I didn’t build StructuredAF because AI arrived. I built it because the internet changed.
Being good at your work and being good at attracting attention are two very different skills.
And yet, for years, marketing has seemed to demand both.
Post more. Show up more. Make another Reel. Build your personal brand. Become a content creator.
All perfectly reasonable advice if you actually wanted to become a content creator.
Rather less helpful if you spent twenty years becoming an excellent consultant, coach or specialist in something that has absolutely nothing to do with dancing around your kitchen.
I thought there ought to be another way.
Not a way to avoid explaining what makes your business valuable. A way to make that information easier for the systems helping people discover businesses to understand.
That's what StructuredAF is here to do.
I noticed something changing before I had a name for it.
In spring 2025, I started paying attention to how the women around me (friends, peers and colleagues) were using ChatGPT.
Not to write blog posts or generate pictures.
To make decisions.
Where should they stay? Which product would suit them? Who could help with a particular problem?
They were describing what they needed and asking for suggestions.
Meanwhile, much of the conversation in digital marketing was still about rankings, traffic and how AI might affect Google. Those things mattered. And of course they still do.
But I was interested in a different question.
What happens to a genuinely excellent business when someone asks AI for a recommendation instead of searching for it themselves?
How does the system know what that business actually does?
Who it's particularly good at helping?
What experience, qualifications or approach make it relevant?
And what happens when those details are scattered across a website, with no clear connection between them?
That's the problem I wanted to work on.
I wasn't interested in building another dashboard.
There are plenty of tools that tell businesses whether they're being mentioned in AI-generated answers. Some of them are useful.
But I kept coming back to the same thought.
Knowing that AI hasn't mentioned your business doesn't, by itself, help AI understand it any better.
I wanted to work further upstream.
Instead of simply measuring what appeared in an AI response, I wanted to help businesses communicate the information those systems might need in the first place.
Their expertise. Their services. Their programmes. Their experience. The people they're best placed to help.
All connected into a consistent description of the business that AI and search systems can read, published through its own website.
Not another list of things to fix. Something that actually does a defined job.
That's why I built StructuredAF.
And if you'd like to understand the bigger change behind it, I've explained that in The Shift.
Alex Sheach
Founder, StructuredAF
I've spent around thirty years working with software, websites and the problems that happen when technology doesn't behave quite as helpfully as it should.
One thing that experience has taught me is that complicated technology isn't necessarily clever technology.
Sometimes the best solution is the one that does its job quietly and leaves everyone else to get on with theirs.
That's the thinking behind StructuredAF.
I'm interested in how businesses are represented and understood by the systems people increasingly rely on to find information and make decisions. But I'm equally interested in the people running those businesses.
The consultant who's spent decades developing her judgement.
The coach who's built an approach that genuinely helps people.
The independent expert who would rather do excellent work than spend every waking hour trying to keep an algorithm entertained.
Those are the businesses I had in mind when I built StructuredAF.
↪I didn't set out to build another AI marketing dashboard.
I wanted to make it easier for people who are genuinely good at what they do to be understood for it.
- Alex
What I believe
Expertise should matter more than performance.
You shouldn't have to become an entertainer to demonstrate that you're an expert.
Software should do something useful.
A dashboard can tell you there's a problem. Sometimes that's valuable. But wherever possible, I'd rather build something that addresses the underlying issue.
Your business is more than a collection of web pages.
Your experience, services, programmes and specialist knowledge belong to the same business. The technology interpreting your website should have a clearer way to connect them.
Good technology shouldn't demand constant attention.
You have a business to run. Software should make that easier, not create another elaborate routine to maintain.
Claims should be backed by what the product actually does.
StructuredAF can't guarantee an AI recommendation. It can make the information about your business more explicit, consistent and accessible to systems that can interpret it.
That's a worthwhile job in its own right.
Built for people who have already done the hard work.
StructuredAF isn't here to invent your expertise or manufacture a reputation.
It's here to help communicate the business you've built.
The services you deliver.
The people you help.
The experience and knowledge behind your work.
Because being excellent at something should count for more than being excellent at getting attention.
Questions? Read the FAQ or get in touch.
