ABERDEENSHIRE, Scotland - 29th August, 2026 - A new book published this week addresses a problem facing businesses that depend on search traffic: AI systems increasingly answer questions directly rather than returning a list of links, and the brands named in those answers are not always the brands that rank highest.
ECHO: How brands get mentioned, recommended, and cited by AI, by search marketing specialist Peter Victor Jones, argues that this shift requires businesses to measure something other than search position. The book introduces "Share of Answer", defined as the percentage of AI-generated responses to relevant queries in which a brand appears, and proposes it as a companion to the share-of-voice metrics established in traditional search marketing.
The book is organised around four requirements the author argues AI answer systems impose before naming a brand. Entity covers whether a system can identify a business as a distinct, real-world organisation. Corroboration covers whether independent sources confirm the same facts about it. Hooks covers whether its published content contains passages a system can extract and attribute. Output covers measurement and its connection to commercial results.
"Ranking first and being mentioned have come apart," said Jones. "A business can hold position one and still be absent from the answer a customer actually reads, because the system is assembling that answer from sources it can identify and verify. That is a different problem from ranking, and it needs a different measurement."
Peter Victor Jones has worked in search marketing since 2008, building organic and paid lead generation systems. The book draws on published research and patent filings describing how retrieval-augmented systems select and cite sources, including query decomposition, knowledge graph resolution and the trust signals applied to third-party sources. Where the author presents his own proposals rather than established findings, the book identifies them as such.
The 76-page book includes a diagnostic audit for assessing how confidently search and AI systems can identify a business, a phased implementation plan, a glossary of terminology in the field, and worked content examples drawn from trades, legal, insurance and professional services.
ECHO is available ebook edition from Amazon. Further information is available at echoplaybook.com
About the author
Peter Victor Jones is a search marketing specialist based in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He has worked in search engine optimisation since 2008, building organic and paid lead generation systems for businesses whose growth depends on being found. His work concentrates on AI search visibility: generative engine optimisation, entity SEO, structured data, and the signals that determine whether an AI system mentions, recommends or cites a brand. He is the originator of ECHO and of the Entity Confidence and Share of Answer metrics. He writes at petervjones.com.
Media Contact
Company Name: Miracle Ventures Ltd
Contact Person: Peter Victor Jones
Email: Send Email
Country: United Kingdom
Website: https://www.echoplaybook.com/
