This is the fifth study in my series on how AI engines decide who to recommend. The earlier ones looked at product categories like project management software, mattresses and VPNs. This one points the same method at my own industry, in my own country.
I asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google who the best SEO expert in the Philippines is, then logged every name and every source behind 105 answers. The results show how AI builds a reputation for a person.
Who Is the Best SEO Expert in the Philippines, According to AI?
AI chatbots most often name Glen Dimaandal, Jin Grey and Jason Acidre, while Google’s AI Overviews most often name Alvin John Ferias and Cyrel Nicolas.
Across 72 chatbot answers, the three most-recommended SEO experts in the Philippines were Glen Dimaandal (named in 65% of answers), Jin Grey (61%) and Jason Acidre (60%). Google’s AI Overviews picked a different group: Alvin John Ferias and Cyrel Nicolas appeared in 7 of 15 answers each, and Maria Espie Vidal in 5. Jin Grey and Jason Acidre didn’t appear in a single AI Overview.
So the answer depends on which AI you ask. Google and the chatbots build their lists in different ways.
How I Ran the Study
I wrote six prompts that a business owner might type:
- Who is the best SEO expert in the Philippines?
- Who are the top SEO specialists in the Philippines?
- I want to hire a freelance SEO consultant in the Philippines. Who should I consider?
- Who are the most respected Filipino SEO experts?
- Who is the best technical SEO expert in the Philippines?
- Who are the best AI search (GEO/AEO) experts in the Philippines?
I ran each prompt 3 times through 4 engines, with web search on, for 72 answers in total. The engines were ChatGPT (searching from the Philippines), Perplexity Sonar Pro, Gemini Flash and Claude Sonnet 5.5. For Google, I pulled 33 AI Overview answers that DataForSEO tracked for Philippine SEO searches through September 2026. 15 of those were for expert or specialist searches, and those 15 are the ones I compare against the chatbots.
For every answer I logged two things:
- Who got named. Every individual presented as a recommendation.
- What got cited. All 767 source links, sorted into five types.
Four notes before the numbers:
- These are answers from one week. The chatbot runs are from October 26, 2026. AI answers drift, so treat the percentages as a snapshot.
- The AI Overviews aren’t live. They’re the answers Google showed for those searches over the past several months, as tracked by DataForSEO. Google doesn’t let you request an AI Overview on demand.
- I counted people, not agencies. Agencies like SEO Hacker and SearchWorks show up a lot, but I only scored a name when the answer recommended a person.
- I’m part of this market. I’m a Philippines-based AI SEO Specialist and Director of SEO and Content Strategy at AlchemyLeads, so I ran every prompt exactly as written, didn’t add or drop any name, and report only what the engines returned.
Which SEO Experts Do ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude Recommend?
The four chatbots most often recommend Glen Dimaandal, Jin Grey and Jason Acidre, each named in at least 60% of 72 answers. Across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, 70 different people got recommended at least once. Only three made it into more than half the answers.
| Expert | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Gemini | Claude | Share of 72 answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glen Dimaandal | 11 | 11 | 13 | 12 | 65% |
| Jin Grey | 12 | 8 | 14 | 10 | 61% |
| Jason Acidre | 9 | 15 | 7 | 12 | 60% |
| Sean Si | 6 | 11 | 9 | 6 | 44% |
| Venchito Tampon | 6 | 9 | 0 | 8 | 32% |
| Yesh Quijano | 2 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 28% |
| Cyrel Nicolas | 2 | 0 | 12 | 5 | 26% |
| Alvin John Ferias | 0 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 19% |
| Maria Espie Vidal | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 7% |
Each engine column counts the answers that named the person, out of 18.
Glen Dimaandal was the most consistent, with 11 to 13 of 18 answers on every engine. The engines split on almost everyone else. Perplexity named Jason Acidre in 15 of 18 answers, while Gemini named him in 7. Gemini named Cyrel Nicolas in 12, and Perplexity didn’t name him once.
That split is the first thing that surprised me. In my product studies, the engines mostly agreed on which brands to recommend. For people, they agree far less.
Why Does Google’s AI Overview Name Different SEO Experts?
Google’s AI Overview names the specialists whose homepages rank for “SEO specialist Philippines.” The chatbots name the experts who appear on the most third-party lists. This is the biggest finding in the study.
| Expert | Google AI Overviews (of 15) | Chatbots (of 72) |
|---|---|---|
| Alvin John Ferias | 7 | 19% |
| Cyrel Nicolas | 7 | 26% |
| Maria Espie Vidal | 5 | 7% |
| Sean Si | 5 | 44% |
| Jen Garrucho | 3 | 1% |
| Digital Lourd (Lord Vincent Van Mendoza) | 3 | 0% |
| Glen Dimaandal | 2 | 65% |
| Jin Grey | 0 | 61% |
| Jason Acidre | 0 | 60% |
The chatbots’ top three got two AI Overview mentions between them. Google’s top three averaged 17% in the chatbots.
The reason shows up in the sources. Google’s AI Overview mostly summarizes what already ranks in Google. For “SEO specialist Philippines” and similar searches, the top organic results are personal homepages that say exactly that in their title tag:
- Alvin John Ferias: “SEO Specialist Philippines”
- Cyrel Nicolas: “Freelance SEO Specialist in the Philippines”
- Maria Espie Vidal: “SEO Specialist & Content Strategist Philippines”
- Digital Lourd: “SEO Specialist in the Philippines”
Google ranks those pages, and the AI Overview cites them. Jen Garrucho shows the same pattern from a different angle. Her page at a dedicated /seo-specialist-philippines URL earned 3 AI Overview mentions and 1 chatbot mention.
The chatbots work from a wider pool. They read “top Filipino SEO experts” roundups, press coverage and the experts’ own sites, then repeat the names that come up most often. Glen Dimaandal, Jin Grey and Jason Acidre appear across a lot of those pages, and they’ve been publishing, training and speaking for years.
Does the Way You Ask Change Who AI Recommends?
Yes. Reputation questions return veterans like Jason Acidre and Glen Dimaandal, while hiring questions return freelancers whose sites say “hire me,” led by Cyrel Nicolas. The six prompts didn’t return the same names. The top three for each prompt (out of 12 chatbot answers):
| Prompt | Most-named experts |
|---|---|
| Best SEO expert | Glen Dimaandal 11, Jason Acidre 10, Jin Grey 9 |
| Top SEO specialists | Sean Si 12, Jason Acidre 11, Glen Dimaandal 10 |
| Hire a freelance SEO consultant | Cyrel Nicolas 8, then Alvin John Ferias, Rene Leandro Padilla, Kent Gloria and Richard Martin Linga at 5 each |
| Most respected Filipino SEO experts | Jason Acidre 12, Glen Dimaandal 12, Sean Si 10 |
| Best technical SEO expert | James Cee Diaz 9, Jin Grey 9, Glen Dimaandal 9 |
| Best AI search (GEO/AEO) experts | Jin Grey 9, Jovel Mark Diaz 7, James Cee Diaz 6 |
Two patterns stand out.
Reputation questions go to the veterans. “Best” and “most respected” return the people with the longest public track record. Jason Acidre and Glen Dimaandal appeared in all 12 “most respected” answers.
Hiring questions go to people whose sites say “hire me.” When the prompt asked who to hire as a freelancer, Cyrel Nicolas led with 8 of 12. His site is built around exactly that phrase. Alvin John Ferias also climbed, to 5 of 12.
The AI search prompt is the least settled. After Jin Grey, the names thin out fast and include several people who barely appear elsewhere in the study. The field is new, and AI hasn’t settled on who owns it yet.
Where Do AI Engines Get Their Recommendations?
ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews cite experts’ own websites most (51% and 55% of citations). Perplexity and Claude lean on third-party roundups (43% each). I sorted the 767 cited links into five types.
| Source type | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Gemini | Claude | Google AI Overviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expert’s or agency’s own site | 51% | 27% | 41% | 42% | 55% |
| Third-party roundups and lists | 16% | 43% | 35% | 43% | 6% |
| Marketplaces and directories | 5% | 18% | 12% | 16% | 23% |
| News and press releases | 8% | 10% | 1% | 0% | 0% |
| Social, community and other | 20% | 2% | 11% | 0% | 16% |
What each engine leans on:
- ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews read your own site first. More than half their citations went to an expert’s or agency’s own website. For ChatGPT, the most-cited domains were searchworks.ph, jingrey.com and kaiserthesage.com, the sites of the three leaders.
- Perplexity and Claude read the roundups. 43% of their citations came from third-party “top SEO experts in the Philippines” lists.
- Perplexity reads press releases. 10% of its citations were news or press-release pages, including syndicated “Filipino SEO experts” releases. No other chatbot leaned on them like that.
- Google AI Overviews read marketplaces. Upwork and Clutch made up a big part of the 23% marketplace share. Google treats them as proof that someone is hireable.
One more thing about the roundups. Some of the most-cited lists are published by people who also appear in them. alvinjohnferias.com was the most-cited single domain in Google’s AI Overviews for these searches (15 citations) and among the top three in Gemini and Claude, largely through its roundups of Filipino SEO experts. Publishing a well-researched roundup of your peers is a legitimate way to earn citations, and the data shows it works. Engines do vary in how much weight they give lists where the author is also a subject, so the roundups that carry the most weight are the ones published by someone else.
What Actually Decides Who AI Recommends?
Link authority doesn’t explain the results. I checked four of the specialists Google’s AI Overview named: Alvin John Ferias, Cyrel Nicolas, Maria Espie Vidal and Digital Lourd. Their sites score between 141 and 247 on DataForSEO’s domain rank, a wide spread. Digital Lourd’s page was named in 3 of 15 AI Overviews with links from just 8 referring domains.
Two things explain it better:
- A page that states the role and the country. Alvin John Ferias, Cyrel Nicolas, Maria Espie Vidal, Digital Lourd and Jen Garrucho all have “SEO Specialist” and “Philippines” in the title tag of the page Google cites.
- How many other sites repeat the name. The chatbot leaders show up across roundups, press pages and their own long-running sites. Repetition across many sources is what the chatbots read as consensus.
The prompt matters too. A long public track record wins the “best” and “most respected” questions. A site built around hiring wins the “who should I hire” question. And nobody owns the AI search question yet.
How Do You Get Recommended by AI as an SEO Expert?
State your role and country on your own site, make every bio match, get onto the roundups AI cites, and list yourself where Google checks hireability. In order:
- Say what you are, and where, on your own site. Put the job and the country in your title tag, H1 and About page. ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews pull more than half their citations from providers’ own sites, so your site has to make the claim first.
- Make every bio agree. LinkedIn, X, your guest-author bios and your directory profiles should all describe you the same way. AI builds its picture of you from those pages. Mixed descriptions produce a mixed answer.
- Get onto the roundups. Perplexity and Claude take 43% of their citations from third-party lists. Find the lists the engines already cite and earn a spot on them. Many accept submissions.
- Be findable where Google checks hireability. Upwork, Clutch and similar directories made up 23% of Google AI Overview citations.
- Pick the question you want to win. “Best SEO expert” rewards a long public track record. “Hire a freelance SEO” rewards a site built around hiring. “AI search expert” is still open. Decide which one fits you and build for it.
I’ll re-run this exact panel in 90 days and publish what moved.
If you want this panel run for your own brand or your clients, that’s what my AI Search Visibility service does. I measure who each engine recommends in your category, find the sources behind them, and give you the work that closes the gap. For the wider method, see my AI search optimization guide. Earlier studies in this series looked at where AI gets its recommendations, whether AI recommends the brand that ranks #1 on Google, and which sources each AI engine cites.
For more numbers like these, my AI search statistics page collects 60+ stats on AI search, SEO and GEO, from this study series and from third-party research.
FAQ
Why do ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews recommend different SEO experts?
They draw on different sources. Google’s AI Overviews mostly summarize pages that already rank in Google, which for these searches are specialists’ homepages titled “SEO Specialist Philippines.” The chatbots combine roundups, press coverage and experts’ own sites, so they favor people who appear on many lists.
Do backlinks decide who AI recommends?
Not in this study. Four of the specialists Google’s AI Overview named range from 141 to 247 on DataForSEO’s domain rank, and one was named in 3 of 15 answers with links from only 8 referring domains. How clearly a page states the person’s role and location, and how many third-party lists name them, explained the results better.
How do I get ChatGPT to recommend me as an SEO expert?
Start with your own site. 51% of ChatGPT’s citations in this study went to experts’ and agencies’ own websites. State your role and country clearly, keep your bios consistent across profiles, and get named on the third-party roundups that AI engines already cite.
