AI Trust Signals

Find out just how likely AI is to recommend YOU. 

SEO got you found. AI trust signals get you recommended. And the brands that win tomorrow are the ones AI trusts today.

Co-Founder

PriceGuide.ai

Explode leads on your website with PriceGuide.ai, allowing you to quickly, easily, and inexpensively create a pricing estimator for your product or service, giving your website visitors what they want while giving you way more of what you need-- LEADS.

The Question First Group

Helping leaders and sales teams connect deeper and win more trust by learning the art of breakthrough conversations.

Marcus Sheridan International, Inc.

In 2017 Forbes named Marcus 1 of 20 “Speakers You Don’t Want to Miss the Opportunity to See." He has been featured in The New York Times, Inc., The Globe and Mail, Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner and more. Having spoken to hundreds of audiences and thousands of people around the world, Marcus delivers riveting and passionate performances that motivate and inspire!

Keynote Speaker

They Ask, You Answer

Rated the #1 Marketing Book to read in 2017 by Mashable and the "#2 Marketing Book of All-Time" by Book Authority, Forbes listed it as one of "11 Marketing Books Every CMO Should Read."

"They Ask, You Answer" is a revolutionary approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer.  In it, Marcus shares his simple approach to inbound marketing that has earned an exceptional track record across many industries and throughout the world.  How can a single approach to selling be so versatile? Simple - it's all about the customer.  All potential customers need answers along their way to making a purchase and "They Ask, You Answer" definitively shows businesses, B2B and B2C, exactly how to become the most trusted voice in their industry.

Author

The Visual Sale

How to Use Video to Explode Sales, Drive Marketing, and Grow Your Business in a Virtual World.

IMPACT

Recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the “Top 25 SMB Workplaces” in 2017, IMPACT is obsessed with helping businesses and organizations succeed.  By offering full support from strategy to implementation, as well as education and in-depth training, IMPACT is able to help lead their clients to success regarding all things inbound, digital, and today’s changing buyer.

Owner/Partner

River Pools

Currently one of the largest fiberglass pool installers in the United States with the most visited swimming pool web site in the world.  In 2001 and fresh out of college, Marcus stumbled across his first business with two friends: installing swimming pools out of the back of a beat-up pickup truck. Nine years later, with the help of incredible innovations through inbound and content marketing, Sheridan’s company overcame the collapse of the housing market and became a leader in the industry.

Partner

The Sales Lion

The Sales Lion is a Marketing/Sales consulting company focusing on helping organizations develop a culture of content and inbound marketing while dramatically improving sales, marketing and video communication.  We offer world-class training, consulting, workshops, and keynotes for businesses, brands, & agencies around the globe.

Founder and President

Working with Chris Marr, founder of the Content Marketing Academy, Marcus has developed workshops focused on achieving true “World Class Communication.”  His true passion is found in helping others reach their potential as teachers, communicators, and speakers. Marcus’s workshops are focused on pushing business professionals and executives to improve their ability to communicate, motivate, and inspire in all walks of life.  Covering such topics as: Presentation Design, The Power of Story, The Columbus Principle, and Trust Techniques; Marcus helps attendees to elevate their communication skills on stage, in the boardroom and in the home.

Co-Founder:  World Class Communication

Along with sales and marketing experts Joey Coleman and Ian Altman, Marcus created and hosted two unprecedented conference events focused on sales, marketing and customer experience.  The Remarkable Growth Experience conferences were held in historic Arlington, VA.  Attendance was limited to 100 participants allowing for more intimate discussions and interaction.  Conference attendees were able to have full access to event speakers, participate in hands-on practical applications, develop individualized specific action items and leave with clear plans for immediate improvement and success.

Co-Founder: The Remarkable Growth Experience Conferences

TED Conferences

The Honest Economy:  How Transparency Can Change the Economy and Inspire a New World

TEDx Speaker

Keynote Speaker on Sales, Marketing, and Building Trust...Author of They Ask You Answer...Ranked #1 LinkedIn Voices for Entrepreneurship...and a Dang Good Follow on LinkedIn

Called a “web marketing guru” by the New York Times, the Story of how Marcus Sheridan was able to save his swimming pool company, River Pools, from the economic crash of 2008 has been featured in multiple books, publications, and stories around the world and is the centerpiece to his best-selling book, They Ask You Answer, which has been named “One of the 5 Best Marketing Books of All Time” by BookAuthority and his follow up book, Endless Customers, was named a National Bestseller by USA Today.

Sheridan is a highly sought-after global speaker (averaging 50 keynotes yearly) in the digital sales and marketing space, working with hundreds of businesses and brands alike to achieve their potential in a rapidly evolving marketplace, ultimately helping them to connect deeper and become the most trusted voice in their respective industry.

Companies Marcus is a Part of: IMPACT, River Pools, Marcus Sheridan International, Question First Group, PriceGuide.ai

Keynote topics include:  Sales, Marketing, AI, Leadership Communication

You may look at this photo and see water, but I see a company that understands the nuance of how little details can make a strong impression. 

Currently, I sit in a restaurant called “Eggstacy” in Phoenix.  I ordered water with lemon and I was served water, 3 lemons in their nice little cup, and a larger pitcher of cucumber water as well. 

My immediate thought: “I like this place. They go the extra mile. They get it. “

As I look around the restaurant, everyone has these pitchers of water on their table as well.  

Something so small, yet so effective.  

That’s smart business.  

That’s smart branding. 

That’s a great customer experience.  

It doesn’t take much to stand out my friends.  Little details with the customer can make such a lasting impression. 

Well done Eggstacy. 👏👏

Marcus Sheridan

li_at

JSESSIONID

Talks about #sales, #marketing, #leadership, #digitalmarketing, and #entrepreneurship

One of the most engaging keynote speakers on the planet—I create experiences that change how businesses sell, connect, and win | Author of Endless Customers and They Ask, You Answer | Entrepreneur | Master Storyteller

Most people assume I “run” all my businesses.

But the truth is I barely run any of them.

Here’s the actual timeline of businesses I’ve started:

   2001 - Swimming pool installation
   2012 - Professional speaking
   2014 - Consulting/coaching agency
   2017 - Pool manufacturing
   2019 - Swimming pool franchise
   2020 - Sold #4 and #5
   2021 - Offshore fishing charter
   2024 - PriceGuide (software) + The Question First Group
   2025 - AI Trust Signals (software) + Pet food manufacturing

I’m still an owner in all of them except the two I sold.

People ask me all the time:
“How do you manage so many companies?”

My answer is simple:
"I don’t."

At least, not really.

I have exceptional business partners (and people) who run them without me.

My job is strategy, big picture, and making sure we are world-class in sales and marketing.

But a great CEO I am not.

And I’m perfectly fine with that.

After 25 years of building, failing, pivoting, selling, and starting again… here are a few lessons that stick:

👉 1. Most entrepreneurs don’t make great CEOs.
At a certain size, the skills that built the business aren’t the same skills needed to run it. This isn’t a knock, it’s self-awareness. Sadly, most CEOs never know when this day has come.

👉 2. Choose partners who are great at what you’re terrible at.
If your partner is just another version of you, you don’t have a partner, you have a mirror. You do NOT need another you.

👉 3. Your first “vision” for the business is almost always wrong.
The market will teach you what it wants...if you’re willing to listen. Observe. Adjust. Observe. Pivot. Observe…

👉 4. Someone on the team has to go to bed thinking about the business.
If that’s not you, you better know exactly who that person is.

👉 5. Your business only scales when you stop trying to be everything.
Ego doesn’t scale. Self-awareness does. You do NOT need to be everyone’s hero.

I could go on and on, but hopefully there’s a nugget or two for you.

I’d love to know, what would you add to the list? What has your journey taught you? 👇

I had no idea so many SEO companies would hate my software AI Trust Signals… but they do...and not for the reasons I expected.

Turns out, there are a lot of SEO companies doing bad work and not being honest with their clients. And when their clients finally ask hard questions, things get...well...interesting.

Here’s a recent example (true story):

A lady heard me speak, ran her website through AI Trust Signals, and her scores came back rough. She forwarded the results to her SEO company and asked for an explanation.

Their response?

“It’s a pile of $hit.” 💩 

That was their technical analysis. (seriously, I'm not kidding)

But it also triggered alarm bells for her. So she started digging.

Eight weeks later, here’s what she uncovered:
• GDPR violations
• Her entire e-commerce section not visible to Google Shopping
• Falsified SEO reporting
• A laundry list of mistakes no competent agency should ever miss

Her words to me: “You name it… it happened.”

She fired the agency and is now fixing what was an extremely broken website.
And the crazy part?

I'm starting to see similar stories all the time now.

When some SEO companies see a low score on AI Trust Signals, the default response isn’t curiosity… it’s defensiveness:

 “It’s trash.”
 “It’s wrong.”
 “Don’t trust it.”

Anything to avoid accountability.

Why?

Because too many firms are still clinging to a world where everything revolves around ten blue links, “keywords,” and link-building spreadsheets.

And that world is disappearing...fast. 

The day is coming when we’ll laugh at how we used to get information online.

If you’re using an SEO company, don’t assume they’ve kept up.

The shift from “rank me on Google” to “make AI recommend me” is rewriting the industry.

Some agencies will adapt.

Many won’t.

Your job is to know the difference...before the market finds out for you.

-----------
Your take? I'd love to hear your thoughts below. 👇

Adanna Burris-Telfer

I spent the last two days doing something that I deeply love, but don’t often get the opportunity to do: Help five CEOs become the best communicators, speakers, and leaders they can be.  

It takes a special leader to say, “I can improve my communication skills” and then put themselves out there to get critiqued while learning a very different way of transforming their team and audiences.  (This is what we do The Question First Group ) 

But these guys all have that deep desire to become the best version of themselves and I can’t complement them enough.  

Hat tip to Austin Houser , Travis Weathers , Jim Ahlin , Tim Brown 🪝 , and Josh Crouch 🐂🎯 for putting in the work and embracing “The Pathfinder’s Way.” 👏👏👏

What a magical couple of days teaching MasterCraft Boat Company dealers how to create extraordinary connections with their customers. But let me tell you a powerful story how one man in the audience immediately applied what he learned to his personal life:

During the event, one of the attendees recieved a text from his daughter that she was having a really hard time.  Instead of calling her and quickly going into "Dad" mode by telling her what she needed to do (or think, or feel, etc.) he simply reached out to her and kept inviting her to "tell me more."

He said it was one of the most powerful conversations he'd had with his daughter in a long time.

That's what is so rewarding about teaching leaders and sales pros to communicate at the highest levels - when done properly, it transcends their "professional" life and deeply affects their "personal" life.  And then, because of that, they come to you months later and  say, "That training has affected my entire life. I can't thank you enough for the impact you've had on my family."

Once again, this is just another reason why I love my job.

It was a good day. 🙂

Wild Stat:
After analyzing 3,500 websites, only ONE scored a “perfect” for NAP consistency (Name, Address, Phone Number).

If you own a business (especially a location-based one) you already know NAP matters. Legacy Google has always relied on it for local signals. But here’s the part business must now understand:

👉 LLMs (like ChatGPT) rely on NAP even more.

To a large language model, inconsistent NAP is a major "ding" on your trust score. If your core business identity isn’t consistent across the internet, the model questions whether you’re legitimate… which directly impacts whether it will recommend you.

When Patrick Moorhead and I reviewed this dataset from AI Trust Signals, we honestly thought something was broken, so we checked the data again and again.

But the result held: 1 out of 3,500. 😳 

Yes, that's a pretty shocking number.

So here’s the takeaway:

AI needs every possible reason to trust you. (I really can't stress this enough.)

NAP consistency is one of the simplest (and strongest) trust signals you can control.

So do this today:
👉 Audit every platform, directory, social profile, association listing, map entry, citation, and third-party mention of your business.
 👉 Make every instance of your name, address, and phone number identical--same formatting, same punctuation, same abbreviations, everywhere.

It may take an hour or two but will be well worth it.

Remember my friends, when it comes to AI recommending you online, small inconsistencies create potentially massive visibility penalties.

And if less than 1% of businesses are doing this correctly, that means one thing:
Fix your NAP, and you instantly separate yourself from the entire market.

Turns out that AI (and humans) HATE recommending stale/old content.

That's why EVERY marketer should make this a non-negotiable in 2026:

👉 Put a “Last Updated” timestamp on every major page and article on your website, just like you see in the photo here from HubSpot.

I know, this may seem incredibly tedious.

But at AI Trust Signals, we’re seeing over and over that it matters a lot, not just to readers, but to the AI systems deciding whether your content is confident, current, and *safe* to recommend.

And please understand, this isn’t just a "front-end" thing.

You also need the machine-readable version on the back end.

This means implementing the proper schema markup so AI can instantly verify when the page was truly updated. (Yes, it appears every marketer will be forced to a Schema expert in the future. 🤷‍♂️ )

This is just one of many "new rules of the game" that we're seeing because of AI.

And yes, it may feel a little annoying.

But it's the reality of where online content is heading, and so there's no need to complain about it.

Fact is, "content freshness" as a trust signal will only matter more and more moving forward. 

It's a new era in content my marketing friends.

Time to lean in.

While teaching a workshop this morning, I had a salesperson come up to me during a break and said, "Marcus, I don't do well with conflict. When a customer is upset, I freeze. Can you help?"

This simple question led to a great conversation, but the core of the answer I gave comes down to three simple steps any team can learn with a little bit of practice. 

Step #1: LET THEM VENT: 
This is a bit hard for folks to understand because the tendency is to immediately try to "fix" the situation. The issue with fixing is that the customer doesn't get a chance to feel heard. Your job is to make sure they feel VERY heard. Which means you let them vent, and even when you think they may be done, you ask them if there is anything else they're unsettled about. This step is the most important by far, yet the most overlooked in the world of customer experience.

Step #2: REPEAT WHAT THEY SAID: 
Not only must they feel heard, but they must feel *understood.* This occurs when you repeat the words they used and confirm, "What I've heard you say is..." (Again, do not use your words here. Use *their* words. Those are the ones that matter.)

Step #3: LET THEM VERBALIZE THE POTENTIAL SOLUTION: 
Assuming the individual has has a legitimate complaint (which is true in most cases), once you've allowed them to vent and have repeated their thoughts, you sincerely ask, "What would you like to happen to make this right?"

Now, granted, businesses can't always do what the customer asks for, but you at least want to put the ball in their court first.  Interestingly enough, often times the only thing they were looking for were step 1 & 2. In other words, they just wanted to feel heard and understood. But by asking them what they would like to do to make the situation right, you've now allowed them to at least state what they feel would be the appropriate solution.

Ultimately, there is no foolproof method of resolving customer frustration, but at a minimum you want to train (with role play) your team what to say and how to say it for these situations. 

Like the young man that approached me this morning, they shouldn't freeze when moments of conflict arise.

Instead, they should be ready for the moment. And if they follow these three simple steps, they are very likely to not only diffuse the situation, but create a lasting relationship as well.

As always, a little training goes a long ways.

#QuestionFirst

Have you seen this article from Inc. Magazine this month? It verifies everything I've been begging organizations to understand since AI changed the way we search.

👉 Pricing Transparency is about to be forced on ALL businesses. 👈 

Why? Here are a few impending realities (all of which have already begun):

1. In the future, if you don't discuss pricing/cost in detail on your website, it's highly unlikely that AI (like ChatGPT) will recommend you.

2. In the future, anytime someone is given a "price" , "quote" , or "estimate" they will run this through AI and it will give them an assessment as to whether or not they are getting a good value. 

3. In conjunction with #2, if someone doesn't feel good about a quote they've been given, they'll then be able to task their AI-agent to go out and "find" a better value...immediately.

I can assure you, these three things will be COMMON. The norm. Table stakes.

I can also say with high certainty most companies still do not realize this is what is happening.

The solution?

Get in front of this. 

Don't wait for everyone in your industry to move while you continue to do things the ways they've always been done.

Entire industries where "call for quote" is the norm are about to be upended.

Act now. Start winning today. And stay in front of all the laggards tomorrow.

Because it's all coming.

Have you ever given a “perfect” speech? Not a good speech. Not an above-average speech. But the kind where something else enters the room?

The kind where you can feel every person in the audience being changed by it?

I had that experience last year. And even now, it’s hard to describe. It felt almost other-worldly...an intensity I’d only felt one or two other times in 13 years of professional speaking - and the impact on my business has been unlike anything I’ve seen.

But here’s what's so fascinating:
It wasn’t a keynote.
It wasn’t a massive stage.
It was a 90-minute sales class for about 100 boat and marine retailers.

I had taught this same event four different times. Always great. Always productive. But nothing prepared me for what happened that day.

From the moment I started speaking, I could feel something building inside me, as if my desire to help the room was too big to stay contained. The energy wasn’t normal. It wasn’t rehearsed or fake. It was real. Almost physically overwhelming. And the audience felt it too - you could see it in their faces, their posture, their eyes.

People in the conference hall were even crowding around the entrance of the session to watch, as there was clearly something "special" happening and everyone could feel it.

But after the event came the moment I’d never experienced before:

From that room of roughly 100 attendees…
11 different event invitations for 2025 came out of it.
One small audience turned into an entire year of work.

And those 11 speeches?

They’ve had a major impact on my businesses - far more than I ever anticipated. Leading to multiple other events and long-term coaching engagements.

But here’s the part that keeps me thinking:
If I’d spoken four other times to that same audience…Why wasn’t that magic there?? Why didn’t those talks lead to a wave of new business??

Truthfully? I don’t know.

Sometimes life hands you a moment.
 
Almost like a window.

And you get a surge of connection and clarity you couldn’t script if you tried.

As a professional (speaker, salesperson, leader, etc.) you never know when that moment is going to hit. You never know which room, which audience, which seemingly “regular” day will become the door that opens dozens of others.

Which is why the work matters.
The consistency matters.
The showing up matters.

Do the reps.
Keep sharpening the craft.
And when you least expect it…
the magic shows up.
✌ 
---------------------------

PS: Today, I'm back at this same event for the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas (MRAA) for the fifth year in a row, and who knows, maybe we'll find lightning in a bottle twice... wish me luck! 🙂

90% of SKOs fail… Here are the 10 reasons why and and how to fix them.

Your SKOs might feel great and your team might leave energized… and yet 90% of SKOs still fail to make an impact. Here’s why.

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