Learning AI Search From People Who Measure It

Author : wipelaw twugg | Published On : 06 Nov 2026

A guide to deciding whose advice is worth following as search shifts to AI answers, and why practitioners who publish data and repeatable methods deserve more attention than loud opinions. Get more information about SEO and AI search experts

When a discipline is young, advice is cheap and evidence is rare. AI search is exactly that kind of discipline right now. Everyone has an opinion about how ChatGPT or Gemini decides which brands to recommend, and very few of those opinions come with data attached.

For businesses trying to keep up, the useful question is not “who is famous?” but “who shows their work?” The difference matters, because the rules of AI search are still being written, and the people writing them are the ones running experiments and publishing what they find.

A recent TIMES Indonesia list of SEO and AI search experts worth following illustrates the mix well. It runs from global researchers to Indonesian practitioners, spans technical SEO, audience research and generative engine optimization, and pairs each name with one recommended resource rather than asking readers to take reputation on faith.

That structure is worth copying in your own reading. Start with people who publish primary research. SparkToro’s work is a good example. Its 2024 research with Datos counted just 374 clicks reaching the open web out of every 1,000 Google searches in the United States, which explains why AI answers can matter even when they send little traffic. A follow-up experiment in early 2026 had 600 volunteers run identical prompts through ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s AI tools nearly 3,000 times, and the same list of brands appeared in fewer than one in 100 attempts. Findings like these reset expectations: AI answers are volatile, so anyone promising guaranteed placement is selling something the data does not support.

Next, look for practitioners who publish their methods, not just their conclusions. Open courses, documented case data and books with visible frameworks all signal that the advice can be checked and repeated. An expert who tells you what to measure, and shows the numbers behind it, is worth ten who tell you what to believe.

Local context matters too. Indonesia reached a milestone on September 9, 2025, when Google introduced AI Mode in Indonesian, putting AI-generated answers in front of users who had previously searched only in their native language. Guidance written for English-first markets does not always transfer, so practitioners working in Indonesian-language search have findings you will not find elsewhere.

The habit to build is simple. Follow a small group of people who publish data, read their sources rather than their summaries, and test their claims against your own measurements. In a field moving this fast, the experts worth your time are the ones who make themselves verifiable.

One more filter is worth applying: be wary of anyone whose advice cannot survive a spreadsheet. The volatility findings cut both ways. They do not mean AI visibility is random, since some brands still appear in 60 to 90 percent of answers for a given intent, but they do mean that any claim based on a handful of manual checks is anecdote dressed up as research. The people worth following are the ones who say so themselves.