Love At First Search

Meg Casebolt
  • 5.0 (18)
  • Marketing
  • Weekly

Love at First Search is a podcast about expert authority, discoverability, and the future of search. Hosted by Meg Casebolt, it explores how experts become easier to recognize, understand, recommend, and find across search engines, AI tools, websites, podcasts, and other public platforms. Episodes dig into authority architecture, expertise legibility, positioning, narrative differentiation, semantic territory, omnichannel distribution, and the changing mechanics of search—without reducing the work to keywords, content volume, or platform hacks. This is the audio layer of a larger body of work from Love at First Search: the same core ideas may also appear in video, written articles, LinkedIn posts, frameworks, and case studies, each adapted to the format rather than simply duplicated. If your expertise is strong but your public signals are scattered, vague, outdated, or hard for humans and machines to connect, this show is about making that expertise clearer, sharper, and easier to trust.

  1. 2h ago

    AI Knows You Exist. Does It Know What Belongs to You?

    AI can know that you exist without fully understanding what belongs to you. Your website, LinkedIn profile, podcast appearances, old bios, offers, frameworks, and years of published work may all exist online — like puzzle pieces scattered across a table. But if the relationships between those pieces aren’t clear, AI systems can struggle to see the complete picture. I learned this firsthand when I searched my name in Perplexity in 2025. It knew I had hosted The Social Slowdown. It separately knew that Aggressively Human existed and that I co-hosted it. But it hadn’t connected those facts to the same Meg Casebolt. The information wasn’t missing. The relationships were. In this episode, I explain: what an entity actually is, without the technical jargonwhy established experts are especially vulnerable to entity fragmentationhow old brands, titles, bios, and offers can muddy your current identitywhy your identity can be distributed across the web without being fragmentedwhat “consistency” actually means — and why every bio does not need to say exactly the same thinghow an Entity Signal Statement can help make important relationships explicitwhy entity clarity is the foundation of AI authority, but isn’t enough by itself to earn a recommendationsimple ways to repair missing connections without rebuilding your whole website Your digital history isn’t necessarily a liability. It can be evidence of experience and authority — as long as search and AI systems can connect those pieces back to the same source. The goal isn’t to force every puzzle piece into one place. It’s to connect them well enough that the picture of your expertise becomes obvious. ResourceWant to strengthen your own entity signals? Get the Entity Optimization Playbook in my free AI Findability Library: https://loveatfirstsearch.com/ai-library/

  2. Oct 26

    The AI Authority Sequence: What Needs to Work First?

    If AI isn’t recommending you, the common reaction is to do more marketing. Publish more. Post more. Pitch more podcasts. Build more backlinks. Show up on more platforms. But if the thing blocking you has nothing to do with reach, all that extra visibility may just amplify the wrong signal. In this episode, I’m breaking down the sequence I use to think about expert authority: how you move from simply being understandable to becoming distinctive, reinforced, trusted, and eventually difficult to separate from the ideas you’re known for. You’ll learn why: clearer expertise has to come before broader distributionbeing specific isn’t the same as being distinctiveyour website, podcast, LinkedIn, YouTube, and guest appearances should reinforce the same underlying associations rather than create five different versions of youtrust is an inference created by accumulated evidence, not something you can declareattribution becomes more likely when your ideas are repeatedly connected to you across your own body of work and third-party sourcesauthority building works better as a sequence than as a giant marketing checklist I call this sequence the Unmistakable Authority Method, but the point isn’t to memorize five stages. The point is to figure out what is actually blocking recommendation right now. Maybe you have a clarity problem. Maybe you’re interchangeable with everyone else in your category. Maybe your strongest ideas are buried in a fragmented archive. Maybe your public evidence is solid, but it isn’t reinforced or corroborated anywhere else. Different problems need different interventions. If you want help identifying yours, take the free AI Signal Check: https://loveatfirstsearch.com/signal-check If you prefer the written diagnostic to the Signal Check assessment, check out the Content Signals Diagnostic.

  3. Oct 19

    AI Knows You. Why Isn't It Recommending You?

    AI can know exactly who you are and still never recommend you. That’s the distinction Meg Casebolt explores in this episode of Love At First Search: the difference between being recognized by AI systems and being selected as a strong fit for a specific problem. Recognition answers questions like: Who are you?What do you do?What company are you connected to?What topics are you associated with?Recommendation asks something harder:Why you, for this specific need? That requires more than identity. It requires enough public evidence for a system to understand your expertise, trust your authority, distinguish your point of view, and connect you to the right problem. In this episode, Meg talks about why broad visibility is not the goal, why smaller specialists can outperform bigger generalists for specific recommendation queries, and why established experts often already have the expertise but lack a clear enough public record for AI systems to recognize the pattern. She also explains why “just publish more content” is often the wrong advice, how fragmented expertise creates ambiguity, and why recommendation emerges from patterns across a body of work rather than from one optimized page or one self-declared claim. The key idea: Recognition means the system knows who you are. Recommendation means it has enough evidence to choose you. And for service providers, consultants, coaches, and other experts, that second outcome is the one that actually matters. Go deeper in the AI Findability Library: https://loveatfirstsearch.com/ai-library/

  4. Oct 12

    AI Discoverability for Experts: What Modern Search Rewards in 2026

    Search isn’t dead, but Google isn't the only tool that peoplea re using anymore And the path between someone asking a question and finding the right expert has changed. For years, search worked through a fairly simple model: someone typed a query into Google, Google ranked a list of webpages, and the goal of SEO was to earn a high enough position to get the click. That still happens. But it’s no longer the whole system. Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI-mediated search tools can now interpret questions, retrieve information from multiple sources, compare what they find, and synthesize an answer before someone ever visits a website. That changes what experts need to make visible. In this episode, Meg Casebolt, founder of Love At First Search, explains how modern search is moving beyond page rankings and keyword-first content strategy toward a system that also has to understand the source behind the information: who you are, what you know, what you’re known for, and whether there is enough evidence to trust and recommend you. You’ll hear about why AI did not suddenly replace search when ChatGPT launched, how individual ideas can be retrieved from webpages and synthesized into larger answers, why Meg no longer starts content strategy with keyword volume, and why expert ideas need to be stated explicitly enough for both humans and machines to understand. Meg also explores how zero-click search changes measurement. Rankings and traffic still matter, but they no longer tell the entire story. Citations, mentions, branded searches, recognition, trust, and recommendation are becoming part of the discoverability picture too. The takeaway: modern search is no longer only about getting a webpage to rank. It’s about making your expertise understandable enough to retrieve, credible enough to trust, and clear enough to recommend. Go deeperFor more on AI discoverability and how search systems evaluate information and expertise: How AI Chooses What to Citehttps://loveatfirstsearch.com/how-ai-chooses-what-to-cite/Google AI Search: How Search Is Changinghttps://loveatfirstsearch.com/google-ai-search/Why I Returned to Blogging for AI Discoverabilityhttps://loveatfirstsearch.com/blogging-for-ai/AI Findability Libraryhttps://loveatfirstsearch.com/ai-library/

  5. Oct 6

    Love At First Search Is Back: Authority, AI Discoverability, and the Future of Search

    After nearly three years of podcast silence, I’m reviving this feed — but not to pick up exactly where Social Slowdown left off. Search has changed. My work has changed with it. And the questions I’m most interested in now are less about ranking for keywords and more about how experts become easier to understand, trust, and recommend across Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, YouTube, and the rest of the public web. In this reintroduction episode, I explain why I decided to revive an old podcast feed instead of starting from scratch, what happened when dormant listeners immediately started downloading three-year-old episodes again, and how I’m thinking about the value of old content, existing audiences, and accumulated authority. I also lay out the experiment I’m running across the blog, YouTube, this podcast, and LinkedIn: taking the same core concepts, translating them into different formats, and tracking both how humans respond and how search and AI systems pick them up. Over the next several episodes, we’ll get into: recognition vs. recommendationthe Unmistakable Authority Methodentity claritysemantic territoryauthority architecturepublic evidence and reinforcementwhy you can’t build authority in privatehow omnichannel distribution can strengthen your signalpositioning and narrative differentiationwhat to do when years of accumulated content start making you harder to understand, not easier If you’ve been here since Social Slowdown, thanks for sticking around. If you found me more recently, welcome. Love At First Search is now about expert authority, discoverability, and the future of search. Explore the AI Findability Library: loveatfirstsearch.com/ai-library

  6. 09/19/2023

    Choose a Business Model That Is Set Up to Pay Your Bills With Jessica Abel

    Jessica Abel's background as an author led her to assume that mass marketing and a large audience was the ONLY way to succeed as a business owner; Thankfully, she finally figured out that her business models needed to first pay her bills, and THEN she could make decisions about audience and marketing style. In this week's episode, Jessica (she/her) and I discuss: How to think about choosing a business model, and why/when you may choose one over anotherChoosing a business model that allows you to make more money in less timeWorking with fewer clients for more money versus working with more clients for less moneyFiguring out how social media fits into your marketing - what do you need it to do for you? Connect with Jessica: Learn more on Jessica's websiteThe Autonomous Creative podcast A little bit about Jessica: Jessica Abel (she/her) is a graphic novelist, author, creative business coach, and the founder of Autonomous Creative, a coaching company that helps mid-career creative professionals build businesses that can pay their bills AND honor their creativity. Abel founded the company in response to the ever-greater struggle creatives face in making a living. Pushing back on the “starving artist” mythology, Abel focuses on business fundamentals, stripped of jargon and adapted to the unique needs of creative professionals, and puts the tools of making real money in less time—without creative compromise—into the hands of the artists, writers, and entrepreneurs who need them. Support the Show. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

    Choose a Business Model That Is Set Up to Pay Your Bills With Jessica Abel

  7. 09/12/2023

    Why a Traffic-Based Business Model May Not Be Right for You With Jessica Lackey

    By now we know that what works for one, may not work for another. And in this week's episode, I'm talking with Jessica Lackey all about business models, and how sometimes what makes sense for other people may not make sense for you and your business. Maybe the traffic-based business models that we're sold can actually be less profitable than a lower, slower pace of business. Jessica Lackey is a strategy and operations advisor who is on a mission to radically disrupt mainstream business culture in an effort to create sustainable businesses with a human-centric approach. With a background in corporate leadership, McKinsey & Company consulting, and a Harvard Business degree, Jessica knows a thing or two about hustle culture and what it feels like to judge success by the bottom line…at all costs. Now, she combines her deep experience in consulting, Fortune 500 operations leadership, and coaching to help businesses grow without sacrificing the well-being of their clients, team, and community. Here's what you can expect from this episode: The importance of community and relationship marketingThe "cult-ish" side of social media (in regards to online business)Why you DON'T need to build your business like everyone elseBusiness models and the math behind scale Connect with Jessica: Sign up for her newsletter and/or take the quiz "What’s Your Stage of Business?"Learn more about Jessica Support the Show. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

    Why a Traffic-Based Business Model May Not Be Right for You With Jessica Lackey

  8. 09/05/2023

    Bring More Feminine Energy Into Your Business With Marissa Lawton

    Marissa Lawton is an 8-year online entrepreneur and conduit for ancient women’s wisdom who guides feminine seekers to reclaim their divine power and channel it into their businesses. As a former licensed therapist who left the medical model of mental health care, Marissa had a behind-the-scenes look into how patriarchal systems and structures continue to diminish women’s ability to co-create the lives and businesses that serve their innate needs. And her Work in the world is to change that. By helping women reconnect to nature’s rhythms, Marissa aims to reintroduce long-denied mysteries and reestablish deep feminine roots in the entrepreneurial space. In this week's episode, Marissa and I are talking about how you can bring more feminine energy into your business. We discuss: Living from a rooted placeIntuitive decision-making for your businessListening to your intuition versus having an analytical mindset when it comes to business decision-making; Can you do both?What does masculine and feminine energy look like in a business?Traditional marketing with a mystical, sacred flare and how you can bring mysticality into your businessRedefining your measure of successSome examples of how you can bring more feminine energy into your business Connect with Marissa: RootedFeminine.comRooted Feminine PodcastFollow Rooted Feminine on InstagramMarissa Lawton - Side Hustles for PsychotherapistsTake the quiz: "What season of “re-rooting” are you in?" Support the Show. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit loveatfirstsearch.substack.com

    Bring More Feminine Energy Into Your Business With Marissa Lawton
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5
out of 5
18 Ratings

About

Love at First Search is a podcast about expert authority, discoverability, and the future of search. Hosted by Meg Casebolt, it explores how experts become easier to recognize, understand, recommend, and find across search engines, AI tools, websites, podcasts, and other public platforms. Episodes dig into authority architecture, expertise legibility, positioning, narrative differentiation, semantic territory, omnichannel distribution, and the changing mechanics of search—without reducing the work to keywords, content volume, or platform hacks. This is the audio layer of a larger body of work from Love at First Search: the same core ideas may also appear in video, written articles, LinkedIn posts, frameworks, and case studies, each adapted to the format rather than simply duplicated. If your expertise is strong but your public signals are scattered, vague, outdated, or hard for humans and machines to connect, this show is about making that expertise clearer, sharper, and easier to trust.

Information

  • Creator
    Meg Casebolt
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Meg Casebolt
  • Show Website
    Love At First Search

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