LLMs don't rank anything. So what are you optimizing for?

Britney Muller is the founder and AI Consultant at Orange Labs. She has gone deep into understanding AI since the earliest days of the recent explosion in capabilities. As a result, she has a unique and detailed perspective on how things actually work and helped me dispel some myths and misconceptions including some in my own understanding. Her strongest argument is that to treat LLMs like search engines is to fundamentally misunderstand how they work. Ranking factors are the wrong mental model.Her ability to speak clearly while building on deep technical accuracy is unsurpassed and she also has some WILD anecdotes from her career in AI.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers understand what works in the age of AI-powered discovery. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Patrick Hathaway is the founder and CEO of Sitebulb. He and his team have built a beloved and powerful tool packed full of insights, and they've done it in quite a different way to SearchPilot. We thought that others might be interested to hear us discussing the differences and similarities in our philosophies and approaches.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers understand what works in the age of AI-powered discovery. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Norman Nielsen has deep experience across travel, retail, and marketplace sites, and strong opinions about how organic discovery should work. In this episode Will and Norman reminisce about the growth of the web, and the changes to how consumers discover products and services.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers take SEO from react mode to control mode. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim Soulo has an irreverent approach to marketing, and strong opinions about how to approach GEO, grounded in deep experience of the SEO tools market. Join the conversation Will had with Tim about what works in 2026.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers take SEO from react mode to control mode. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Will was joined by Abby Gleason, Senior Product Manager for SEO at Upwork. Abby has a rare blend of experience: she came up through agency SEO, moved into product at Scribd, and now runs SEO in a true product operating model at Upwork, with an engineering team, a roadmap, and a steady drumbeat of experiments.This session was about the system. How Abby picks what matters, writes it up so teams can ship, runs tests that stand up to scrutiny, and keeps growth moving even as the SERPs shift underneath us.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers take SEO from react mode to control mode. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Probably the most common question we hear from SearchPilot customers is "how should we pick which tests to run?". In this episode, Will Critchlow asks Rodney Pérez how they do it at Wayfair. Rodney shares the frameworks and thought processes that underpin a large, competitive, and successful SEO organization.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers take SEO from react mode to control mode. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will Critchlow and Wil Reynolds cover some interesting and different topics in this episode of The Business Class Lounge. This candid conversation covers what Wil is seeing across hundreds of clients, how he is using AI day-to-day and what it takes to keep a 200+ person agency moving while the ground keeps shifting. Listen up for hard truths from Wil about how staying employable means treating AI learning like a second job, being honest about uncertainty, and building a culture of momentum and accountability.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers take SEO from react mode to control mode. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will Critchlow catches up with Mike King, founder and CEO at iPullRank to talk about GEO, fanout queries, agents, and what the cutting edge feels like at a top agency. Mike and Will go way back, so this episode covers a lot of ground, from SEO to Mike's view on the place of AI in the production of art.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers take SEO from react mode to control mode. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will Critchlow is joined by Matthew Morrissey, Organic Search Director EU at adidas to talk about life at the cutting edge of enterprise SEO at a major global brand. Learn about the power of hunting insights, and insight rate over wins and testing cadence, team alignment, and where great ideas come from.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers take SEO from react mode to control mode. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will Critchlow is joined by Brodie Clark, independent SEO consultant and ecommerce expert to talk about all the ways that the search result pages are changing, new display features and ranking algorithms, and all the ways these things affect ecommerce businesses in particular when it comes to SEO.This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large ecommerce retailers take SEO from react mode to control mode. Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it.If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.You can email us at [email protected] to discuss anything you hear on the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.