Stephen Sumner
AI Search & AEO
The shift from blue links to answer engines is the thing I think about most right now: how brands stay visible inside AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity.
- Answer-engine optimisation
- Entity & schema strategy
- LLM visibility tracking
From blue links to answer engines, and everything between.
I started in search before "content marketing" had a name. Twenty-five years on, I'm the founder of Local SEO Ltd, a growth agency built on proven, data-driven frameworks and AI-native by default. The name nods to where I started, not the limits of the work. I've spent my career helping brands across the legal, care and commerce sectors get found by the people who need them.
I've served on the International Steering Committee at BrightonSEO, and these days I'm most interested in two things: staying ahead as AI reshapes search, and building things of my own. This site is where I tie it all together: the projects, the experience, and the notes I write to think things through.
A personal note: I left the UK for Sweden in 2013 and have been based in Gothenburg ever since. The work travels well (it's borderless by nature), but the coffee and the quiet are firmly Scandinavian.
