Alex Melen, co-founder of Smart Sites, has been in digital marketing since the mid-90s. What he’s seeing now with AI and data is unlike anything that’s come before — including the last time it felt like the wild west.
Alex Melen has been building in digital since the mid-90s. He started one of the first web hosting companies before words like “SEO” or “paid search” even existed. He co-founded Smart Sites in 2011, grew it into what he believes is now the largest private digital marketing agency in the US, and has watched every wave of hype, scam, and real innovation the industry has thrown at marketers over three decades.
So when he says what’s happening right now with AI and data feels like the early internet — he means it as a compliment and a warning at the same time.
We had him on Deconstructing Data and covered a lot of ground: how agencies are using aggregated industry data to answer questions individual businesses can’t, what GEO and AEO actually mean versus what people are selling, and why connecting Claude to your data is genuinely a different thing than just using Claude.
There Are Two Data Equations in PPC — And Most People Only Think About One
Ask most marketers what “data-driven PPC” means and they’ll talk about Google’s machine learning, smart bidding, conversion tracking. That’s table stakes now. Alex agrees that’s important — but he sees it as only half the equation.
The other half is the data you have that Google doesn’t: the aggregated, cross-client intelligence that comes from running campaigns at real scale.
Smart Sites manages digital marketing for thousands of clients. When a single dentist calls to say “it feels slow this month,” their PPC team can literally ask Claude whether it’s slow for every dentist in the portfolio — and get a real answer in seconds.
“You could ask Claude: for these 100 dentists, are they getting less organic search traffic because of AI overviews? And it would tell you within seconds, where it would have taken months before.”
— Alex Melen, Co-Founder, Smart Sites
That’s not theoretical. They have Google Analytics and Search Console access across thousands of accounts. With Claude connected to those data sources, a question that used to require weeks of custom analysis is now a conversation.
“I think our competitive advantage is literally having this data and being able to ask questions against it. It’s not proprietary at all — it’s not like we built proprietary AI. We use Claude for everything. It’s just that people aren’t creating the processes and connecting it.”
— Alex Melen, Co-Founder, Smart Sites
That last part is worth sitting with. The advantage isn’t secret technology. It’s the combination of data depth and the discipline to actually connect it.
GEO, AEO, and the Snake Oil Problem
I’ll be honest — I’ve noticed more and more vendors pitching “GEO optimization” and “AI search ranking” services. Alex had a story that captures how bad it’s gotten.
A client forwarded him a spam email from a company offering to rank them number one on ChatGPT.
“I must have reread the email like eight times. It literally says ‘We’ll rank you number one on ChatGPT.’ And that doesn’t even make sense. You can’t rank number one on ChatGPT. There’s no number one. There are no ranks.”
— Alex Melen, Co-Founder, Smart Sites
He’s not exaggerating — this was from a real company, not a one-person shop. And his client was genuinely asking if they should try it.
The wild west comparison is accurate. We’ve been here before: when SEO was new, everyone was selling “guaranteed page one rankings.” Now the same pitch is getting recycled into AI search. Different technology, same hustle.
What actually works, according to Alex — and this lines up with what Google has said publicly — is that GEO and AEO are largely an extension of good SEO. Content still matters. Authority still matters. The main shift is in what kind of authority counts.
Traditional search rewards backlinks and domain authority. AI search rewards topical authority — going deep on a specific subject rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
“If you’re a Honda dealership and you create a lot of content about how to repair Hondas, AI will see you as the topical authority on servicing Hondas and will more likely reference your dealership when people are asking questions related to it.”
— Alex Melen, Co-Founder, Smart Sites
It also filters out AI slop more aggressively than traditional search. Forbes can publish 67 AI-generated apple pie recipes and rank on Google because of their domain authority. AI search is less easily gamed — it wants you to be a real expert on something specific, not a content farm pretending to be one.
The Car Deal That Explains Where AI Is Actually Headed
Alex told a story that illustrates better than any framework where this is all going.
He wanted to sell his car. So he had Claude build a website for it — professional photos, full listing, looked better than most dealer sites. That took about a minute and a half. Then he told it to find luxury car buyers, email them the listing, and ask for trade-in values. Claude found the companies, submitted the forms, sent the emails. Offers started coming back. He told Claude to use the offers to negotiate. He went to sleep.
By morning, Claude had bid multiple buyers against each other — including sending screenshots of competing offers — and had three companies ready to send contracts at $15,000 more than the opening offers.
That same level of capability is what got people into trouble with ad platforms:
“Facebook was literally banning any advertising account using Claude MCP connectors because of how powerful they were. With Claude, you could see what audiences are working well and stop spending on the bad ones. For Facebook, if everyone stops spending on certain audiences, they can’t monetize them.”
— Alex Melen, Co-Founder, Smart Sites
That’s why they were banning people. The tool was that effective at optimizing spend. (Facebook has since reversed course and launched their own MCP.)
What This Means for Anyone Running Campaigns Today
The people winning right now aren’t the ones with the most sophisticated proprietary AI — they’re the ones who’ve done the unglamorous work of connecting their existing data to tools that can reason about it.
For agencies, cross-client data becomes a real competitive moat when it’s accessible. For in-house teams, the Google Analytics data you already have is worth a lot more than you’re currently getting out of it. And for anyone getting pitched “number one rankings on ChatGPT” — you know what to do.
“A lot of people use Claude and ChatGPT without the data connectors. They just have conversations and think they’re using AI. It’s really not the same.”
— Alex Melen, Co-Founder, Smart Sites
That’s the whole thing in one sentence.
To learn more about Smart Sites’ digital marketing services, visit smartsites.com or connect with Alex Melen at alexmelen.com.
This article was adapted from an episode of Deconstructing Data, BDEX’s weekly podcast on data-driven marketing. Tune in live every Thursday at 4:15 PM Eastern on LinkedIn.
About BDEX: For companies that need clean identity data to power their products, BDEX offers unmatched quality and execution. Visit bdex.com and click “Talk to an Expert” to get started.
