Notes · 3 of 8
The first reader of your website is an AI. It got my company wrong.
The thing reading your website isn't a person. Its answer comes before the first link, and most people stop there.
This month I pretended to be a stranger who had been handed my business card.
I asked two AI assistants whether the company on the card was worth my time. The company was mine.
They were thorough. They read our website and quoted my own sentences back to me. One guessed our price, then wrote a thirty-day plan to test whether our claims were true. The other looked me up.
Both got the facts right. Then each described what kind of company we are, and both got that wrong.
Every word came from pages I had written. Nobody called me to check. A real stranger would have read that answer, believed it, and never opened my website.
The answer comes before the link
Try it now. Type the question your office hears most into a search engine. Read what comes before the first link.
An AI wrote that answer. Search engines now put one above the links. AI assistants go further and read your website for whoever asks.
This is the new normal. Anyone who looks you up meets that answer first, and most stop there. Your website used to be where people ended up. Now it is what the answer is made from.
A wrong answer about my company costs me a conversation. A wrong answer about your office could go viral, and not in a good way.
Picture someone who moved to town in September. On a Sunday night she searches for the last day to register to vote. The answer gives one date, in one sure sentence. She writes it down.
That date came from a notice posted two years ago that nobody took down. It is the right deadline for the wrong year.
The AI made nothing up. It read a page with your name on it. She never saw your current page, so it could not help her. She finds out at the counter, and that is how an old page becomes a story.
What only you can do
Ask — the AI, the way a stranger would. Pick the three questions the public asks you most. What is the last day to register, file, or apply? Where do I go, and what do I bring? Who do I call?
Ask a search engine and two AI assistants, yourself, on your own phone. Record each answer and the date you asked.
You are not grading the AI. You are learning what it would say about you if prompted. Every wrong answer points somewhere: an old notice, a page from an office you oversee, a vendor's help site, or an old elections calendar.
Confirm — each answer against the page you would stand behind. Check the date, the address, the hours, and the phone number.
Require — Someone on your team who decides which pages are current.
Decide — which old pages come down this week, before your next deadline, product launch, or public appearance.
Copy and send: I asked two AI assistants our three most common questions today. The answers are below. Which page did each one come from, and which should come down?
The short version, for this week:
Ask (the AI, as a stranger) · Confirm (against the page you'd stand behind) · Require (one owner for what's current) · Decide (what comes down this week)
The business card again
Last week we published a page of plain answers to the questions people ask us. We also posted a short file that points the machines at our current pages. Your web team will know it as llms.txt. Ready for Tuesday has a practical walkthrough.
I don't know yet whether it helped. Next month I'll hand the same two assistants the same card, and record the reply.
Nobody called me before those answers were written. Nobody will call you. The answer about your office gets written tonight, for whoever asks.
You can't always predict what AIs will say about you and your organization. You can decide to be informed about what answers they might provide.
Reply with the one question the public asks your office most, and I'll ask two AIs and send you what came back. Message me instead if you'd rather not say it in public.
Next · 4 of 8 · Your vendor has a vendor. Here is the question to send.