In April 2026 I delivered an AEO masterclass for UK small business owners. 35 founders attended. Three hours. We covered the shift from search engines to answer engines, ran live diagnostics on attendees' real businesses, and worked through what each of them needed to do in the next 30 days to stop bleeding visibility to better optimised competitors.
This is the recap for those who couldn't make it, and the trail of breadcrumbs for those who did and want to remember what they took away.
What we covered
The structure was deliberate. I didn't open with theory. I opened with three live questions to ChatGPT in front of the room, asking for recommendations in three different sectors that some of the attendees worked in. The results were uncomfortable: a fitness instructor in the room asking ChatGPT for "best HIIT classes Birmingham" and not appearing anywhere. An accountant searching "Birmingham accountant for small businesses" and watching ChatGPT recommend a competitor in another city.
That set the frame. From there we worked through:
The mechanics. How AI search engines actually decide what to recommend. What entity signals are. Why your Wikidata entry, your trademark registration, your Companies House listing, and your name being mentioned across many independent domains all matter more than your meta description.
The diagnostic. Every attendee ran the AEO-REX visibility checker on their own business in the room. Live scores in front of everyone. The lowest in the room was 12 out of 100. The highest was 67. Most fell between 20 and 40, which is roughly where most UK SMEs sit.
The fix. What you actually do about a low score. Schema markup. FAQ sections written for AI extraction. Press mentions, directory listings, and entity consolidation across Wikidata, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and your own site.
The 30 day plan. Three concrete actions every attendee left with, customised to their score band.
What surprised the room
Three things came up repeatedly in the questions afterward.
The first was how much of AEO is not a website rebuild. Most attendees came in expecting to be told they needed a new site. Almost none actually did. What they needed was structured changes to the site they already had, plus a co-ordinated effort to get their business mentioned in trusted external sources.
The second was the gap between SEO confidence and AEO reality. Several attendees who had been investing in SEO for years had AEO scores under 30. Their search rankings looked healthy. Their AI visibility was nearly zero. That gap is where most of the room's 2026 revenue is leaking.
The third was how fast the diagnostics ran. The visibility checker takes minutes, not days. Most attendees expected something heavier. The speed is the point. SMEs don't have weeks to wait for an audit.
What attendees did next
In the weeks since the masterclass, several attendees have followed up with progress updates. Some have implemented schema and FAQ changes. A few have engaged AEO-REX directly for Done For You AEO work. Others have joined the Rex Commerce Q3 2026 cohort waitlist.
If you missed this one, the next masterclass is in planning. The fastest way to know about it is to join the waitlist for Rex Commerce. Anyone on the waitlist gets first access to dates and any future masterclass invitations.
The thing I want everyone to take away
If you're a UK SME owner reading this and you don't yet know your AI visibility score, that gap, between not knowing and knowing, is the entire game. Run the free AI Visibility Report. Whatever number comes back is the starting line. Everything good follows from knowing.
The lowest score in the room was 12 out of 100. The highest was 67. Most fell between 20 and 40, which is roughly where most UK SMEs sit.
Related reading: why I'm running AI workshops at BMet College, and my origin story, from physics teacher to AEO founder.