Get Discovered by Prerender.io

Brands say they're disappearing from search. They prompt ChatGPT, expect to show up, and don't. The instinct is to tweak content, but none of that matters if the machine can't get through the front door.

In this episode of Get Discovered, we sit down with Venessa Chege, Senior Product Manager at Prerender.io, who led the research and build behind AI Insights, Prerender's tool for checking whether AI crawlers can access your site.

They cover the version Prerender didn't build: a prompt-tracking tool for an already crowded market. They explain why the team refocused on access, and they're candid about the limits of that approach. If AI can't reach your page, it can't cite you, but fixing access doesn't guarantee citations. Venessa also shares a surprising finding: about half of the sites that ran the diagnostic had a major AI crawler blocked, mostly without knowing it.

In this episode:

• Rendering explained
• What "I'm disappearing from search" really means now that search is fragmented
• AI Insights over prompt visibility monitoring
• Access is the floor, not the party: what being reachable does and doesn't guarantee
• From machines that read to machines that act, and why a closed gate removes you from the whole buyer journey
• How CDN and firewall rules set years ago are quietly blocking AI crawlers today
• Why you should check access before any content optimization

Guest links:

Connect with Venessa Chege on LinkedIn

About the show:

Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io exploring the fundamentals of online discovery and machine experience. Season 3 focuses on the infrastructure and technical decisions that determine whether machines can find and understand your content, so every machine works for your marketing team.

Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0rzmrAPI063Y0LYpHipII8

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-discovered-by-prerender-io/id1840604392

🎧 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT0E2vMvCuQU

🎧 About the show: https://prerender.io/podcast

Rankings and impressions used to be the whole story. Now AI overviews answer the question before anyone clicks, and the dashboards that marketing teams have reported on for a decade are flashing red, even when the work hasn't gotten worse.

In this episode of Get Discovered, host Joe Walsh sits down with Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO and the strategist who took SurveyMonkey's organic search from near-zero to a $200M-a-year growth driver through IPO. Eli has advised WordPress, Shutterstock, Quora, Gusto, and Mixpanel, and is currently writing his second book, Customer Intelligence.

They dig into why "AEO" and "GEO" might just be new names for the same discipline, why the old split between head terms and long-tail keywords has quietly disappeared, and why the real shift isn't in how people search — it's in what happens to the metrics your boss is watching once the click stops being guaranteed. Eli also makes the case for why AI search is a net win for users even as it makes the marketer's job harder than it's ever been.

In this episode:

• Why product-led SEO means building a product, not writing a blog post
• The case against splitting "SEO" and "AEO" into separate hires
• Why every search term is now both long-tail and head term at once
• How Google's personalization has moved from session signals to persistent profile flags
• The SEO attribution crisis — and why teams can't fix it without the authority to change what's being measured
• The billboard analogy: what SEO can learn from how car brands justify ad spend they can't fully attribute
• What gets better and worse for marketers over the next 12–18 months

Guest links:

• Connect with Eli Schwartz on LinkedIn
• Newsletter: productledseo.com

About the show:

Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io exploring the fundamentals of online discovery and machine experience. Season 3 focuses on the infrastructure and technical decisions that determine whether machines can find and understand your content, so every machine works for your marketing team. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0rzmrAPI063Y0LYpHipII8

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-discovered-by-prerender-io/id1840604392

🎧 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT0E2vMvCuQU

🎧 About the show: https://prerender.io/podcast

In Season 2, we proved something's broken: AI is rewriting how people find businesses online, and most marketing teams don't even know it's happening. Season 3 goes under the hood — what's actually causing it, the infrastructure behind it, and what you can do about it.

In this short preview, host Joe Walsh brings back producer Carli Van Stolk for one more episode before she heads out on maternity leave — and hands the mic over to Fiona Horan.

Join us as we break down what’s really deciding your AI visibility, the infrastructure and technical decisions behind it, and the role of rendering in downstream SEO, GEO, and AEO success. Listen in for advice and expertise from leading industry voices, our partner network, and the wider Prerender.io team.

Season 3 drops in the coming weeks — subscribe so you don't miss it.

Got an idea for what we should cover? Share it with us at prerender.io/podcast.

Resources:

• About Get Discovered
• Connect with us on LinkedIn
• About Prerender.io

About Get Discovered: Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io on AI, SEO, and online discoverability. We speak with business leaders, marketing experts, SEOs, and CEOs on how AI is impacting our world, the infrastructure behind it, and what you can do to keep up.

Find us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• Spotify
• Apple
• YouTube

After a short hiatus, we're back to close out season two of the Get Discovered podcast.

But this episode is a little different. Instead of an external guest, host Joe Walsh sits down with producer Carli Van Stolk, who's sat in on every conversation this season but hasn't been on mic herself until now.

Together, they look back at the season's biggest themes, dig into the AEO vs. SEO debate, revisit the misconceptions guests kept bringing up, and pull back the curtain on how the show actually gets made.

In this casual conversation between colleagues, the two also share what they have in store for season three. Plus, stay tuned until the end as Carli shares some personal news about next season.

Got an idea for what we should cover next? Share it with us at prerender.io/podcast.

Resources:

• About Get Discovered
• Connect with us on LinkedIn
• About Prerender.io

About Get Discovered: Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io on AI, SEO, and online discoverability. We speak with business leaders, marketing experts, SEOs, and CEOs on how AI is impacting our world, and what you can do to keep up.

Find us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• Spotify
• Apple
• YouTube

HubSpot is one of the most renowned brands in SaaS. It operates in over 135+ countries, powers nearly 300,000+ businesses, and is one of the most consistently cited brands in AI search.

Today's guest is Sylvain Charbit, Lead AI Search Technical Strategist at HubSpot. In his day-to-day, he runs experiments to see what works and what doesn't when it comes to AI search visibility. Tune into this conversation to hear some of his findings.

What you'll learn:

- Why HubSpot's traditional SEO success helps but doesn't explain its AI search success

- Why SEO and AEO aren't the same after all, and why the gap is only getting wider and wider

- Why AI search isn't a traffic channel

- How a Cloudflare default setting (and a robots.txt toggle) could be making your site completely invisible to AI

- Why schema tags with extra attributes don't move the needle

- Why broad topic clusters built for traffic volume are becoming a liability

- All about agentic search being the next frontier

Monday Morning Action:

Check your robots.txt and your Cloudflare bot settings to make sure your site isn't accidentally blocked from AI crawlers. It takes 15 minutes and could fix a problem you didn't know you had. Here's a guide on how to get started: https://prerender.io/blog/robots-txt-and-seo/

Episode resources:

• Connect with Sylvain on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylvaincharbit/
• Follow Sylvain on Twitter: https://x.com/scharbitjrs?lang=en
• HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com
• HubSpot AEO tool: https://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing/aeo
• State of AI Search Q1 2026 (Datos + SparkToro): https://datos.live/report/state-of-search-q1-2026/

About the show:

Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io exploring how AI and online discoverability collide. Season 2 focuses on how AI is changing where discovery happens, what actually gets surfaced, and why so many teams are realizing they don't have the visibility or control they thought they did. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0rzmrAPI063Y0LYpHipII8

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-discovered-by-prerender-io/id1840604392

🎧 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChi3x8i3OuQ6oh1Bs7YYDlQ

🎧 About the show: https://prerender.io/podcast

In this episode of Get Discovered, host Joe Walsh sits down with Max Woelfle, SEO Team Lead at On, one of the fastest-growing sportswear brands in the world.

Together, the two talk about what the brand's move from on-running.com to on.com revealed about AI training data, entity confusion, and why the technical foundations brands lay today will determine their visibility in an agentic world.

On is a Prerender.io client too, which makes Max's perspective on JavaScript rendering and AI crawler visibility particularly grounded.

What you'll learn:

• How and why On migrated from on-running.com to on.com
• How AI platforms impact site migrations
• The JavaScript issue with AI crawlers
• How On approaches measurement
• How On has shifted its organizational structure for AI search, and what you can learn from this, too
• Agentic commerce: why the technical foundation needs to be built now, even if there's no volume

This week's Monday Morning Action: get your technical foundations in place.

For AI agents to reliably shop your pages, your technical foundations need to function first, says Max. From JavaScript to structured data, there's a lot to cover. Check out this article on how to get started.

Episode resources:

• About On: on.com

• Connect with Max on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-woelfle-444354b/
• How On uses Prerender.io: https://prerender.io/resources/case-studies/on-prerender/

About the show:

Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io where AI and online discoverability collide. Season 2 focuses on how AI is changing where discovery happens, what actually gets surfaced, and why so many teams are realizing they don't have the visibility or control they thought they did.

Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0rzmrAP...

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

🎧 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Prerender

🎧 About the show: https://prerender.io/podcast

Niklas Buschner is the founder and CEO of Radyant, one of Europe's leading growth agencies for SEO and AI search. He also hosts Masters of Search, a podcast where he interviews growth leaders from companies like Wise, Miro, and Eleven Labs.

In this episode, he shares what the data actually shows about AI search's scale, why your analytics are understating its contribution to pipeline by 15–30x, and what a three-layer attribution system looks like in practice.

What you'll learn:

- Why AI search is already at ~20% of Google's traffic volume

- How analytics tools miss AI-driven pipeline by 15–30x

- The three-layer attribution model you should use

- Why free-text attribution beats dropdowns

- Why you shouldn't rely on perfect data, and how to focus on the "directional truth" mindset instead

- Why SEO fundamentals matter more than before

Monday Morning Action:

Change your self-reported attribution model to a free-text form, not a dropdown. Even if it's imperfect, you'll gain more directional insights than you would otherwise.

Find anything interesting? Share with us at prerender.io/podcast.

Resources:

- Connect with Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklasbuschner/

- Radyant: https://www.radyant.io/

- Masters of Search podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@niklas.buschner

- Ethan Smith's study: https://graphite.io/five-percent/ai-is-much-bigger-than-you-think

- About Prerender: https://prerender.io

About Get Discovered:

Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io on AI, SEO, and online discoverability. Find us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0rzmrAPI063Y0LYpHipII8

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-discovered-by-prerender-io/id1840604392

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChi3x8i3OuQ6oh1Bs7YYDlQ

About the show: https://prerender.io/get-discovered-podcast/

Ray Griselhuber is the founder and CEO of DemandSphere. For the last 15+ years, he's experienced the different waves of search firsthand. And because of this, he knows how to confidently navigate between what's a true signal and what's just noise.

In this episode of the Get Discovered podcast, he joins host Joe Walsh to talk about exactly that. He shares why the SEO measurement contract is broken, what you can do instead, and how we can all think about—and better prepare for—the next wave of agentic AI without panicking.

What you'll learn:

• How to think about measurement in SEO now
• Why your website should be less about marketing
• The training layer vs. the retrieval layer in LLMs, and why both matter
• Where most teams are going wrong with traditional SEO
• How to think about agents on your website
• Misconceptions about AI search

Monday Morning Action:

Like Ray, many of our guests are already talking about agentic AI. Tune into our episodes with guests like Tobias Schlottke, Ethan Smith, or Marius Meiners, who are navigating these shifts too.

• Tobias Schlottke: https://rss.com/podcasts/get-discovered-by-prerender-io/2707331
• Ethan Smith: https://rss.com/podcasts/get-discovered-by-prerender-io/2638783/
• Marius Meiners: https://rss.com/podcasts/get-discovered-by-prerender-io/2256338/

Episode resources:

• About DemandSphere: https://demandsphere.com

• Connect with Ray on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raygrieselhuber/

• The Great Decoupling (Kevin Indig): https://www.growth-memo.com/p/the-great-decoupling

• Found Conference: https://foundconf.com
• Obsidian: https://obsidian.md

About Get Discovered:

Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io on AI, SEO, and online discoverability. Find us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0rzmrAPI063Y0LYpHipII8

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-discovered-by-prerender-io/id1840604392

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChi3x8i3OuQ6oh1Bs7YYDlQ

About the show: https://prerender.io/get-discovered-podcast/

In this episode, we sit down with Tobias Schlottke, Cofounder, Partner, and CTO of saas.group, one of Europe's leading software portfolio companies with 25+ brands and $100M+ ARR.

Tobias, or Tobi, makes some stark comments this episode. His main take: being discoverable by AI isn't enough. Businesses need to go one step further to ensure agentic AI can actually take action on their sites, too.

What you'll learn this episode:

• How to move from discoverability to actionability
• Why trusted sources matter more than ever
• Why you don't always need to read tech news
• Risks to be prepared for: prompt injection, security issues, and more
• What's coming next for SaaS

This week's Monday Morning Action: explore agentic AI.

If you haven't already, familiarize yourself with agentic tools like Claude Cowork. Connect them with your tech stack (Notion, Gmail, etc.) and assign them manual tasks, such as populating a Notion database. The more experience you have with agentic AI, the better prepared you'll be for what's next.

Episode resources:

• About saas.group: https://saas.group/

• Connect with Tobi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tschlottke/
• OMR Reviews: https://omr.com/en/reviews
• Alphalist Podcast: https://alphalist.com/podcast

About the show:

Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io where AI and online discoverability collide. Season 2 focuses on how AI is changing where discovery happens, what actually gets surfaced, and why so many teams are realizing they don't have the visibility or control they thought they did.

Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0rzmrAP...

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

🎧 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Prerender

🎧 About the show: https://prerender.io/podcast

Most marketing leaders are still focusing on the same strategy: rank in the top 10, drive clicks, and convert traffic. But there's a problem with this: traffic isn't showing up the same way anymore.

In this episode of Get Discovered, host Joe Walsh sits down with Tom Capper, Senior Search Scientist at Moz, to dig into what the data actually shows about the AI discovery shift.

What you'll learn in this episode:

- Why SEO has always been a brand channel, but why this matters more now

- Why digital PR has become one of the highest-leverage moves you can make for AI search visibility

- How to think about citations (hint: they shouldn't be a core KPI)

- What original research gives you that no other content strategy can

- Tom's thoughts on Google vs. OpenAI

Monday Morning Action: start your first in-house study. Pull 30 days of data, use AI for analysis, find a compelling research question, and build your study from there. Share your findings at prerender.io/podcast.

Episode resources:

- "How Will OpenAI Compete?" by Benedict Evans: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/2/19/how-will-openai-compete-nkg2x

- Find Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thcapper/

- Moz Top 10 Newsletter: https://moz.com/moztop10

- Moz blog: https://moz.com/blog

About the show: Get Discovered is a podcast from Prerender.io where AI and online discoverability collide. Season 2 focuses on how AI is changing where discovery happens, what actually gets surfaced, and why so many teams are realizing they don't have the visibility or control they thought they did.

New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.

🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0rzmrAP...

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

🎧 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Prerender

🎧 About the show: https://prerender.io/podcast