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September 2026 RediForAI update · Jeff Mays
When I started working on RediForAI, I wasn't planning to build a program. I was trying to figure out how my own business could show up when somebody asked AI about it.
At that point, I thought visibility was the answer. Could AI find me? Did it know what my business did?
Over those first few months, the question got bigger. Being found was one thing. Being recommended when someone asked who they should hire was something else I needed to understand.
I was looking at about five AI systems, trying to figure out how each one worked. That was difficult. They publish some guidance, but much of what happens inside those systems is a black box.
So we started looking at what we could see: other people's research, the reports we were pulling, and the sources showing up in the answers. Social media, citations, credibility, and SEO became part of the original seven factors we looked at.
I probably changed the system twenty times in March alone, just keeping up with what I was learning.
Eventually, we set up a bot to check for announcements every week. We added Perplexity along the way and started looking at Gemini and Google's AI Overviews separately.
That's how RediForAI has developed. We keep learning, and we make changes when there's a reason to.
I'd like these monthly updates to be a chance to talk through a few of those changes: what we're seeing, what we've done about it, and what it means for your agency and your clients.
What we're paying closer attention to
One of the things we've been seeing is local social media sources showing up in AI answers. That led us to give social media more weight in our own scoring last month.
When those sources appear in the answers we're reviewing, they deserve attention alongside the website and SEO. It's another part of the business's public presence for an agency to look at.
We also added a separate section showing how a business appears in Google AI Overviews.
It shows which of the questions we tested brought up an AI Overview, whether the business was cited, and which other sources appeared.
That gives the agency something specific to discuss with the owner. Here's where your business is showing up. Here's an answer we should look at more closely. Here's what the system actually returned for that question.
Those observations give you a starting point for deciding what work makes sense.
Why Google's latest changes caught my attention
In late August, Google confirmed that AI Overviews can expand automatically for some searches. That puts more of the answer on the screen and moves the regular links farther down. Search Engine Land reported Google's confirmation on August 28.
Those links are still there. But someone may use the answer at the top to decide which businesses they want to investigate first.
The hotel-booking announcement caught my attention, too.
Google announced hotel booking through AI Mode, rolling out in the U.S., in English, with participating partners. Someone can compare hotels and complete a booking through the conversation. Google explained the rollout on August 27.
My guess is we'll see more of that kind of experience in other businesses over time. That's a guess, but it's something I want to keep watching. It brings the recommendation and the decision closer together.
For agencies, that makes it useful to understand how a client is represented during that decision. What does the answer say about the business? Is it accurate? Does the business appear at all?
Why we changed the reports
All of this fed into the update we released on September 3. While we were doing that, we changed the reports, too.
Honestly, the initial customer report just didn't feel right to me. There was information there, but I wanted something a business owner could look at and understand why it mattered.
So we made it simpler.
Here's the question. Here's what AI said. Here's where your business appeared, or didn't.
The customer snapshot gives an agency something concrete to sit down and talk about with an owner. It helps start the conversation without making them work through a long report first.
Inside the agency report, the evidence summary near the top and the social evidence help explain the findings. The complete longer reports are still there when the agency needs more detail.
I want the owner to understand the first conversation and the agency to have the detail it needs for the work that follows.
The relationship you already have
That's really what I'm trying to do with RediForAI: help local agencies help their customers without having to spend all their time following every announcement and running all these checks themselves.
If you manage a client's website, you already know the business. You know the owner, and you have a relationship to build on.
AI Presence Management gives you another way to help that client and develop an ongoing service around useful work.
Each month, you can bring a report with your agency's name on it and say:
“Here's what we're seeing. Here's what we're working on. Here's what I think we should do next.”
We can't promise a recommendation. What we can do is keep checking, identify work worth doing, and bring evidence to the next conversation.
For this month, start with a client whose website you already manage. Look at how that business is being represented in AI answers, and talk with the owner about what you find.
If you'd like help working through that first client audit, get started with RediForAI.
That's the work I want this system to help you do, month after month: keep up with what's changing and make it useful for your customers.