Written by Jonathan Dunnett
5 minute read
In brief: Search is changing faster than most speakers realize. AI Mode has a billion users. Google is building agents that monitor topics around the clock. Bing now shows you exactly how often your content gets cited in AI answers. And the models are already recycling familiar names — surfacing speakers with signal density while filtering out the ones who’ve gone quiet. Here’s what five major shifts mean for how event planners find speakers in 2026.
How event planners find speakers is changing and we’re in a time of opportunity.
A senior enterprise tech events professional told me recently that when she uses AI to find speakers, it usually suggests names she already had on stage one or two years ago — or dismissed for other reasons.
That’s how these models are working: they are looking for signal. They know it’s safe to cite Adam Grant or Brené Brown.
They surface speakers with signal: consistent presence across podcasts, articles, bureau listings, and cited content.
If you’ve gone quiet, or never built that density, you get filtered before a human ever makes a decision. Or, as I’ve seen with people in the AI Search Audit, you might be doing a bunch of podcasts, but you’re not setting a steady identity, and so you’re doing a ton of time for “visibility”, and missing some key opportunities because you don’t understand the approach.
The good news is that the rules are becoming clearer. In the last 90 days, Google, Microsoft, and the broader AI ecosystem have made moves that tell us a lot about where speaker discovery is heading. Here’s what changed — and what it means for you.
1. Google’s Search box just got its biggest upgrade in 25 years — and not everyone is happy about it
Google announced that AI Mode has now surpassed one billion monthly users, with query volume doubling every quarter since launch.
To match that momentum, they’ve completely reimagined the Search box itself: it now expands dynamically, accepts text, images, files, and video as inputs, and uses AI to suggest how to phrase your question before you finish typing. You’ve probably seen this in action.
But there’s a counterweight worth noting. Following Google’s AI search overhaul, DuckDuckGo weekly installs surged 30% in the US as users pushed back against AI being forced into their traditional search experience.
Not everyone wants AI in their search box. Some people will preserve familiar behaviors (that’s human nature). Others are actively opting out.
What it means for speakers: The search landscape is fracturing, not converging (but it’s not bad news!). Some event planners will use AI-powered search to find you. Others will use traditional search. A few will avoid AI search entirely.
Your visibility strategy needs to work across all of it, which means solid traditional SEO and AI-readiness aren’t competing priorities.
They’re the same work. Generally? That’s how you need to be thinking about content, anyway: it’s not just “this is SEO, that is AEO” – you need to have assets working for you in both categories as much as possible.
2. Google is building Search Agents — and forward-thinking event planners will use them
At Google I/O, Google announced that this summer, Google Search will let users create persistent AI agents that monitor topics and send proactive updates. The description: “Your agent will operate 24/7 to intelligently reason and research and send you a comprehensive update.” It almost makes Google Alerts look like Clippy! Sorry, Clippy.
This isn’t some sci-fi experiment: a senior enterprise tech events professional I spoke with called it “low lift” and exactly the kind of tool she’d activate — she was already looking for a solution like this to keep tabs on emerging speaker talent. Tech-forward planners are going to use agents to discover new voices, track good prospects, and stay ahead of their speaker roster.
What it means for speakers: AI discovery is moving from reactive (someone searches) to proactive (an agent monitors). Being findable on demand matters. We’re modernizing from Google Alerts to findable continuously — across the right topics, consistently — matters more.
3. Bing just gave webmasters their first real window into AI citation data
On June 16, Microsoft launched four new AI visibility tools inside Bing Webmaster Tools: Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare. (And yes, Bing matters, as about 4% of the world uses it for search).
Citation Share is the meaningful one: it shows what percentage of AI-generated citations for a given query go to your site versus everyone else. For the first time, you can see not just whether you were cited in an AI answer, but how much of the citation space you actually own for specific topics.
Intents classifies the queries that triggered your citations — Informational, Commercial, Navigational, and others. Topics groups those queries into broader thematic clusters, the way AI systems actually organize information.
What it means for speakers: The measurement infrastructure for AI visibility is being built right now. Speakers who get into Bing Webmaster Tools today and start tracking citation data will have baseline numbers that matter in 12 months. The ones who wait will be starting from zero. If your site traffic is still building, you may not see much data yet — that’s expected. Keep building. The tool will become more useful as your signal grows.
Beyond that? Bing has a feature called IndexNow that helps your content get picked up quicker (like submitting to Google Search Console). Bing Webmaster tools is both full of insights, and can help more people find you: that’s a win/win.
4. Google launched a new open specification for how AI agents discover resources
On June 17th, Google announced ARD — Agentic Resource Discovery — an open specification that lets AI agents find, verify, and connect to tools and services across the web. Organizations publish a catalog file on their domain. Agents query registries to find the right capability and verify it before connecting.
This builds on llms.txt — the file that tells AI models what’s on your site — and moves toward a world where AI agents actively navigate the web as participants, not just readers. Marie Haynes, one of the most respected voices in search, flagged a related development: Google also introduced the Open Knowledge Format (OKF), a standardized way to store information in a directory of markdown files designed to serve as a living wiki that agents can query and edit.
What it means for speakers: The infrastructure of the agentic web is being standardized. Speakers who understand how to make their expertise, frameworks, and services machine-discoverable will have a structural advantage as these systems mature. This is early, but there’s a direction and it’s definitely worth watching, especially because people can and are building their own agents to be “scouts.”
5. The models are recycling familiar names — and event planners already know it
Remember what that senior enterprise tech events professional told me at the top? She told me “It’ll usually suggest speakers I already had on stage 1–2 years ago or have dismissed for certain reasons.”
LLMs like ChatGPT surface names with signal density — speakers who show up consistently across podcasts, articles, bureau listings, LinkedIn, and cited content. If you’ve gone quiet, or never built that density (along with a consistent view of who you are) you get filtered out before a human ever makes a decision.
The models aren’t discovering speakers. They’re confirming the ones who already have enough signal to be recognizable. Building that signal is the work.
What it means for speakers: creating a consistent position for yourself, getting into the right sources, using PR and earned media to gain traction? Those are all great opportunities to work on getting cited, along with understand the questions that your buyers are actually asking. That’s incredible fodder to leverage as you build your owned content.
If you’re thinking about how event planners find speakers, the thread running through all five of these: event planners are increasingly getting their first answer from an AI, not a search results page. That answer is shaped by your digital presence — your consistency, your authority signals, your framework language, how you’re cited across the web. If you want to know where you stand, that’s exactly what an AI Visibility Audit is designed to show you.
Frequently asked questions
Why are event planners starting to use AI to find speakers?
The pressure to find fresh, relevant talent efficiently is real. AI-powered search lets planners describe what they need in plain language and get a shortlist without manually browsing bureau directories. As tools like Google Search Agents roll out — running 24/7 to monitor topics and surface new names — the planners who are already comfortable with AI will adopt them first. Enterprise and tech events are leading. The rest of the industry will follow.
Does traditional SEO still matter if AI is changing search?
Yes — and the two are more connected than most people assume. AI systems draw from well-structured, frequently cited web content. The same work that improves your Google rankings — clear page structure, consistent language, credible external links — creates the signal density that AI systems use to recognize you as an authority. They’re not competing priorities. They’re the same priority. Google even says so.
What is AI citation data and why should speakers care?
When an AI system answers a question, it often cites the sources it drew from. Citation data shows how often your content is being used to ground those answers. Bing Webmaster Tools now tracks this directly with a metric called Citation Share. For speakers, it’s the clearest early signal of whether AI systems recognize you as an authoritative source in your topic area — before that recognition shows up anywhere else.
How Event Planners Find Speakers Through AI: What You Can Do Right Now
Start with your digital footprint: consistent bio language across your site, LinkedIn, and bureau listings; named frameworks published on your own domain; and content that answers the questions event planners are actually asking. If you want a structured view of exactly where the gaps are, that’s what an AI Visibility Audit is designed to show you.
Jonathan Dunnett helps keynote speakers get booked on purpose. He is a Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellow and brings systematic, intelligence-driven frameworks to speaker business development. Serendipity isn’t a strategy.
