Why GEO is a reputational issue

There is a common misconception that GEO is a technical problem.

Just browse LinkedIn or X for 30 seconds, and you’ll find the next GEO virus hack.

• Like “create an AI detail page” so that LLMs can easily understand your product.
• Maybe “create markup versions of your content” for AI visibility.
• Maybe “get Claude auto search” which scans your robots.txt and generates a llms.txt file for you.

But most of these strategies have limited impact because they do not address how LLMs decide which brands to recommend.

GEO’s functionality has been preserved a bit by technical tweaks and more by how your product is consistently positioned, segmented, and verified across the web.

If GEO’s performance is driven by standardization and consistency, it’s no wonder that many widely promoted strategies fail.

Just search [GEO tactics for LLM visibility]and you will see the same tired ideas.

The recommendations below are not perfect, but they are generally part of the table. Many have misinterpreted this advice and taken these ideas to extremes.

Useless FAQ entry

Google docs recommend using FAQs with schema.

But all the hype surrounding the GEO FAQs has led companies to make poor decisions about which FAQs to include in their content.

Instead of answering really important questions, they end up slapping useless questions at the bottom of the page because they think it’s “helpful with GEO.”

Currently, it does nothing for the end user. Here is one such example:

Putting ‘key takeaways’ at the top of every article

Another glorified trick that isn’t inherently bad, but the opposite is extreme.

Shorter answer summaries can improve human readability, but there is no strong public evidence that “capable key” blocks improve AI visibility on its own.

Pages are overly formatted for LLM readability

This can mean forcing each page into strict Q&A patterns, stuffing bullet points into every section, and cramming HTML tables into sections where they don’t belong.

Some think that LLMs need heavy formatting help to retrieve content, so they resort to copywriting tactics like “chunking” which can make the editing process more difficult.

Dig deeper: How to categorize content and when it’s appropriate

GEO’s Reddit Chase

Some are more concerned with Reddit’s pursuit of GEO, and it’s causing brands to spam Reddit.

This is bad for the countless reasons Eli Schwartz has already mentioned, but it also supports the argument that GEO is not a technological problem.

Reddit represents the voice of real people, which is why moderators carefully hunt out fake work like astrology or “SEO shaping” in threads where software testing takes place.

GEO is a product positioning problem

GEO is a strategy matter at a high level, not an SEO issue at a functional level.

GEO’s biggest advantage comes not from technological advancements – but rather, the integration of brand positioning, messaging, and reputation management across all on-site and off-site channels.

Everyone thinks that the SEO team should be 100% responsible for all aspects of GEO, but they only control a limited part of how LLMs make their product ideas.

Ross Hudgens recently posted about this problem. If none of these sources align with a consistent narrative, it will be a challenge for LLMs to reach consensus about your product.

GEO is a phase alignment problem

Let’s check [best AI SDR agents] where Coldreach is ranked No. 1 and quote AI.

Despite the high ranking of the web and getting the URL quote, there is no recommendation of their product regarding the best AI SDR agents.

This strategy worked very well during the golden age of SEO when rankings and clicks were the goal.

The AI, being an excellent normalizer, has degraded the performance of this playbook dramatically.

Listicles will not force your brand into AI recommendations

The main difference between SEO and GEO is that you cannot make product recommendations for a topic that your product has no recognition for.

We just saw that above with an excellent example of AI SDR.

Here is another example: [best insider threat management] where URL quotes are found by Exabeam, SpyCloud, and Pathlock.

None of these brands are recommended in the feedback summary, however they all use listicles.

AI is the main producer of this strategy, as it simply scratches and shortens their names and recommends all other products.

This is another reason why reporting on “citations” as a GEO success metric is a failure to differentiate, given that there is no corresponding product recommendation.

Instead, AI Overview recommends brands that really deserve to be there, such as Teramind, Proofpoint, DTEX, etc.

Most brands do not know how to represent all LLMs

Aside from the inevitable randomness in AI responses, you should reverse engineer how LLMs compile information about your product.

Start with the below funnel instructions like:

• “What is the best Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) B2B company’s solution for business to [industry] with [features]?”

Then check the answers and sources systematically.

A new study by Kevin Indig found that the web search environment has a significant impact on LLM citation rates. This is further confirmation that GEO is fundamentally linked to traditional SEOas LLMs rely on web searches (baseline) to generate answer summaries, especially for low-productivity test questions.

The bottom line is that if your pages don’t rank high in traditional SEO, third parties and external websites can control the narrative about your brand.

Many of the top and most competitive categories are owned by third parties

It’s useful to understand which product categories are dominated by third-party companies versus original companies so that you can prioritize marketing efforts accordingly.

In this example of [best employee monitoring software]The product recommendation rate is about 90% and the citation rate is about 15%.

This suggests that the product is well covered on all third party pages where LLMs are releasing the relevant information.

When we examine the SERP, it is clear that third-party sources account for the largest number of citations.

Citations come from agencies such as Business.com, CurrentWare, PC Mag, Gartner, and other reputable sources.

The key takeaway: if your brand wants to compete in the high-volume categories, you may be forced to play the membership game.

What does this mean for your GEO strategy

Technical website cleanliness is still important. If you have a vibe-coded, JavaScript-heavy website with poor internal communication and flat layouts, you’re unlikely to do well in GEO.

Things like XML sitemaps, page indexing, site taxonomy, and internal linking structure are still important for improved productivity for retrieving and importing training data.

However, these are the basic pillars of SEO that only create the foundation that GEO is built upon, rather than accelerating GEO itself.

GEO is a branding and ranking exercise, not a technical SEO test.

Questions to ask about GEO:

• Are LLMs really recommending our brand, or just citing our pages?
• If our product comes from AI responses, which category is it bucketed? And is that the class that wants to own it?
• Do LLMs match our product with the right buyer, use case, and problem set? Or are they joining us with the heirs?
• Are third-party sites, review forums, Reddit threads, and comment pages shaping our AI visibility more than our content?
• Is there a consistent narrative across our homepage, product pages, comparison content, review websites, and third-party affiliates?
• Are we trying to force visibility with listicles and formatting tricks instead of achieving a position of admiration by aligning the market and category?
• Do we know what the most important leads are at the bottom of the funnel, and have we tested how our product evolves from that information?
• Within our featured category, are AI responses largely shaped by first-party sites or affiliates and review forums?
• If third parties dominate the category, do we have a plan to achieve strong security there?
• What is the role of YouTube in our niche? How much influence does YouTube have on LLM responses, and are we represented there?
• Are we publishing content that really helps consumers understand our positioning and uniqueness?
• Or can we add FAQ blocks and “key takeaways” because it looks like a productive GEO job?
• What outdated, incorrect, or weak associations keep reappearing in AI responses? Which group owns the sessions and fixes them once we get them?

Stop chasing geo hacks

GEO’s main problem is whether LLMs believe your product is the answer.

LLMs need to reach consensus about your brand, built on reputation, category alignment, and repeated validation across the web.

Technical SEO provides a foundation, but it doesn’t help LLMs reach a conclusion about your product’s market position.

A great opportunity to direct messaging across the board that influences how LLMs interpret your product and why it should be recommended.

That means that GEO is not a siled optimization problem, but an ecosystem visibility problem.

It’s time to stop chasing geO hacks, because AI is cutting down ineffective and outdated techniques forever.