AI: Verify What It Says About You. The SEJ Protocol
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A morning of panic: when AI lies about your brand
A client calls me on a Tuesday morning.
« Stéphane, look at what Google pulls up when I search my brand. »
He reads me the AI-generated answer. It claims his biscuits contain artificial dyes. False. His site proves it on page 2. But the AI preferred an article from a poorly informed NGO.
In 6 weeks, his click-through rate dropped 22%.
22%. That’s massive.
The problem wasn’t classical SEO. His pages ranked well. The AI simply didn’t cite them.
That’s when the job shifts.
Search Engine Journal published a webinar under a title that says it all: « SEO Expert Became AI Search Expert (Gulp.) ». I watched it. I broke down the 3 stratégies shared by seoClarity. I applied them for 3 of my clients. That morning, I told my client: « We’re taking back control. We’re correcting the narrative. We’re becoming the only source of truth for AI. »
We stopped the bleeding. We recovered 34% of clicks. Without spending a dime on ads.
Strategy 1: Become the orchestrator of your truth
The first lever of the SEJ protocol struck me hard: cross-functional alignment. You can’t control what AI says about you by staying alone in your SEO corner. You need to align communications, product, PR, and content.
The speakers, Chris Sachs and Tania German, call it « the Orchestrator’s Playbook ». Translation: a battle plan where SEO becomes the conductor across departments.
For my biscuit client, I organized three meetings in 10 days:
- Product: an updated technical sheet, with ingredients and certifications, machine-readable format.
- PR: a corrective press release, picked up by 7 specialized media outlets.
- Content: a FAQ page with video of the founder, answering point-by-point the myths spread by AI.
Result? Within 4 weeks, AI started citing this FAQ page as the primary source. The false answer disappeared from results.
That’s the heart of it. AI draws from an ecosystem of signals. If your ecosystem is incoherent, it picks an external source.
Strategy 2: Measure certainty, not visibility
All my clients track their SEO rankings. None monitored the accuracy of AI responses.
Yet according to the SEJ webinar, there are Answer Certainty Metrics: reliability indicators for what AI returns.
I set up a simple dashboard for 3 of my clients:
- Critical questions: 10 to 15 typical questions customers ask about the brand.
- Current AI answer: captured weekly.
- Source cited: your site or a third party.
- Truth score: on a scale of 4 (1=completely false, 4=100% aligned with your official messaging).
What’s fascinating is that a declining score predicts a traffic drop 3 to 4 weeks before it shows up in your analytics.
I saw a score go from 4 to 2 in 15 days. We corrected it before clicks tanked.
Visibility is no longer enough. It’s cited accuracy that counts.
Strategy 3: Reclaim the narrative (narrative reclamation)
The third pillar of the SEJ protocol is about narrative reclamation. It’s the most powerful and least technical.
The AI error about my client didn’t come from a finicky algorithm. It came from an old 2019 Greenwatch NGO report that conflated two product lines. AI had absorbed it without fact-checking.
To take back control, we published:
- An independent study commissioned by the client, published on a partner university site.
- A technical white paper in 14 points, each chapter addressing a myth.
- A timeline of facts, with clickable links to proof.
Tania German emphasizes in the webinar: « Make your organization the primary Source of Truth. »
We proceeded in 3 steps: identify false narratives, produce authoritative content (factual, dated, sourced), distribute it where AI reads: Wikipedia, Google Scholar, corporate site, indexed press releases.
In 12 weeks, the truth score went from 2 to 4. Clicks jumped 34%.
No magic. Just methodical control recapture.
Apply the SEJ Protocol to Your E-Commerce in 4 Steps
Apply the SEJ Protocol to Your E-Commerce in 4 Steps
Here’s how I adapted the SEJ method for a pure-play seller moving 800 dietary supplement SKUs:
1. Map your AI questions
List 30 « brand + product » questions your customers ask. Use People Also Ask, Google suggestions, and AI prompts.
2. Audit current answers
Capture each Monday. Note the response and source. Assign a truth score.
3. Create « ultimate source pages »
For each question, one page on your site: expert content, no corporate jargon, with dates and verifiable links. Structured format (FAQ, How-To). Precise numbers.
4. Push the signal
Get your pages cited on trusted sites. A press release on PRNewswire. A mention in a trade publication. An update to your Wikipedia page.
This protocol isn’t a sprint. It’s a system. A system that runs.
What I’ve seen in Southeast Asia: the trap of the illusion of control
My office moved. I work from Southeast Asia now. And I see a systematic error in European e-commerce: they think their site is enough.
They tell me: « My site tells the truth. »
But AI doesn’t read only your site. It reads forums, reviews, press articles, NGO PDFs.
I audited 15 sites in 6 weeks. 12 had at least one inaccurate AI answer about them. The most shocking? A mattress brand claimed « zero toxic substances »; AI attributed formaldehyde emissions to them because a competitor had published a biased study in a medical forum. Truth score: 1. Estimated loss: 41% of clicks on « brand + danger » queries in 2 months.
The lesson? You can’t hide behind your pages. You must seed the entire information ecosystem.
The SEJ protocol gives you the framework. But your action creates the gap.
Three questions to ask yourself right now
I’ll end with what matters. No complex checklist. Just three brutal questions:
1. Do you know exactly what AI says about your 5 most important products?
2. If it gets it wrong, are you equipped to correct it in under 3 weeks?
3. Does your organization have a « chief orchestrator of AI truth »?
If one answer is no, apply the SEJ protocol this week. You’re no longer just an SEO. You’re the guardian of what AI says about your brand.
And believe me, your customers are already judging you on that answer.
Free AI truth audit
On our first call, I take your brand and pull 5 AI answers live in front of you. We compare them to your product truth. If the gap is big, I show you how to close it in 3 weeks. No strings. Just reality.
Book a strategic call — 45 minFrequently Asked Questions
How do I know if AI is giving false information about my brand?
Manually ask or use a tool (like seoClarity) to pose your 10 to 15 critical brand-inclusive questions. Capture the response and check the source. A truth score on a 4-point scale lets you track shifts week to week.
How long does it take to fix an incorrect AI answer?
With my clients, the average is 12 weeks to go from a truth score of 2 back to 4. It depends on how many conflicting sources exist. The key is publishing « ultimate source » content and getting it indexed fast by trusted sites.
Do I need to be a big company to use these stratégies?
No. The protocol scales to SMBs. A pure-play seller with 800 SKUs can map 30 questions, audit answers, and create source pages in 4 weeks with a lean team. It’s rigor, not budget, that matters.
Which internal teams do I need to involve?
The Orchestrator’s Playbook recommends bringing together SEO (or digital lead), product (for reliable technical specs), PR (for corrective releases), and content (for expert FAQ). Without alignment, AI will keep preferring external sources.
Does the SEJ protocol replace classical SEO?
No, it extends it. Solid semantic architecture and strong rankings remain the foundation. But you add a layer of « AI precision governance ». It’s your new area of responsibility.
