AI Visibility for Personal Brands: My Live Experiment
This is my experiment in AI visibility for personal brands, run on myself, in public. I help companies get recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. So I'm doing the same for my own name, starting from zero, and writing down every step: what I change, what happens and what doesn't.
Published
Last updated: 5 October 2026
- Status today
- ChatGPT can't find a clear profile of me. Google doesn't show my site for my name.
- Expected in 30 days
- To be announced
- Goal for the next 30 days
- To be announced
Where I'm Starting: What Google and ChatGPT Say About Me
Where I'm starting is close to invisible, and I have the screenshots to prove it.
Google. On 4 October 2026 I googled myself: "martin alexandru" on google.com. My website wasn't on the first page. What was there: LinkedIn profiles of other people with my name, UK company records, court records and a boxer named Alexandru Marin. My own LinkedIn came sixth and my Instagram ninth. "Martin Alexandru SEO" and "Martin Alexandru AI" returned nothing about me at all. On google.ro, a front-end developer with the same name ranks first.
ChatGPT. On 5 October 2026 I asked ChatGPT (with web search on): "Who is Martin Alexandru, the AI SEO expert?" Its answer started like this:
"I couldn't find a well-established public profile for Martin Alexandru specifically identifying him as an 'AI SEO expert.' The name is ambiguous…"
It then pointed to a LinkedIn profile for an Alexandru Martin presented as an operations manager, and said it couldn't confidently connect the services to him.
That's the honest baseline: two name orders, many namesakes, and no single page that tells Google or ChatGPT who I am.
How to google yourself properly: use a private browser window (so your own history doesn't skew the results), search your name in quotes, then your name plus what you do. Then ask ChatGPT, with web search on, "Who is [your name]?" and "Who is [your name], the [your job]?". Save the screenshots with the date. That's your week zero.
The Plan: Entity SEO for a Personal Brand
The plan is entity SEO for a personal brand: making it unambiguous, for search engines and AI models, that "Martin Alexandru" is one specific person, what he does and which profiles belong to him. Concretely:
- One name. Martin Alexandru everywhere. LinkedIn renamed on 4 October 2026. The reverse order, Alexandru Martin (older press uses it), is declared as an alternate name instead of competing.
- One home for the entity. An About page at /martin-alexandru with Person schema: name, alternate name, job title, and sameAs links to every profile.
- Every profile points back. LinkedIn, Instagram and the rest link to the site and use the same name, photo and one-line description.
- Other people say it too. Mentions on sites I don't control: interviews, guest articles, lists, the communities where my buyers spend time.
- Measure monthly. The same Google searches and the same ChatGPT questions, every month, with the date.
How to Show Up in AI Search as a Person
To show up in AI search as a person, you need the same thing a company needs: a clear source that says who you are, and other sources that agree with it. For a person, that means:
- a page about you on your own site, with your full name in the title and the first sentence
- the same name, photo and description on every profile
- structured data that ties those profiles together
- content that shows your expertise, under your name
- mentions from other people: articles, podcasts, lists, talks
The last one is the hard part, and it's what separates people AI recommends from people AI has merely heard of. I'll log what works for each of these as I go.
Getting a Google Knowledge Panel
Getting a Google Knowledge Panel isn't something you can apply for. Google shows one when its Knowledge Graph is confident about who a person is, usually because several trusted sources describe them consistently. Once a panel exists, you can claim it by verifying yourself with Google and then suggest edits.
I don't have one yet. My bet is that steps 1–4 of the plan are what gets one: a consistent name, an entity page, connected profiles and independent mentions. When it appears (or doesn't), this section gets its own detailed entry, with dates.
How to Get Mentioned by ChatGPT
To get mentioned by ChatGPT, you need sources that ChatGPT trusts to say your name. I tested it: on 5 October 2026 I asked ChatGPT to recommend an AI SEO expert who could help a brand get recommended by ChatGPT. It named two: an agency, Search Agency, citing its case-studies page, and a consultant, Lily Ray, citing a Le Monde article about AI search.
Neither was there because of its own homepage. One had published proof with numbers. The other had independent press coverage. That's my roadmap for the next months: publish proof (this page is the start), then earn mentions I don't write myself.
Does ChatGPT know who you are? Ask it, with web search on and then without: "Who is [your name]?" The answer with web search shows what it can find today. The answer without shows what the model learned in training, which changes much more slowly.
Timeline: Every Update, Dated
4–5 October 2026: Week zero. Baseline recorded: Google and ChatGPT barely know me (see above). LinkedIn renamed to Martin Alexandru. Site structure, About page and Person schema planned. Next: launch the new site and the About page.
Follow the Experiment
Follow the experiment and get each update by email when it's published. No other emails.
If you'd rather run this playbook on your company instead of a personal name, start with an AI visibility audit.