Shanaz Begum
CEO · AEO-REX
Shanaz Begum is the founder of AEO-REX®, the UK's first Answer Engine Optimisation consultancy for small businesses. Her AI masterclass at Santander sold out in July 2026, she spoke at Oxford University's Saïd Business School in May 2026, and she is Education Secretary of Masters Club International. She teaches physics and treats AI search as an experiment: test, measure, fix, test again. Her focus now is agentic commerce, the shift from AI recommending a business to AI buying from it. Her message: evolve or become extinct.
ChatGPT Is Warning Your Customers About You.
Right now, someone is asking ChatGPT who to buy from in your industry. It will name two or three businesses. If you are not one of them, you lost that customer before they ever reached your website. It will not show up in your analytics. Nobody will tell you. It gets worse. This year I measured what AI tools say about a real UK business. Half the answers that mentioned it told the reader to check its figures before spending money. Competitors making similar claims got no warning. The business had no idea. Here is my uncomfortable claim. Your own website is the least trusted source about your business. AI tools treat what you say about yourself with suspicion and lean on what everyone else says. If your claims only live on your own site, AI hedges, and your competitor gets the recommendation. And this is only stage one. Search went from ten blue links to one AI answer. The next step takes the human out completely. It is called agentic commerce: AI agents that compare, choose and pay on a customer's behalf. Google has already built checkout into its AI search and Gemini app, and the biggest platforms are racing to follow. When an agent does the buying, nobody sees your branding or reads your reviews. If it cannot read your prices, facts and availability, you are not on the shortlist. This is not a lecture. It is a live test, and you are the subject. Bring your phone. In the first five minutes, everyone asks ChatGPT the same question about their own business, logged out, at the same time. Then we count the room out loud. Who got named. Who got sent to a competitor. Who got a warning. Some people will not like their result. That is the point. Then I show you why it happens and what fixes it, using a real campaign I ran this autumn: what was wrong, what we changed, and what the AI said afterwards. You will see what an AI agent needs before it will choose you, and how to get ready before it starts buying in your market. Near the end, a volunteer's business goes up on the big screen, tested live and unscripted. If my method works, you will see it. If it does not, you will see that too. You leave with the full diagnostic method on a card, plus a date to test again in 90 days. I normally charge for it. Here it is free. Everyone who takes part also gets the room's anonymised results by email. Then 15 minutes of questions about your own business. If you would rather not know what AI tells your customers about you, skip this one. I teach physics, so I run this as an experiment, not a sales pitch. My AI masterclass at Santander in July 2026 sold out, and in May 2026 I spoke at Oxford University's Saïd Business School. I have also appeared on television three times to talk about agentic commerce.
Attendees walk away knowing exactly what AI tells their customers about them, and able to do something about it on Monday morning. They will be able to: 1. Run the same test I use with paying clients, on their own business, in under five minutes: the exact question wording, logged out, repeated, and how to read which sources the AI relied on. 2. Spot whether AI is recommending a competitor instead of them, or quietly warning buyers to double check their claims. 3. Name the three fixes that move the needle most: consistent facts everywhere, proof that lives on other people's websites rather than only their own, and structured data that machines can read. 4. Judge whether their business is ready for agentic commerce, when an AI agent compares, chooses and books for the customer, using the free AGENTREX scanner. 5. Measure their own progress, with a card dated to test again in 90 days. The one thing to remember: AI does not recommend the best business. It recommends the one it can verify. Leave this room and make yourself verifiable.
About Shanaz
Right now, someone is asking ChatGPT who to buy from in your industry. It will name two or three businesses. If you are not one of them, you lost that customer before they ever reached your website. It will not show up in your analytics. Nobody will tell you.
It gets worse. This year I measured what AI tools say about a real UK business. Half the answers that mentioned it told the reader to check its figures before spending money. Competitors making similar claims got no warning. The business had no idea.
Here is my uncomfortable claim. Your own website is the least trusted source about your business. AI tools treat what you say about yourself with suspicion and lean on what everyone else says. If your claims only live on your own site, AI hedges, and your competitor gets the recommendation.
And this is only stage one. Search went from ten blue links to one AI answer. The next step takes the human out completely. It is called agentic commerce: AI agents that compare, choose and pay on a customer's behalf. Google has already built checkout into its AI search and Gemini app, and the biggest platforms are racing to follow. When an agent does the buying, nobody sees your branding or reads your reviews. If it cannot read your prices, facts and availability, you are not on the shortlist.
This is not a lecture. It is a live test, and you are the subject.
Bring your phone. In the first five minutes, everyone asks ChatGPT the same question about their own business, logged out, at the same time. Then we count the room out loud. Who got named. Who got sent to a competitor. Who got a warning. Some people will not like their result. That is the point.
Then I show you why it happens and what fixes it, using a real campaign I ran this autumn: what was wrong, what we changed, and what the AI said afterwards. You will see what an AI agent needs before it will choose you, and how to get ready before it starts buying in your market. Near the end, a volunteer's business goes up on the big screen, tested live and unscripted. If my method works, you will see it. If it does not, you will see that too.
You leave with the full diagnostic method on a card, plus a date to test again in 90 days. I normally charge for it. Here it is free. Everyone who takes part also gets the room's anonymised results by email. Then 15 minutes of questions about your own business.
If you would rather not know what AI tells your customers about you, skip this one.
I teach physics, so I run this as an experiment, not a sales pitch. My AI masterclass at Santander in July 2026 sold out, and in May 2026 I spoke at Oxford University's Saïd Business School. I have also appeared on television three times to talk about agentic commerce.
AEO-REX
AEO-REX® is the UK's first Answer Engine Optimisation consultancy for small businesses. It is based in Birmingham, founded in 2026, and every piece of work is delivered by the founder, Shanaz Begum. No juniors. No outsourcing. Buyers are changing how they choose. Instead of scrolling Google, they ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews who to use, and those tools name two or three businesses and stop. AEO-REX gets clients named in those answers, described correctly, with the right facts, prices and location. The next shift is already being built. AI agents are starting to compare, choose and book on a customer's behalf. AEO-REX prepares businesses for that too, so an agent can find them, understand them and complete the journey. What AEO-REX offers: 1. Free tools: six AI visibility checks at tools.aeo-rex.com, plus AGENTREX, a free scanner that tests whether an AI agent can actually find and book a business, not just mention it. 2. AI Visibility Audit: a personally reviewed test of what the main AI tools say about a business, and which competitors they recommend instead. 3. Done For You implementation: four weeks fixing the causes, from structured data and website content to the outside directories and sources AI tools trust more than your own site. 4. Watchdog: rolling monthly monitoring, so a business knows when an AI answer about it changes before its customers do. 5. Rex Commerce: a premium agentic commerce programme for a small group of businesses that want AI to recommend and transact with them end to end. Who it serves: UK small businesses, especially regulated practices such as clinics, law firms and financial services, where one wrong AI answer costs real clients. Also tradespeople, consultants, hospitality and online retailers. Track record: finalist for Startup of the Year at the Birmingham Tech Week Tech Awards 2026. Selected from 250 businesses for the HSBC UK Women's Business Growth Initiative. Sold out AI masterclass at Santander, July 2026. Speaker at Oxford University's Saïd Business School, May 2026. Shanaz is Education Secretary of Masters Club International and has appeared on television three times to talk about agentic commerce. Registered in England and Wales (Companies House 17018571), ICO registered (ZC099609), registered trademark.