Here's what came up this time.

When you say "public," does that mean we have to set our lessons to open to everyone?

• Not necessarily, and it helps to think of eligibility as two separate gates.

  • Gate one: your content is published and released, which alone makes your detail page information (description, tabs, etc.) eligible for indexing.

  • Gate two: the interior of your content is public, meaning a course, microcourse, or lesson is set to "open to everyone," or a video/article has "accessible to public" turned on.

  • That second gate is what gets your actual interior content indexed, not just the detail page. You can stop at gate one if you'd rather not open up lesson content, and AEO will still work off your detail pages.

I don't see an "accessible to public" toggle on my course, is something wrong?

• No, that's expected. "Accessible to public" specifically lives on the enrollment tab for videos and articles. For courses and microcourses, the equivalent setting is "open to everyone" at the lesson level. Different content types use different controls to get to the same outcome.

Will this change anything my learners see on the site?

• No. The structured data (JSON-LD) that AEO inserts is invisible to learners and doesn't alter your existing detail page experience in Thought Industries. It only affects how your content is surfaced in outside AI tools, which then link back to your existing detail page.

Are those questions always auto-generated, or can we influence what gets populated?

• They're dynamically generated, with no admin input into the specific questions or answers today. That's intentional, so the questions are created the same, unbiased way regardless of customer input. Whenever a page is updated, the indexing job reruns and evaluates whether the change is significant enough to warrant new Q&A, so not every small edit triggers a full refresh.

Is it possible to turn on AEO without adopting other new AI capabilities?

• Yes, one hundred percent. These are built as mutually exclusive toggles, so you can turn AEO on and leave the others off.

Can we get visibility into usage reports, like for Conversational AI Learning?

• Not in-product today, that reporting hasn't been built out yet. In the meantime, the team can pull GA4 reports ad hoc if you grant access to track the relevant events.

  • Worth knowing: traffic lift is gradual, not overnight. The typical approach is establishing a baseline, turning AEO on, then checking in at 30/60/90-day intervals and adjusting content (more robust descriptions, fuller detail pages) if results aren't where you'd like. If you already track in your own GA instance, you don't have to wait on that cadence, you can watch it daily yourself.

Are there best practices for setting up pages or videos to get the most out of AEO?

• First, thin detail pages limit how much useful Q&A can be generated, so the more complete and representative your description and content are, the more (and better) structured data AEO can create.

• Second, if your academy lives on a different domain or subdomain from your main site, make sure there's a clear connection between them (footer links, subnavigation, etc.), so Google and other engines don't treat them as unrelated, competing domains and split your authority.

Is it possible to preview the questions that will be generated before turning AEO on?

• Not today, there's no preview option before enabling it. Once it's on, you can see the structured data the same way it was demoed in the workshop, via View Page Source on a live detail page.

Can we test this in a sandbox first to see what the structures look like?

• You can, but it's not recommended as a practice going forward. Indexing sandbox content risks sending inconsistent signals to LLMs about which version of your content is authoritative, so it's best to avoid amplifying a sandbox instance.

From a legal standpoint, do we need to disclose that an answer came from AI?

• No, treat it the same as SEO. The content itself isn't new, AEO just increases the odds your own content, rather than generic or third-party content, is the source AI tools pull from.

We use Helium (or a similarly customized instance), does AEO work the same way for us?

• Mostly, yes. The underlying release, publish, and public toggles work the same way at the platform level, since those are manager panel settings rather than something Helium overrides. AEO indexes content as long as detail pages exist and data is flowing in; Helium isn't expected to block that. One caveat: non-detail-page Helium pages aren't automatically tracked by Thought Industries' Google Analytics the way standard detail pages are, so if you want a Helium page treated (and tracked) as a true detail page, double-check it has the right files/structure attached.

How does AEO interact with Panoramas?

• AEO is global and is not panorama controlled.

As always, drop any follow-up questions in Community!

• Get a first look at where our AI direction is headed next

• Preview our AI Product Innovations

• Direct roadmap access — your input genuinely shapes what we build next

• Peer conversations on the challenges you're all tackling

Agenda:

• 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM: Lunch and welcome 
  Enjoy lunch and welcome from Irana Wasti, CEO
  

• 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM: AI vision, product roadmap and roundtable discussion
  Get a first look at Thought Industries’ AI product innovation and a clear view of the trends shaping customer and industry decisions right now

Whether you're refining your current strategy or looking ahead to what's next, expect a candid afternoon of executive access, peer discussion, and forward-looking insight you can bring back to your own team.

I started with a transcript and an existing course I could point to as a “this is what good looks like” reference. That was pretty much it. No staring at a blank page trying to figure out where to start, no spending hours getting an outline into shape. In about the time it would’ve taken me to grab a coffee, I had something I could actually work with. Here’s what I did, what came out of it, and why it got me thinking differently about how we could build out our catalog.

We already had an API Fundamentals MicroCourse built out, so I handed Claude that course as a style/tone reference and fed it raw webinar transcripts for topics we hadn't turned into courses yet.

What I did:

1. Gave Claude the API Fundamentals MicroCourse as the "template", tone and level of detail.

2. Dropped in a webinar transcript for the new topic.

3. Used the author-course playbook that comes with the TI Admin plugin, and in my prompt explicitly told Claude to build it as one single lesson with a max of X pages, matching how our MicroCourses are actually structured (no sections/lessons/topics tree).

4. Reviewed the draft, asked for a couple of tweaks.

5. Had Claude push it straight into Academy as a draft, ready for our normal review/publish step.

Repeated that a couple more times and ended up with three new MicroCourses sitting in Academy as drafts:

• Build a Structure for Easier Content Management

• Intro to Conversational AI Learning

• Intro to Answer Engine Optimization

Time saved: what would’ve normally taken hours of outlining, writing, and building happened in one sitting. I went from a transcript to a review ready draft in Academy without all the usual back-and-forth in between.

Consistent quality: because Claude had one of our actual courses to work from, it wasn’t guessing at what “good” should look like. The new courses followed the same structure and tone, so they actually felt like they belonged in the catalog.

Repeatable: this is probably the part I’m most excited about. Any webinar or recording we already have a transcript for could become a MicroCourse using the same process. And everything still lands as a draft, so there’s always a human in the loop before anything gets published.

We’ve got a whole backlog of webinars that could be doing a lot more for us than sitting in the archive. If you’re thinking about doing something similar, or just want the prompt I used, drop a comment. Happy to share it.

We currently have gamification setup in our LMS.

Every time a learner completes a course, they earn 1 point.

The leaderboard shows the top "points" which are completed courses. We are also using in house badges provided by TI.

We have the "leaderboard" setup under the courses catalog.

I'm curious on what are some best practices that some of you have as a way to increase engagement.

• Get a first look at where our AI direction is headed next

• Preview our AI Product Innovations

• Direct roadmap access — your input genuinely shapes what we build next

• Peer conversations on the challenges you're all tackling

Whether you're refining your current strategy or looking ahead to what's next, expect a candid afternoon of executive access, peer discussion, and forward-looking insight you can bring back to your own team.

This post picks up where that one left off, with the additional questions and details that came out of this latest session.

Paywalled and authenticated content

If your course is paid or gated, AEO only ever looks at what's on the detail page, since that's the part accessible without logging in. Nothing behind the paywall gets indexed. If you want more of the actual course content to be discoverable, you can open a specific lesson to everyone (think "first lesson free"), and that lesson's content becomes indexable too.

Custom pages, still being confirmed

The working understanding is that any publicly accessible page, including custom pages, gets indexed the same way as standard content. That said, this hasn't been formally confirmed against the technical requirements yet, so treat it as directionally correct for now while the team follows up.

Using an external eCommerce platform

If you're not using Thought Industries' eCommerce and instead handle purchases through a third party, your detail page is still indexed, as long as the content is published and released. One nuance: depending on your external eCommerce flow, learners themselves might not actually pass through that indexed detail page as part of checkout, even though it's still the page AEO is using behind the scenes.

Skipping the detail page with the External Detail Link field

If you've pointed the External Detail Link field at a course URL hosted elsewhere and effectively skip the Thought Industries detail page, there's nothing there for AEO to index; third-party linked destinations aren't indexed directly. The workaround is to still fill in some Thought Industries detail page fields (like the course description) even if you're redirecting learners elsewhere. That gets the content indexed, and citations will route learners to your Thought Industries detail page, which then redirects onward as normal.

How often content gets reindexed

There's no fixed schedule. Content is indexed once AEO is enabled, and it's automatically reindexed any time that content is updated, since the structured Q&A only needs to change when the underlying content does.

Excluding individual pieces of content

There's no way today to cherry-pick specific published/released detail pages out of AEO. This wasn't part of the first iteration since the core goal is increasing traffic broadly, but the team is actively gathering real use cases (via email, or better yet, a Community thread) to help prioritize this for a future release.

Hidden from your catalog isn't the same as unindexed

If content is released, its detail page gets indexed once AEO is enabled, even if it's intentionally hidden from your public catalog. This came up specifically around competitor-comparison courses some customers keep released but out of the catalog; if it's released, assume it's indexed.

Private cohorts and partner content

Whether cohort or partner-specific content shows up comes down to release status, not which panorama or learner group it's assigned to. If you don't want that content surfaced, the lever is to leave it unreleased, rather than trying to scope AEO by panorama or cohort.

AEO vs. Conversational AI Learning

Worth a reminder since it came up live: AEO only indexes public content. If you're looking to make content a learner is enrolled in (but that isn't public) searchable, that's the territory of Conversational AI Learning, which does access-based indexing.

Early traffic signal

Among open beta customers already tracking AI traffic, turning AEO on produced a real lift in traffic from LLMs like Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, described as a jump into double-digit increases rather than a marginal bump.

A couple of housekeeping notes

Sessions aren't recorded for distribution since some discussion touches on account-specific details, but Q&A from both the live conversation and the chat gets folded into these Community recaps so nothing gets lost. There's also a help center article and an "Intro to Answer Engine Optimization" microcourse in the Academy, both being actively updated with what comes out of these workshops. Your Account Manager would be happy to talk about AEO strategy with you anytime and can walk you through pricing.

More sessions are scheduled if you want to catch a repeat or bring a teammate; keep an eye on Community Events for times. A short companion resource, "AI Powered Customer Education," will also be posted in Community and go out in the follow-up email.

Thank you to all who participated in today's session!

The brief's real argument, though, isn't "panic," it's "reframe." Instead of fighting to keep learners inside the academy, the case is made for treating your academy as the source that feeds AI tools, chatbots, and search everywhere your customers already are, while your LMS becomes the system of record behind the scenes. It walks through three pillars (contextual, personalized, dynamic learning) and a real example from Ironclad on turning their academy into the central hub for customer outcomes.

Worth the 5-minute read if you're thinking about AEO, your Q4 content strategy, or just want language to bring to your leadership about why this matters now.

Key things to know:

AEO indexes all publicly available content in your instance. The one exception is video-only content with no transcript, which is not indexed today.

Once indexed, that content is put into structured data, essentially question-and-answer pairs (three to five per piece of content), inserted into the header of the relevant detail page. When an AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude fields a question, it can read that structured data, extract the accepted answer, and cite your detail page as the source.

Request to turn it on: request it from Apps in your dashboard, accept the terms of service, and your Account Manager will reach out.

For content to be eligible for indexing, it needs to clear a few gates:

• the content item must be published & released

• for interior content to be indexed, a course/microcourse lesson must be open to everyone, or the article/video must be accessible to public.

Structured data lives only on detail pages, not on listing or catalog pages. This is intentional, so AI tools have one clear landing destination per piece of content rather than competing pages.

Key Takeaways

• Public content only, always. Only content configured as publicly accessible at the content level is eligible to be indexed and surfaced. This was easily the most repeated point of the session.

• Detail pages do a lot of work here. If you already have solid detail page content (descriptions, tab info, etc.) and it's released content, AEO has something to work with immediately, with minimal extra lift.

• SCORM content can be indexed inside of open to everyone lessons.

• Panorama-level exclusion isn't natively supported yet. You can't currently scope AEO on or off per panorama the way content is scoped; structured data is tied to the content itself, not the panorama it's assigned to. If your content is already cleanly segmented by panorama (a course only lives in one panorama), you can approximate this by controlling publish/release/public settings on that content. If content is shared across panoramas, it gets harder. Our team is looking into this.

• No built-in AI traffic tracking today. Thought Industries doesn't currently have native reporting on whether AI engines are sending learners to your site. Google Analytics and Google Search Console are the two go-to tools customers use to establish a baseline and see which pages are being indexed and why.

Q&A Recap

Does this work with SCORM files?

• Yes, as long as the SCORM package is inside of a course lesson that is open to everyone. Videos with transcripts inside of the SCORM package can also be captured.

Is the AEO tool scanning every page, or just the detail page?

• AEO scans the broader public-facing site for eligible content, but the structured data (the Q&A header markup) is only inserted on the detail page for that content, by design, so AI tools land learners on one clear source rather than getting confused across duplicate or competing pages.

How does the tool know what questions to ask, and can the answers be trusted?

• Questions are generated using Thought Industries' internal LLMs and third-party sub-processors (Gemini embeddings), covered under the terms of service. Importantly, the accepted answers in the structured data are grounded entirely in your own content, not pulled from external sources, so the goal is to reduce hallucination risk and keep your content as the source of truth. How the answer engine (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) phrases the final response to the learner is up to that engine, but it draws from your grounded, accepted answer.

Does "published" mean published in the content builder, or released to the catalog?

• Content needs to be both published in the content builder and released to the catalog for the detail page to be indexed.

If content is unreleased or archived for retirement, does the tool know to unindex it, and do we need to handle unindexing manually in Google Search Console?

• Yes, our team is also testing this more thoroughly.

Can AEO be enabled for one panorama and disabled for another?

• Not today. Structured data is tied to the content itself rather than the panorama, which makes a clean per-panorama toggle difficult. If your content is already segmented so each panorama has its own distinct courses, you can effectively control this through publish/release/public settings on that content. Shared content across panoramas is a harder case, and our team flagged this as something to look into further.

Is there a way to track whether AI engines are actually driving traffic to our site?

• There's no built-in AEO traffic tracking today. The recommended approach is Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Search Console in particular is a good way to see which pages are being indexed and, if pages aren't indexed, to diagnose why, most commonly missing Q&A structures or redirect issues.

More sessions are scheduled if you want to catch a repeat or bring a teammate; keep an eye on Community Events for times. A short companion resource, "AI Powered Customer Education," will also be posted in Community and go out in the follow-up email.