Notes from the work · Tag
Nine parts on what personal agents change. This one is about what we are doing: the scanner we built, our own site going from 39 to 97, what 98 fitness and wellness sites showed us, the order we fix things in, a door for clients' own agents, and what is not live yet.
AI referral traffic is growing fast, and in October a missing tag on ChatGPT links turned a week of it into "direct" visits. Part 9 of The Personal Agent Shift: where the trail goes cold, and what a local business can track instead.
Google's AI already phones local businesses to ask about prices and openings, and personal agents fill in web forms for their person. Part 8 of The Personal Agent Shift: what your front desk owes a caller that is software, and what it still owes the human behind it.
A person reads a few reviews and gets a feeling. An agent reads your website, your listings and your reviews at once and lines them up. Part 7 of The Personal Agent Shift: where assistants get their facts, why contradictions now cost you, and how to give an agent nothing to doubt.
Ads still reach people, but when a customer hands the search to an assistant, the shortlist forms somewhere your ad may not be. Part 6 of The Personal Agent Shift: what is live for ads inside ChatGPT and Meta's AI as of October 2026, what is a test, and what paid media is for now.
Personal agents watch the inbox and the bills and speak up before anyone asks them to. Part 5 of The Personal Agent Shift: what that does to membership retention, and what a membership business should do before the agent does.
Personal agents read a business website like a spec sheet, against a brief their person already gave them. Part 4 of The Personal Agent Shift: the facts your site has to state in plain, current text, and what our research says most sites leave out.
Gmail now summarizes and sorts mail with AI, and personal agents brief their person on the inbox every morning. Part 3 of The Personal Agent Shift: what happens to promos, newsletters and win-back emails, and what survives a summary.
Personal agents remember their person's schedule, budget and dealbreakers. Part 2 of The Personal Agent Shift: marketing is moving from persuading a stranger to matching a brief the agent already carries.
In seven weeks this fall, Meta, OpenAI, Google and Anthropic each shipped a personal AI agent. Part 1 of The Personal Agent Shift: what each one does, who can use it today, and what makes them personal.
Book a walkthrough with David Steel. Bring last month's lead count and one location you are worried about.