AI Visibility · SEO GEO Consultant · Speaker

Stephen Burns

If your content isn't in the data, you're not in the answer. I work on AI visibility from the data side: how the web becomes training data, and what that means for being seen.

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Common Crawl Foundation

Web Intelligence Lead

The open web archive behind a majority of today's large language models. I help the SEO and marketing world understand what the corpus contains, who is in it, and who is missing.

Enterprise practice

Technical SEO & GEO at Scale

Principal-level technical SEO and generative engine optimization inside a Fortune 500 product company, tying the upstream data reality to the work search teams already do.

Independent consulting

AI Visibility Consulting

Audits and advisory for brands that want to be found, and cited, by AI systems: crawl access, training-data presence, and GEO strategy. Start a conversation.

Signature keynote

Training Data Is the New Ranking Factor

When models learn from a corpus instead of ranking links, being present in that corpus is the precondition for being seen. This talk makes the case that crawl inclusion is now the foundational AI visibility factor, then hands the room a practical way to check their own coverage.

Stephen Burns delivering the keynote on the main stage at SEO Vibes Summit 2026 in Zakopane, Poland
Main stage, SEO Vibes Summit 2026 · Zakopane, Poland

A Working Model

How content enters an LLM and surfaces in AI answers, from crawl to training to retrieval.

Checks to Run

A short set of checks to confirm a site is reachable by AI crawlers and present in the data behind the models.

The Blind Spots

Language coverage, inclusion, and the ways sites block crawlers by accident.

Keynote, about 25 minutes · also sessions, workshops, podcasts · at ease with live translation

Also on the Circuit

  • SEO Is Not Enough: Common Crawl and the AI Visibility Gap

    Your SEO is optimized and your content is strong, but if Common Crawl has not crawled you, none of it matters to AI. Where the gap opens and how to close it.

  • The Three Gates: Permission, Edge, Rendering

    Every invisible site fails at one of three gates: robots.txt turns crawlers away, the CDN blocks them at the edge, or the stored page renders no words worth learning from. Real domains traced through all three, live.

Speaker kit: bio, photos, and abstracts →

The AI Visibility Audit · Tool & Field Guide

New The AI Visibility Audit Audit any domain live at all three gates: robots.txt permission, edge behavior, and the words actually stored in the crawl that trains AI. Run the Audit →

The Field Guide

The 18-page companion, published with the Common Crawl Foundation.

PDF · CC BY 4.0

Download the Guide
View from behind Stephen Burns on stage, facing a full audience at SEO Vibes Summit 2026
“The best presentation of the day.”Tomáš Novák, CEO, Marketing Miner · SEO Vibes Summit 2026

Upcoming

Past

  • ALIGN: AI 2026Washington, DC · July 23, 2026 · panel, the future of search
  • SEO Vibes Summit 2026Zakopane, Poland · May 21-22, 2026 · main stage keynote
  • SEO Mastery SummitSaigon, Vietnam · March 13, 2026 · “SEO Is Not Enough: Common Crawl and the AI Visibility Gap”
Video interview: How to Rank in LLMs in 2026, featuring Stephen Burns Watch How to Rank in LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Grok) in 2026 Interview with LLM Mastery · Watch on YouTube

Selected Writing · Common Crawl Foundation Blog