Duane Forrester needs no formal introduction; the marketing/search/SEO guru was introduced to the domain investors community via NamesCon, many moons ago. Yes, that was during the first NamesCon in 2014.
Since then, the former manager of has added a wealth of experience to his
Duane’s latest book, The Machine Layer, was published on December 1st. It’s a roadmap for professionals adapting to AI-mediated search, arguing that traditional SEO isn’t dead but remains the foundation on which generative AI optimization is built.
The Machine Layer explains how large language models read content: By chunking, embedding, and retrieving based on relevance, clarity, and trust, adding a new (machine) layer to visibility rather than replacing crawlability, structure, and UX.
Here’s how Duane Forrester describes the focus of his new book:
AI systems – ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot – now sit between your content and your audience. They decide what gets retrieved, cited, and trusted before a human ever sees it. And most of us are still optimizing for a world that’s already fading.
This isn’t abstract. It shows up in careers that stall because the skills that built them don’t translate. In content that disappears from consideration without warning. In organizations that can’t explain why their visibility is eroding while doing “all the right things.”
I wrote The Machine Layer for anyone feeling that gap between what used to work and what’s working now.
We’re looking forward to reading Duane Forrester’s book, available now on Amazon.
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