Stephen Sumner

Stephen Sumner is an AI and organic search specialist who has worked at the front line of search marketing since 1999. He is the founder of Local SEO Ltd and Legal Marketing Agency, and owns Local Media Ltd His current focus is AI search visibility: how brands get cited and surfaced by tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini, and how structured data, schema markup and machine-readable content shape what AI assistants recommend. Over 25 years he has led SEO for one of Scandinavia's largest start-ups, held senior roles in award-winning agencies in the UK and Sweden, and contributed to the international search community, including BrightonSEO. He splits his time between the UK and Sweden and comments on SEO, AI search (AEO/GEO/LLMO), local search, schema and structu...