About Dawn Anderson
Dawn Anderson runs SEO consultancy, Bertey based in Manchester, UK. Dawn has spoken at some of the leading UK and global search marketing conferences, including Pubcon (Las Vegas and Florida), SASCON (Manchester, UK), European Search Conference (Liverpool, UK), Brighton SEO (Brighton, UK), SMX London (London, UK), SMX East (San Jose, US), SMX Advanced, MozCon (Seattle, US) and State of Search (Dallas, US).
Dawn has also spoken at conference across Europe and as far afield as Australia. Dawn has been in digital marketing and SEO for 17+ years and works with leading brands providing digital marketing and SEO strategy and consultancy across a number of sectors.
Talk details
You Can’t Generate What You Can’t Retrieve: The Hidden Architecture of AI Search
In this talk, Dawn will explore why Large Language Models depend entirely on retrieval systems to produce grounded answers, and how Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines reintroduce classic search problems under a new name. From document structure and chunking to relevance, freshness, and evaluation, the same decisions SEOs have always influenced now directly affect what AI systems “know.”
Attendees will gain a clear framework for understanding AI Search failures, a deeper appreciation of retrieval as the true bottleneck, and concrete ways search professionals can adapt their strategies for a world where visibility means being retrievable and not just rankable.
