Welcome back to another Chat With Sean. I’m joined by Nick Lafferty, founding marketing engineer at Profound.

Profound helps brands understand and improve how they show up across AI search - ChatGPT, Claude and the other answer engines.

We get into the biggest platform shift in marketing history, why roughly 90% of citations come from third parties, the rise of the “marketing engineer,” and the practical stuff: prompt tracking, query fanouts, citations vs mentions vs sentiment, and Nick’s hot take on how to actually build the prompts you track.

Nick discusses:

- Why this is the biggest platform shift in marketing history

- The biggest misconceptions people still have about AI search

- Why ~90% of citations come from third parties — and why AEO is a team sport

- Evolution or revolution? How SEO, AEO and GEO actually relate

- The rise of the “marketing engineer”

- What Profound does beyond prompt tracking — Fact Check, MCP server, agents

- Which brands win and which struggle in AI search

- Affiliates as gatekeepers, and why LLMs are citing LinkedIn so much in B2B

- How to report on AI visibility: inputs vs outputs

- Citation vs mention vs sentiment vs accuracy — and why each matters

- Why query fanouts matter more than tracking a million prompt variations

- His hot take: stop using keyword tools, talk to your customers

- Fixing damaging sentiment, and when to escalate to PR/crisis comms

- Where AI search is heading + what’s next for Profound

Related Source: Mike King’s brilliant breakdown of how AI Mode works — mentioned in the episode:

https://ipullrank.com/how-ai-mode-works

Connect With Nick Lafferty:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicklafferty/

Thank you to our partners:

SEO Gets, the easy-to-use analytics and reporting tool for your GSC & GA4 data.

Be sure to check out the tool and use code search10 for 10% off:

https://seogets.com/

Linkavista — A backlink marketplace built for SEOs who want more transparency. With access to thousands of websites, real traffic insights through Google Search Console connections, and an easier way to find relevant opportunities.

Use code SEAN10 for 10% extra credit on your first order:

https://linkavista.com/

Welcome back to Search With Sean — another Chat With Sean, and this one’s a proper demo. I’m joined by Mohamed Yousuf, founder and CEO of Smart Workforce AI, who’s spent 15+ years in workforce planning and operational strategy across complex industries like aviation, rail and healthcare. Mo shares his screen and walks us through the AI platform he’s built to help large organisations make smarter operational decisions.

If you’ve ever stood in a shop watching four people do the work of one — or seen a hospital understaffed one day and overstaffed the next — this is the problem Mo’s going after. We get into how the system forecasts demand by the hour (not the month), designs the shifts, builds the rosters, and keeps the whole thing live with agentic workflows running in the background. Mo’s line stuck with me: he wants AI that’s “human in command, not just in the loop.”

What I liked most is that it isn’t just a cost-cutting tool for the company. Mo’s Marketplace feature hands staff real control over their lives — swap, drop and pick up shifts within the rules, without begging a manager every time — which is where burnout, retention and morale actually get fixed. We also get into the stuff everyone worries about: data privacy (single-tenant, your own small language model, nothing leaves, nothing trains anyone else’s AI), surveillance vs lifestyle benefit, and geofenced clock-in. And right at the end, Mo tells us what he’s building it all with — including Claude and Fable.

Mohamed discusses:

- Why he split the product into Smart Workforce AI (SMBs) and a deeper platform for 5,000+ employee enterprises

- Forecasting demand by the hour, not the month — and why that matters for rail, aviation and hospitals

- “Human in command, not just in the loop” — his take on agentic AI

- The algorithm library + knowledge library: different roles, different equations

- Marketplace: letting staff swap, drop and pick up shifts to control their own lives

- Overtime, burnout and why nurses leave — and how better forecasting helps

- Data privacy: single-tenant, your own SLM, nothing leaves the tenancy

- Surveillance vs lifestyle: the system learning your shift preferences

- Geofenced clock-in/out and break management

- Which industries fit best — aviation, rail, healthcare, events and stadiums

- The scenario studio: “what if we add five routes?” answered in real time

- What he builds the platform with — Claude, Fable and where the tooling’s going

Topics covered include:

- Agentic AI & workforce automation

- AI forecasting, scheduling & rostering

- The future of work & staff wellbeing

- AI data privacy & single-tenant models

- AI in aviation, rail, healthcare & events

Got an innovative idea around search, AI or digital marketing? I'm always open to showcasing it on the channel — get in touch.

🔗 Connect with Mohamed / the platforms:

Smart Workforce AI (SMBs & smaller enterprise): https://smartworkforce.io

Maia Intelligence (large / critical industries): https://maiaintelligence.io

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohamed-a-yousuf/

Katherine Watier Ong (WO Strategies) presents real-world SEO case studies from the health and science sectors. She demonstrates how targeted technical fixes, content strategies, and internal team training drive measurable organic growth and client trust.

Connect With Katherine - https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherinewatier/

This video was generously created for Search With Sean Live 2026 to share valuable digital marketing knowledge while raising awareness for charities nominated by our speakers.

If you enjoy the video, please consider donating to one of the three main charities or any of the other brilliant causes featured on the event page:

https://www.searchwithsean.com/search-with-sean-live-2

Main Charities Supported

These charities were nominated and selected entirely by our speakers, without any involvement from me.

SEO For Paws - https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/search-with-sean-live-seo-charity

RSPCA - https://www.justgiving.com/page/search-with-sean-live-rspca?utm_medium=FA&utm_source=CL

Macmillan Cancer Support - https://www.justgiving.com/page/search-with-sean-live-macmillan-cancer-support?utm_medium=FA&utm_source=CL