🎤 What I learned at Semrush London

In partnership with Semrush

Hey ,

Last Tuesday, I was in London for Spotlight, Semrush's marketing conference at Old Billingsgate. I moderated a panel, sat in on the launch of some new research, and recorded a podcast.

Here's what I took away…

THE PANEL

The most candid panel I've hosted

I moderated "The Agentic Marketing Stack: What to Automate, What to Control and What to Measure" with Eugène Ernoult, CMO of Weglot, and Alex David, GM of AI Solutions at G2.

I've sat through a lot of conference panels. Most are polished. Everyone sticks to their talking points, and nobody admits what isn't working.

This one was different. Both of them were honest about where AI really sits inside their teams.

"AI does the digging, humans do the deciding"

Eugène said plainly that Weglot isn't running an autonomous marketing team full of agents. Not yet. Most of the value comes from focused workflows. His team makes human sign-off almost effortless: an emoji reaction in Slack can approve an idea and kick off the next step.

Eugene Ernoult

“Stop counting tokens, count tasks”

Alex was just as direct. In his view, AI output is still mostly mediocre unless you have people inside the business who really know how to use it. And the budget conversation is shifting from counting tokens to asking what each finished task costs.

Alex David

If the people running marketing at G2 and Weglot are still working out where agents fit, you're not behind. You're normal.

WHAT THE DATA SAYS

Sentiment matters again

The day started with a media breakfast where Semrush released its 2026 AI Visibility Index, including its first UK benchmark. The team tracked millions of prompts a month across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews from January to July 2026.

Three numbers stuck with me:

• Fewer than half of the top 100 brands AI mentions are also among the top 100 sites it cites as sources.

• In July, Tesco ranked 25th among the UK sites ChatGPT cites most. Asda ranked 606th, even though AI platforms mention both brands all the time.

• News sites made up 29.5% of ChatGPT's top UK citations, compared with 19.6% in the US.

My takeaway: AI doesn't take your word for it. It builds its picture of your brand from what other people publish about you, from news coverage to reviews to community threads.

Being mentioned and being trusted as a source are two different things. So sentiment, what the internet actually says about you, matters again. For years, it was easy to file reputation under PR. Now it decides whether to recommend you to AI.

WHAT I'D DO THIS WEEK

1. Ask ChatGPT and Gemini to recommend a product in your category. Check whether you come up, and how you're described.

2. Look at which sites they cite. Those sources are shaping your reputation in AI.

3. Put effort into earning coverage on those sites, not just publishing on your own.

Being mentioned isn't the same as being trusted. Work on both.

Read Semrush's full AI Visibility Index →

COMING SOON ON THE PODCAST

While I was there, I sat down with Eli Goodman from Semrush, one of the experts behind the index. We went deeper into how brands get picked by AI and what to do about it. That episode lands on The AI Report podcast soon.

A huge thank you to Kirsty, Alyssa, Alexis, Federica, Jana, and the whole Semrush team, and to Eugène and Alex for being so open on stage.

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All the best,
Liam Lawson, CEO @ The AI Report

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