I ❤️ Claude cowork: I’m sure like me you’re inundated with LinkedIn posts about how to automate everything and just press a button? Yeah, I know - super annoying.

I’m not a coder nor have any desire to become one, but I am interested in how I can leverage AI to automate repetitive tasks or to speed up manual tasks.

I started watching a few of Brooke Wright’s videos, which I highly recommend you check out, and was hooked on automating a number of tasks.

Below is an example of what I built earlier in the week that helps to identify prompts to use in Obsero for key topics.

It plugs into the alsoasked.com API and I am able to run queries at scale to understand the most relevant questions people are asking around a specific topic. I’ve added a scorecard for concise similarity so that I can prioritise the questions.

This took a matter of minutes to setup and I’ve only scratched the surface with what I can achieve.

If you’re interested in a video on this for future editions, please drop a comment in and let me know.

AEO/GEO is a big business: Canva hit $4B in ARR last year, with LLM referral traffic now in the double digits - and the company is actively allocating resources to surface more within AI answers.

Looking at top referrals over the past 12 months to Canva through SimilarWeb, ChatGPT is the top source:

This only captures referral traffic, so given the rise of zero-click searches, think of how many more AI Search answers are influencing buyers that are invisible to brands! 🫥

Obsero tells you where you’re mentioned (and where you’re not): Obsero keeps on shipping features that help marketers increase their visibility within AI Search and this is one of my new faves. 🚢

Obsero now gives you the ability to understand (with ease) whether your brand is mentioned on the top citations within the category. The below screenshot is for Strava and the column “brand mentioned” highlights whether “Strava” is included within the page URL:

You can segment the above by topic or LLM, giving you greater flexibility in understanding how you perform across key areas relevant to your business.

Strava has high visibility across AI Search, so it is no surprise to see significant mentions across the space.

If your mentions are low, then there is some work to do. 🏗

If you’re keen to try out, we offer a free trial below.

Check out my full interview with Harry Clarkson-Bennett, the SEO Director at The Telegraph below. 👇

It is a really great discussion and I recommend you check it out.

If you're interested in news in an AI era and advanced SEO thought leadership, you can subscribe to Harry’s newsletter below.

Interested in seeing Obsero in action? Mike and I would be happy to run you through it - sign up for a free trial here.

If you’re not already following us on LinkedIn, you should. I’m more vocal on my personal account, so connect there as well and add “Franc Talking reader 👋” in your note.

The best articles this week on AI Search and how it affects business, marketing and tech.

In 2026, it’s easier than ever to start a newsletter about a topic you love, grow your audience, and increase revenue.

Whether you’re in B2B SaaS, FinTech or want a side hustle, consider starting a newsletter today and beehiiv is the perfect partner for this.

Use my link here and start your 14-day trial today. If you sign up, you get 20% off your subscription fee for 3-months!

I sat down with Harry Clarkson-Bennett, SEO Director at The Telegraph, to discuss the topic of news and how publishers need to adapt in an AI Search World.

For years, Discover was treated as a "nice to have." That's changed.

Harry's take: as zero-click search has eroded traditional traffic, publishers are finally taking Discover seriously. The algorithm is essentially a personalised doom-scroll feed - which means quality of user isn't always high, but consistency is everything. Satisfy the right cohort repeatedly, and the algorithm expands your reach to connected interest clusters.

The golden hour matters here too. If your content outperforms its predicted engagement in the first 60 minutes - clicks, shares, reach - you dramatically increase your chances of going viral through Discover. Sound familiar? It's the same mechanic as LinkedIn.

Technically, there's not much to set up. Be indexable, use a 1200px minimum image, and set your max image preview to large. The rest is content execution.

Here's where Harry shows his experience and expertise.

AI Overviews didn't create the zero-click problem - they accelerated something that's been building since featured snippets. Google has been redirecting users to its own platforms for over a decade. The value exchange has always been shifting. It's just more obvious now.

His position on ChatGPT and Gemini as threats to The Telegraph? "I'm not sure it is a threat in that sense." If you're a subscription publisher built on quality journalism, opinion, and human connection - the person asking an LLM for a news summary wasn't your subscriber anyway.

What it does force is a rethink of North Star metrics. Traffic as a primary goal is dead for anyone in the subscription game. The shift is toward quality traffic that converts, and building journalists as individual brands rather than anonymous contributors.

The Telegraph doesn't use AI for writing or fact-checking. Full stop.

Where they do use it: deep PDF analysis, translation, research synthesis. Harry was clear - AI should make journalists less wrong, not replace the human layer that gives content credibility. He used a VAR analogy I liked: it should reduce errors, but when something goes wrong, the bar is set higher and the frustration is greater.

On reader trust, they ran testing and found audiences want to know how AI is used. An AI policy page isn't just good for readers - it's a trust signal for machines too. The reluctance to publish one usually comes from legal teams, not editorial intent.

A few things stood out for anyone building or optimising a news site:

Freshness signals are non-negotiable. Published dates, updated dates - consistency across structured data, on-page, sitemap, and server-side rendering. If your content is client-side rendered, you have a real problem for news indexing.

News Article Schema matters. The Telegraph learned this the hard way - changing live blog schema cost them their red live badge in top stories for months. Don't touch what's working without a full rollback plan.

Google News XML sitemaps remain one of the most underutilised tools. Valuable for discovery, and a free window into exactly what competitors are publishing and when.

Publishing volume is a competitive variable, not just an editorial one. Understand where you sit relative to competitors before setting volume targets.

What I liked most about Harry is that he doesn't dress things up. Publishers who built their model on chasing search volume are in trouble. Those with a genuine brand, a loyal audience, and journalists worth following - they have a path forward.

The information ecosystem is being restructured. The question isn't whether AI changes how content is discovered. It's whether the content you're creating deserves to be discovered at all.

Watch the full conversation with Harry Clarkson-Bennett on the Franc Talking channel.