need visits. And the answer is no, you don’t. 

[00:03:45] Joe Fier: Right. 

[00:03:46] Jason Barnard: What you need is that the machine rebuilds that funnel in its brain and leads the person to you for the perfect click.

So clicks on your middle and top of funnel content are no longer a great KPI. It’s when do people come to your website and simply buy? 

[00:04:04] Joe Fier: So you’re basically saying that now we’re living in this age with AI so smart and it’s just getting smarter. We’ll talk about that with agents and things, that if we position ourselves correctly, and the AI platforms understand that and us, and what we put out there, it’s basically gonna find us the best buyers or most buyer intent. People from the get go, instead of us having to nurture everybody and take a long time. 

[00:04:28] Jason Barnard: No, a hundred percent. And so they nurture and they recommend and that’s brilliant. Oh, and you can actually fight these machines with exactly what they’re trying to do to us.

[00:04:38] Joe Fier: Tell me more about that. What do you mean? 

[00:04:40] Jason Barnard: Well, they’re creating walled gardens where they take the person entirely down the funnel. 

[00:04:46] Joe Fier: Mm-hmm. 

[00:04:47] Jason Barnard: If they ever leak or either they send somebody to your website before the end of the funnel. Create your own walled garden. Don’t let ’em out.

[00:04:55] Joe Fier: Yeah. How would you define that?

[00:04:57] Jason Barnard: Beat them at their own game. 

[00:04:59] Joe Fier: How would you recommend someone, what’s the basic structure of a walled garden from your perspective? 

[00:05:04] Jason Barnard: What they’re doing is saying, okay, we’ve got an awareness question, and we then take that down to consideration and we take it down to decision.

If ever you get a click from the awareness moment, you have to have that awareness page pushing people down the funnel so they don’t go back to the engine to ask for a recommendation, which might not be you. So basically it’s kinda cute in the sense that they’re creating walled gardens that are not letting people out of their ecosystem.

If they ever send somebody to you, do the same thing. 

[00:05:43] Joe Fier: Yeah. Play their game. But make sure you’re also playing their game, right? And Google’s always been that way too, right? Like they’ve always kind of had these rules that they tell you or they hint at how to play by the rules, but obviously the rules change all the time.

[00:06:01] Jason Barnard: Exactly. And if you can beat the rules at any point in the funnel, take the opportunity to not let the person go back. 

[00:06:10] Joe Fier: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:11] Jason Barnard: And then you’ve beaten the machine at its own game. 

[00:06:14] Joe Fier: We mentioned SEO, and that’s why I think when people immediately think of, oh, you worked with Google for a long time.

You’re an SEO guy, blah, blah, blah. We are already connecting on the previous guy that I’ve had on the show many times, Gert Mellak from Spain. Yeah. He said, he’s one of your favorite people. I’m like, that’s super cool. Small world. 

[00:06:33] Jason Barnard: He’s one of the smartest SEO marketers I’ve ever met because he builds things step by step.

He says, let’s do this today because it’s gonna have a result tomorrow and it’s gonna be a small result, but at least it’s a result. And he builds things step by step in a very intentional manner that I immensely appreciate. And when I talk to him, he always talks sense. 

[00:07:04] Joe Fier: That’s true. It’s true. It’s very practical.

That’s why I’ve had him on so many times because things change and we’re probably due for another one after you. And of course, Gert, if you’re listening, I’ll make sure you hear this. Obviously, Jason says hi and appreciates you, but I mentioned that because I’ve had him on a lot because people ask about SEO all the time and because it changes.

And so I’m curious from your perspective, Jason, when was SEO not enough anymore? There had to be more behind just doing? 

[00:07:36] Jason Barnard:  It’s never been enough. 

[00:07:37] Joe Fier: Ah. 

From Billion Pageviews to Algorithmic Deliverability: Jason Barnard on Why Google Is Just an Amplifier.

[00:07:38] Jason Barnard: I built my company online. It was an ed tech edutainment platform. We competed with Disney, with PBS. We had a billion page views in 2007 from 60 million visits.

[00:07:55] Joe Fier: Wow. Holy Molly. So people were sticking around on the site.

[00:08:00] Jason Barnard: Yeah, but only 20% came from Google.

[00:08:03] Joe Fier: Wow.

[00:08:05] Jason Barnard: All of the rest came from the marketing, the branding that we were doing across different platforms. So I would suggest that Google is a bonus. ChatGPT is a bonus. And that you should be focusing on marketing to the people that you can truly help in the places where they already hang out.

In my case, it was kids entertainment. It was schools, it was cartoon websites, it was parenting websites. It was grandparenting websites. And it was babysitting websites. That was 80% of our traffic.

[00:08:48] Joe Fier: So referral traffic, then, more or less, right?

[00:08:51] Jason Barnard: Yeah. It was being in front of the right people, in the right places at the right time when you could actually offer the solution.

And the 20% of Google and search in general was a bonus. So if you’re looking at it that way, you change your perspective and you say, well, I don’t rely on Google. Google is simply an addition. It’s an additional amplifier. And ChatGPT is exactly the same.

[00:09:15] Joe Fier: Yeah.

[00:09:15] Jason Barnard: So look at it as an amplifier of what you should already be doing.

[00:09:20] Joe Fier: And do you see that being the same as time goes on in the future as well? 

[00:09:25] Jason Barnard: I would say it’s even more the case now with the close-walled gardens. It’s if you let them keep the user, they will keep the user. If you can get the user before the user even gets to them, you’ve won the game.

[00:09:40] Joe Fier: True. Do you feel like there’s a timeframe right now that we’re kind of in, like this window in time?

[00:09:48] Jason Barnard: Two years.

[00:09:49] Joe Fier: Two years? Why is this? 

The Two-Year Countdown: Why Content Must Fill AI’s Information Gaps Now.

[00:09:51] Jason Barnard: Because in two years time, the AI will already have all of the information it needs to serve the basic, fundamental information funnel that we need as users. So let’s take an example of Napoleon Bonaparte.

I’m in France. It doesn’t need new information about him.

[00:10:13] Joe Fier: Right.

[00:10:13] Jason Barnard: So it doesn’t go looking for information about him.

[00:10:15] Joe Fier: It’s just gonna make basic AI-generated stuff out of the knowledge that it already has about Napoleon. Yeah. 

[00:10:21] Jason Barnard: So if I write an article about Napoleon Bonaparte, I’m throwing my time down the toilet in terms of Google and ChatGPT. And in two years time, that is gonna be true of every standard basic topic in the world. 

[00:10:37] Joe Fier: Meaning, basically, all the information has been mined from what we know as humans or what has been published, I guess, right? 

[00:10:45] Jason Barnard: Yeah, exactly. And so you are only in, is up to date information, football scores, great example. And information gaps. Anything you can teach it that it didn’t already know. 

[00:11:03] Joe Fier: Hmm. Yeah, information gaps. So it’s information that we hold or maybe a perspective of something kind of recent, I guess. Define information gaps and how that’s an opportunity for us.

[00:11:17] Jason Barnard: Well, data numbers. And super important, if I say I’ve got 9.4 billion data points in Kalicube Pro™, and I can tell you that 30% of lawyers do not have a Knowledge Panel. That’s new information it didn’t have, and it will be super enthusiastic. 

[00:11:37] Joe Fier: Got it. 

Algorithmic Harmony: Jason Barnard’s Three Principles for Frictionless AI Brand Education.

[00:11:38] Jason Barnard: And then today, the three o’clock in the morning thing you were talking about, and it’s difficult to explain, but I woke up and I thought, wow, okay, we are looking at Algorithmic Harmony.

[00:11:48] Joe Fier: I like that.

[00:11:49] Jason Barnard: How do we create Algorithmic Harmony? We create a friction-free situation for bots on our website and within our content generally. We create tasty content for algorithms that they want to use, and we organize ourselves for the engines so that they can understand how to put all the pieces together.

And it’s a bit geeky and I’m sorry, I’m probably explaining it very badly, but it was literally last night that I thought of it. This is new information. This is a new perspective on something that everybody already knew. 

[00:12:24] Joe Fier: Well, expand. I love for one, you got me with Algorithmic Harmony. I had to write that down because that’s interesting. 

[00:12:31] Jason Barnard: And it’s cool, isn’t it?

[00:12:32] Joe Fier: It is. So Algorithmic Harmony in your mind and this is what kept you awake probably, or woke you up. So you’re reducing friction for all of the bots. So we’re talking about what?

[00:12:44] Jason Barnard: Yeah.

[00:12:44] Joe Fier: Google, AI, OpenAI, all the stuff that’s basically looking for information. So you’re making it easy for people. You’re making it tasty and interesting for the bots. 

[00:12:55] Jason Barnard: No, the algorithms.

[00:12:57] Joe Fier: Yeah, for the algorithms. 

[00:12:59] Jason Barnard: So the tasty part is the algorithms. It’s “does the algorithm think that your content is tasty and helpful?” 

[00:13:06] Joe Fier: And that would be timely stuff, right? The information gaps that you mentioned. 

[00:13:10] Jason Barnard: Does it serve the purpose of the need of the user?

[00:13:15] Joe Fier: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:16] Jason Barnard: You need to make sure the content you’re creating makes the algorithms think, yes, I can serve this to my user and it will be helpful to them. That’s tasty. And then, the organizing, please go ahead, because I’m interested in your perspective. Literally, this is 18 hours old.

[00:13:35] Joe Fier: Right. I know. And just so everyone knows, that was 3:00 AM. You’re in France. I’m in San Diego, California. It’s what, past 7:00 PM your time. So it’s almost 7:30. So it’s like you’ve been up for a while and you’re still buzzing. But yeah, the third, so we talked about reducing friction for the bots. Make it tasty for the algorithms, and then organizing this so the engines understand how to put all the pieces together, right? So how it shows up when people are actually searching for that need.

[00:14:05] Jason Barnard: Yep. You’ve nailed it.

[00:14:06] Joe Fier: That’s my take on it. 

[00:14:08] Jason Barnard: That’s it. So 18 hours old and it’s all nailed now. Thank you very much, Joe. 

[00:14:14] Joe Fier: Thank you very much. Well, I’m happy to introduce it. I gotta publish this before you go and no, I know you’re already writing something. Beat you to it. I don’t think I will. But no, I think that’s a great overview. And I guess, now this leads me to, because I wanna get to Knowledge Panels and how that’s important.

And it’s been around, it’s not like a new thing. But maybe we go back to that and pause for a moment because I do want to get your perspective of what’s happening right now in AI and how search is similar but changing how we position ourselves.

[00:14:50] Jason Barnard: Yeah.

The Knowledge Panel: Why It’s the Ultimate KPI for Algorithmic Understanding.

[00:14:52] Joe Fier: But I want to tease that for a moment. Go to Knowledge Panels because that’s something that I know is very important. I wanna understand. Just quickly describe what they are, they’ve been around and then how they’re changing. 

[00:15:04] Jason Barnard: A Knowledge Panel is Google’s understanding of who you are. So when it shows a Knowledge Panel, it says, well, this is the person or the company, and this is what I’ve understood about them and I am super confident. And it’s a great KPI for algorithmic understanding.

And that same algorithmic understanding applies to every single engine, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Claude. If they understand who you are, they will represent you with that factual representation that you need for the bottom of funnel clients, prospects that you’re getting.

[00:15:46] Joe Fier: Yes.

[00:15:47] Jason Barnard: So the Knowledge Panel right now is a great KPI because if Google understands you, the other AI probably understands you too.

[00:15:55] Joe Fier: Because they’re all looking at Google as that source of information, at least for now. But like you said, Google’s been at it since you said 1997, 1998? 

Jason Barnard’s “Claim, Frame, Prove” Strategy: Engineering Brand Narrative for Algorithms.

[00:16:03] Jason Barnard: I think they started in 1996, but they incorporated in 1998. So I used that date because it makes me look like I was there at the beginning, but they’d actually been going two years before I started.

[00:16:15] Joe Fier: Ah, okay.

[00:16:15] Jason Barnard: “I started SEO in the year Google was incorporated” is better than “I started SEO two years after Google started.” 

[00:16:23] Joe Fier: I like it. It’s all branding and positioning, right?

[00:16:25] Jason Barnard: Yep, exactly. 

[00:16:26] Joe Fier: Always.

[00:16:27] Jason Barnard: It’s what we call at Kalicube®, Claim, Frame, and Prove.

[00:16:30] Joe Fier: Claim, Frame, and Prove. 

[00:16:32] Jason Barnard: So I claim 27 years. I frame it by saying, the same year Google was incorporated. That makes me look impressive. And then I prove it with links out to resources on the web that show that. So the framing is super important because the difference between I started in SEO the year Google was incorporated. Brilliant. Okay. Google, Jason, same date. 

[00:16:54] Joe Fier: Yep. 

[00:16:55] Jason Barnard: I started SEO two years after Google started actually, with their search engine. Jason was behind the time. 

[00:17:03] Joe Fier: Right. So you get media trust, you could prove it and off you will. That’s great. That’s a little nugget right there. Anyone could just take and use it for their own business or whatever you do.

[00:17:14] Jason Barnard: Yeah. The framing is super important. Whatever’s true in your life is incredibly important, but how you frame it to serve your current purpose is fundamental to people and to algorithms. 

[00:17:31] Joe Fier: I love that. And so the Knowledge Panel thing, it’s interesting because everybody’s looking at these four or five big AI companies really. If you think about it, that’s what’s interesting. They’re all racing to get all the information and feed each other. Go ahead. 

[00:17:48] Jason Barnard: Tell me which four or five you’re thinking of. 

[00:17:50] Joe Fier: Oh, there’s probably more, but yeah, you have Google. You have Microsoft. You have Anthropic, OpenAI, and you have China and all these others. But I’d say, Amazon is probably coming up too.

[00:18:07] Jason Barnard: Yeah. No, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.

[00:18:10] Joe Fier: No, it’s okay. It’s okay.

Beyond the Dead Internet Theory: Which Bots (and Why) Consume Your Content.

[00:18:11] Jason Barnard: But we actually had a situation where right now people are saying 60 to 80% of your traffic on your website is bots.

[00:18:20] Joe Fier: Mm-hmm. Right. And that’s the dead internet theory or whatever?

[00:18:24] Jason Barnard: Yeah, and it’s rubbish, of course.

[00:18:26] Joe Fier: Oh, is it? 

[00:18:27] Jason Barnard: Oh God, oh yes.

[00:18:28] Joe Fier: Tell me because I’m curious.

[00:18:30] Jason Barnard: It struck me that that can’t be true. The kind of subtlety there is 60% of the files on your website are being taken by bots, but only 15% of the web pages that are digested are by bots because they’re taking lots of files that people never see.

CSS, JavaScript, robots, TXT, the XML site map, so on and so forth. So if you remove all of that, the number of webpages that are being digested is in our case, at Kalicube®, 15% because we are an incredibly popular bot-friendly website. In your website, it might be 8%, it might be 6%, but be careful about getting caught out in the headline grabbing clickbait title. 

[00:19:24] Joe Fier: Hey, I wanna pause the episode really fast and shout out another podcast that’s on the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The podcast is called This Old Marketing, and it’s hosted by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose.

And these guys have been around for a wow, very well-known experts in content marketing. If you want anything around content marketing and the trends and basically the rants. It just brings in a lot of the tactical but really fun conversations. They’re not more than an hour long, so you’ll be able to jump in there, get some actionable stuff here at content marketing, and then jump right out and then go do some stuff with it.

So I highly recommend to go listen to The Old Marketing, wherever you get your podcast and go enjoy.

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[00:20:44] Jason Barnard: So bots are crawling your website and they are doing a lot. And TikTok is a huge consumer. 

[00:20:51] Joe Fier: Really? 

[00:20:52] Jason Barnard: You said China. It’s TikTok.

[00:20:54] Joe Fier: It’s TikTok. Yeah.

[00:20:55] Jason Barnard: I dunno what they’re doing. I don’t have an insight into why, but they crawl as much as, if not more than Google and Bing. 

[00:21:04] Joe Fier: TikTok does? I did not know that. 

[00:21:07] Jason Barnard: Nuts, isn’t it?

[00:21:08] Joe Fier: So is that just to beef up their own internal search algorithm, right?

[00:21:12] Jason Barnard: Maybe they’re feeding Baidu. Maybe they have a plan for the future. Maybe they’re gonna take over the world. I don’t know. But definitely, they’re huge consumers.

[00:21:26] Joe Fier: Got it. I didn’t know that. I learned something very new.

[00:21:28] Jason Barnard: Amazon are a huge consumer. Meta are a huge consumer.

[00:21:32] Joe Fier: I missed that. So that might be the sixth or seventh then. Yeah. Meta, that’s true. Good call. It’s a race. 

[00:21:38] Jason Barnard: We found a bot called Paddle-bot. 

[00:21:41] Joe Fier: Paddle-bot? I haven’t heard of that. No. 

[00:21:42] Jason Barnard: No, me neither. I’ve got no idea what they do, but they’re terribly enthusiastic. 

[00:21:48] Joe Fier: I’m curious of your thoughts, but now, with agents or bots, everybody can Vibecode or do something. The information is literally out there to anyone in the world. The power of AI, “OpenAI.” So who knows what’s getting developed? Right now, we have these ones that are really backed by either a bunch of investors or nations. Both. But then you have all these independent players who are spinning up things that are also competing in their own thing, right?

[00:22:19] Jason Barnard: Yeah. And Paddle-bot is doing something. TikTok are doing something, but I don’t really know what, and we’ll see. But it’s super, super intriguing. 

[00:22:31] Joe Fier: I take it as it’s probably intriguing, at least to me, this is even more of a reason to at least show up in the way that I want to get showed up or shown to my best potential customers or whoever, subscribers, viewers. Whatever your KPI or your conversion point is, right? 

The New Digital Wild West: Why Search Bots Are ‘Kind’ While AI Crawlers Play Dirty.

[00:22:47] Jason Barnard: Right. And a really important point to make is that Googlebot and Bingbot have been incredibly kind to us over the years. 

[00:22:57] Joe Fier: How do they really though? 

[00:22:58] Jason Barnard: They render JavaScript. They try to figure out what your website looks like when the JavaScript triggers, they try not to overload your server.

They try to chunk down your content. They make enormous efforts. TikTok, OpenAI, Meta, and Amazon literally don’t make any effort at all. 

[00:23:20] Joe Fier: So they’re literally like bogging down our own systems because they’re trying to take.

[00:23:24] Jason Barnard: Yeah. And Perplexity has been caught not respecting instructions saying, “Don’t crawl this part.”

[00:23:32] Joe Fier: Oh, wow.

[00:23:32] Jason Barnard: So it’s now turned into the Wild West and we’ve been spoiled by Google and Bing. And we need to learn now that Perplexity will break the rules. TikTok will crawl you massively and they don’t care about the fact that your server is about to crash and that your users are not getting a great experience. Amazon, the same. Meta is the same. So we’re in a situation now where you’re saying, well, we actually need to think about this. It’s not so much am I sharing my information, which you want to do, if you want to be present in these AI assistive engines. It’s, do I have the resources and can I afford it?

[00:24:07] Joe Fier: Is there anything we can do to prevent or optimize what we’re doing so they’re not gonna take us down and ruin the experience for everybody else? 

Taking Control: How to Manage and Block Aggressive AI Bots from Your Website.

[00:24:15] Jason Barnard: Well, if you wanna take control, go through Cloudflare.

[00:24:17] Joe Fier: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:18] Jason Barnard: They have bot detectors and you can actually exclude bots. And so if you’re saying, well, I don’t want TikTok, exclude it. 

[00:24:25] Joe Fier: Ah, okay.

[00:24:27] Jason Barnard: And that’s a really neat trick. So it’s basically just setting your website up so that every request comes through Cloudflare. 

[00:24:36] Joe Fier: Yep. 

[00:24:36] Jason Barnard: And then you can control it. 

[00:24:39] Joe Fier: Yeah. It’s Cloudflare first, and then it goes to your domain, right? And then host and whatnot. 

[00:24:43] Jason Barnard: Exactly. And so you take control and then you just need to be careful. For example, USA Today is saying nobody can take our content because we want people to come to our website. We don’t want Google, OpenAI, Bing, Perplexity, Claude stealing our content. That’s fine. But then you have to accept that they’re not gonna send you traffic.

[00:25:05] Joe Fier: Or you’re probably not gonna show up in some of these AI searches. Yeah, it’s an interesting thing. It’s a paradigm. Even with TikTok or the other bots, maybe it’s a good thing in the future. I don’t know. Do I exclude them? Do I not? 

[00:25:22] Jason Barnard: Well, it’s a huge bet that we’re all taking. 

[00:25:25] Joe Fier: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:25] Jason Barnard: If you’re a publisher, you’re saying, well, I make my money from my content, therefore I can’t give it to the bots. But you are cutting off a source of traffic and revenue. 

[00:25:35] Joe Fier: Right. 

[00:25:36] Jason Barnard: If you’re a business, B2B, B2C, you want the bot to send the people to you, and you need to understand that they will only send them to you when the person has made the decision at the perfect click. 

[00:25:50] Joe Fier: Right. And you’re showing up in the right way at the right time.

[00:25:53] Jason Barnard: Exactly. So you end up, it’s a debate in our own heads, and it’s a debate that we’ve never had to have before. And I would advise every business owner to look at it from their own perspective. What makes sense to me? 

[00:26:06] Joe Fier: Well, it’s a business model thing, right? Maybe there’s a shift in the model that we get to take now because of the shifts happening. 

Kalicube’s Mission: Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed Where Publishers Face an Unsolvable AI Dilemma.

[00:26:14] Jason Barnard: With Kalicube®, we’re a B2B service. We help entrepreneurs and their companies turn up in Google and AI. We want these bots to build the funnel in their brains and bring people to us, and we’re actively building that. But if I were a publisher who was publishing news, I would be struggling with, do I want to share my content with them where they will give the answer on their own walled garden?

[00:26:50] Joe Fier: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:51] Jason Barnard: And if I do that, will I lose all the people who come to me and I make my money out of subscriptions or advertisements? But if I don’t, I lose all that traffic. I have to find another source. 

[00:27:06] Joe Fier: Right. 

[00:27:07] Jason Barnard: That’s a huge, huge question and I don’t have the answer. 

[00:27:10] Joe Fier: Right. I don’t think anybody has a perfect answer right now, but I think it’s good thought experiments, looking at what maybe has happened in the past, even though this is totally new. 

From Assistive Engines to Autonomous Agents: Preparing for the Ultimate Algorithmic Gatekeeper.

[00:27:21] Jason Barnard: I would advise anybody who is implementing SEO strategies to sit down and ask themselves the fundamental questions of where do I get my money from. And talk to somebody smart like myself, for example, about how I avoid leaking and maximize the actual kind of income.

[00:27:48] Joe Fier: I think it’s very smart. There’s so many indicators that say, yeah, two to three years in this kind of time span. Who knows what the world’s gonna be like? It’s gonna change fast. It’s rapid. You have things like agents popping up that will be completely changed. Yeah.

[00:28:08] Jason Barnard: Now, and that’s a hundred percent. It’s all gonna be brand. And you mentioned agents, and I literally just wrote an article about that. 

[00:28:17] Joe Fier: Yeah. 

[00:28:17] Jason Barnard: Is AI assistive engines today? It’s a discussion, it’s a funnel that I’m having with my AI assistive engine, be it Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and so on and so forth. But in the near future, it’s gonna be AI agents who do that funnel multiple times for each task. 

[00:28:38] Joe Fier: Yes. 

[00:28:39] Jason Barnard: And they make the decision, and I don’t know about it. 

[00:28:42] Joe Fier: So we need to show up in the right way to those machines too. Right now, it’s the people primarily making the choice. 

[00:28:49] Jason Barnard: And in a few years time, it’s gonna be the machine that makes the choice multiple times.

[00:28:53] Joe Fier: Right.

[00:28:54] Jason Barnard: So your audience is the machine because the audience that you’re actually trying to reach are just gonna say, well, I got the plane ticket, I got the hotel booked. I bought the microphone from Thomann, which is something I did last week. But I had nothing to do with the actual multiple decision processes that the agent went through.

So AI agent optimization is gonna be a thing.

[00:29:21] Joe Fier: Gotcha. This is fascinating, Jason. Knowledge Panel. I just wanna close the loop there.

[00:29:29] Jason Barnard: Right, you like your Knowledge Panel? 

[00:29:30] Joe Fier: I do because I feel like, you and also our mutual buddy, my business partner, Scott Duffy.

[00:29:37] Jason Barnard: Yeah.

[00:29:37] Joe Fier: I know he has worked with you for a long time now, building that up.

[00:29:42] Jason Barnard: Five years.

[00:29:43] Joe Fier: There you go. So obviously, and it’s working for him. Where do people start for the Knowledge Panel? Because it seems like that’s the core or the most leveraged piece right now. Obviously there’s more to it. 

Knowledge Panels as the KPI: Engineering the Infinite Loop of Corroboration for AI Trust.

[00:29:57] Jason Barnard: Well, if you look at the Knowledge Panel as the KPI of Understandability, then you’re in a really good place because whether it’s a Knowledge Panel or it’s ChatGPT or it’s Perplexity, these algorithms need to understand who you are, what you do, who you serve. 

[00:30:14] Joe Fier: Yeah. 

[00:30:15] Jason Barnard: If they don’t understand that, they can’t trust you. So you are right. That’s the foundation. The Knowledge Panel is the KPI of do the machines understand you. And the really simple approach to that is say, okay, right, I’ll have an About Page on my website that describes who I say I am, who I serve, and why I’m credible. Then, from that page, I need to link out to the resources that confirm what I’m saying.

And I need to get them to link back to me confirming that it is indeed me. And then you end up with what we call the infinite loop of self corroboration, where the machine comes to your website, says, okay, this is what Joe Fier says about him. This is what Medium says about him. This is what this article says about him.

This is what Twitter says about him. This is what LinkedIn says about him, and it all maps out. I understand that. I’m confident. I’ll give them a Knowledge Panel. That’s your KPI, that’s understandability. 

[00:31:18] Joe Fier: So you’re putting signals out there. They’re all kind of saying the same thing. So it gets a picture of you. On the About Page, like you said, you’re almost like creating this web or this journey for these bots to go on, right?

[00:31:31] Jason Barnard: Exactly.

[00:31:31] Joe Fier: All kind of saying the same thing. 

[00:31:33] Jason Barnard: No, I love that it’s a journey. And it’s a very repetitive journey. It’s the algorithm understands by repetition and repetition by trustworthy sources.

But you have to remember that the go-to source is always you. And if that’s not the case, you’ve lost the game because you have no control. 

[00:31:59] Joe Fier: Yeah. Well, speaking of control, I’m thinking of websites now. You’re talking about About Page structure of your own website. Obviously now you’re talking about other platforms as well that your name shows up on.

What is one simple fix that someone can make on their website today that makes it easier for Google, but also AI to better understand? 

[00:32:24] Jason Barnard: You said the About Page and that’s exactly it. 

[00:32:28] Joe Fier: That might be it. Yeah. 

The Kalicube Process™: Why Understandability is the Non-Negotiable Foundation for Algorithmic Trust.

[00:32:29] Jason Barnard: So The Kalicube Process™, which is the system we use, is Understandability, Credibility, Deliverability.

If it doesn’t understand who you are, it can’t trust you. If it doesn’t trust you, it will never deliver you. So you need to start with Understandability. And it’s Understandability is that About Page on your website that says, this is who I am, this is who I serve, and this is why I am credible.

[00:32:55] Joe Fier: Hmm.

[00:32:56] Jason Barnard: So that’s the first place to start. 

[00:32:58] Joe Fier: That’s it. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. And there’s more to it, but yeah, that’s great. Thank you, Jason. 

[00:33:02] Jason Barnard: But it’s actually really simple and it’s one of those moments in life where you say, well, actually, I can explain to the baker downstairs and she understands it in five minutes.

Create the single source of truth, which is you. Make sure that every single source about you around the web corroborates what you’re saying. Link out to it. The machine goes backwards and forwards and it keeps seeing the same message and you’ve won the game. 

[00:33:29] Joe Fier: I like it. Logically it’s all there, but like you said, it’s a process.

That’s why Gert Mellak, when he talks about things, he’s got his process. So I’m really excited because I know personally, I’m going to start the journey with Kalicube, and with you and your team. Scott and my team, we’re all working together, so it’s pretty awesome. 

[00:33:52] Jason Barnard: And I think the important thing is, it’s what you’ve focused on. You keep talking about the Knowledge Panel and I’ve been doing this so long, I’m a bit bored. Knowledge Panel. But it is the foundation of everything. If the machine doesn’t understand who you are, you have no hope. You’re not even in the game. 

[00:34:12] Joe Fier: Yeah. 

The Entity Home: Why It is the Non-Negotiable Foundation for All AI Trust.

[00:34:13] Jason Barnard: So if you don’t have the Knowledge Panel on Google, you’re not gonna be playing the game in Google, in Bing, in Claude, in ChatGPT. That’s your foundation. You need to start there. And it starts with the Entity Home, which is the About Page on your website and the corroboration around the web with links that make sure the machine goes through that infinite loop of self corroboration.

And when I say it like that, it sounds very simple. Managing it is quite difficult. 

[00:34:40] Joe Fier: Yeah.

[00:34:40] Jason Barnard: Because as human beings, we’re a bit messy. But that’s where you start and you can DIY it. 

[00:34:46] Joe Fier: That’s great. So, if they don’t wanna DIY it or if they wanna learn more, where do they go and find you, Jason? 

[00:34:53] Jason Barnard: Well, if you want to DIY it, you go here, kalicube.com/guides, and if you don’t, reach out to me, I’d be happy to help.

[00:35:02] Joe Fier: Awesome. Yeah, we’ll put everything in the show notes, link it up and all that. Make it easy. So last question, Jason. I’m always curious, and we’ve kind of talked about it, but like the next handful of years. What’s the thing you are most excited about? You’ve been excited, you’ve been on fire all day long today. I know. I’m curious, with you, what you said, there’s two years of this. Does that mean that you’re out of a job, Jason, in two years?

The Urgent Mandate: Make Your Brand So Important the Algorithms Come Looking.

[00:35:28] Jason Barnard: No. Ah, I love the question. There are a few things that are gonna remain in place. My life is gonna change and the algorithms know that.

But if they don’t recognize me before that two-year window, they won’t come looking. I have to make myself, you have to make yourself sufficiently important to the machines that they come looking, three years from now. That’s the key focus. And anybody who’s missed that boat is gonna be really struggling.

So you need to, in the next two years, make sure that you become sufficiently important within your niche for the machines to proactively come looking for information about you.

[00:36:18] Joe Fier: Mm-hmm. That’s it. All right, y’all, you know the procedure. Go do it. Go do some stuff. Definitely go follow Jason. What he’s doing. It’s very timely stuff. That’s why we’re talking now and yeah, the next few years are gonna be interesting. Who knows what the future’s like?

[00:36:36] Jason Barnard: It’s nuts, isn’t it? 

[00:36:37] Joe Fier: I’m just happy we’re here. We’re alive and we’re experiencing it.

[00:36:41] Jason Barnard: Absolutely. Thank you.

[00:36:42] Joe Fier: All right, Jason, I appreciate you. Was this a good cap to the day? I know it started very early for you. 

[00:36:49] Jason Barnard: Yeah, it’s absolutely the perfect end to a day where I started the day just going, oh, wow, this is all brilliant and wonderful and delightful. And I’m thinking it all through. But the foundation is always, does the machine understand who you are, what you offer, and to whom? Does it believe you to be credible as a solution to the subset of its users who are your audience? And does it have the content to be able to deliver you to those people for whom you have the perfect solution.

[00:37:20] Joe Fier: That’s it. Yeah. Perfect. All right, Jason, go get some rest. You’ve been at it all day long. Thanks for hanging out late with me. So till next time, we’ll do it again soon.

[00:37:41] Jason Barnard: Bye-bye.

[00:37:42] Joe Fier: Bye.