How do you figure out AI when AI hasn’t figured itself out yet? I was with a potential client this week. They had ChatGPT and Claude open. And I’ll be honest, this was a terrible idea. Because who knows what AI is going to say? It might get it right. It might say something completely off the wall. It might decide a courier company in Kansas City is actually a bicycle shop in Toledo. That’s kind of the point. I had them ask one question about a company I already work with: Who is this company in Kansas City? Both AIs came back with our exact words. Word for word. That’s GEO. Then I had them ask the harder one, the one that is an even worse idea: Who is the best in this category in Kansas City? No name. No hint. My client came up first (yep, did a little dance in my head). That’s Pick Rate. Not just known. Picked. And honestly, that’s still a little wild. Because AI can be dead on one minute and completely off in the weeds the next. The honest answer is simpler than that: You can’t fully figure out AI right now, because it hasn’t fully figured itself out. It changes fast. We’re all studying something while it’s still deciding what it is. That’s why I keep digging into the actual research and the actual server data, not just the hype. Many late nights deep diving Perplexity for reputable and unbiased data and stats. And the weird part is, the best independent research right now says the files we use for this barely get read by AI. I believe that research. Way too many reputable companies and incredibly smart people saying similar things to discount it. But then I watch two of the biggest AIs on earth do the exact thing that research says shouldn’t happen because we believe it does read our files in real time, not cached data. So I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’ve cracked it. Nobody has. AI changes too fast for anybody to act like they’ve got it all figured out. So I just try to stay honest about what I’m seeing and learn from it. Clear gets you read. Backed up gets you picked. That’s the part I trust. The rest I keep asking why. My Substack link in the comments.