Bans are permanent brand damage; domains with heavy authentic Reddit/Quora mentions ~4x citation odds; give more than you take
How to implement →GEORedditCommunity-tested
GEO Best Practices, Ranked by Evidence
Generative engine optimization best practices for getting cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews — evidence-scored, community-ranked.
Princeton GEO paper (KDD 2024): Statistics Addition +30-40% visibility; r/DigitalMarketing 200-page test: pages with 5+ stats cited ~3x more; 12%->47% avg citation rate after framework
How to implement →GEOPeer-reviewed85% of brand mentions in AI answers come from external sites (AirOps); McKinsey: own site in only 5-10% of citations; $30K-marketing r/DigitalMarketing case: client with forum/Zillow mentions beat agency with owned channels
How to implement →GEOLarge studyGoogle's official guide: commodity content the model can generate itself never gets cited; robot-vacuum blog with real tests outranks NYT affiliate listicle in AI answers
How to implement →GEOOfficial guidanceLinkedIn top-5 cited on ChatGPT, AI Mode (~15% of responses) and Perplexity, rising steadily; BUT our scrape of 150 GEO posts found ~90% agency self-promotion with <10 likes - great citation platform, terrible advice source
How to implement →GEOLinkedInLarge studyThe cited format is not the upvoted format - structured first-person comparisons get extracted; participate weeks before mentioning your product
How to implement →GEORedditCommunity-testedLLMs cite Reddit threads that surface in search for the fanned query; Semrush analyzed 248K AI-cited Reddit posts; site:reddit.com [query] to find targets
How to implement →GEORedditLarge studyPerplexity: 46.7% Reddit; ChatGPT: 47.9% Wikipedia; AI Overviews: Reddit 21%/YouTube 18.8%/Quora 14.3%/LinkedIn 13% (Profound 10M); ChatGPT cut Reddit ~60%->10% in one month (Semrush 100M)
How to implement →GEOLarge studyPRNewswire, Forbes, Medium = biggest ChatGPT citation winners post-Sept 2025; mentions themselves are the value, backlinks secondary
How to implement →GEOLarge studyAI skips citing brands with conflicting data across sources; sameAs schema to Wikidata/LinkedIn/Crunchbase; conflicting descriptions = model confusion
How to implement →GEOCommunity-testedPrinceton: Cite Sources +30-40%; GeoSource 540-check study: citation quality = +65% lift - AI trusts content that shows its work
How to implement →GEOPeer-reviewedPrimary citation sources for tool-recommendation queries; a thin profile is a citation that never happens; earn specific-language reviews
How to implement →GEOG2/CapterraLarge studyWikipedia = ChatGPT's #1 domain (47.9% Profound; still top-2 after Sept cut); Wikidata feeds knowledge graphs across engines; category-page mentions work if no dedicated article
How to implement →GEOWikipediaLarge studyQuora = 14.3% of Google AI Overview citations; question-format communities are exactly where LLMs look for Q&A content
How to implement →GEOQuoraLarge study- 7/10
Curated lists = the listicle format LLMs over-cite; Claude-Code is the #2 fetcher of llms.txt (Ahrefs) - dev-tool docs are its only evidence-backed use
How to implement →GEOGitHubLarge study Medium was a top post-Sept ChatGPT citation winner; declined on Google AI Mode - it's a ChatGPT play; canonical in Settings->Advanced avoids duplicate risk
How to implement →GEOMediumLarge study85% of AI-retrieved pages never get cited; getting retrieved is SEO, getting cited requires extractable, quotable, definitive content
How to implement →GEOLarge studyRun a fixed 20-40 query set weekly across engines, repeat runs and average (LLM nondeterminism); tools (Semrush, Profound, Ahrefs) are directional only - '17% mention share with no error bars is astrology' (r/AEO SWE)
How to implement →GEOCommunity-testedPerplexity reacts in days, ChatGPT weeks-months; technical audience -> Perplexity/Claude, mainstream -> ChatGPT; 30-40% mention rate on one engine beats 5% on six
How to implement →GEOCommunity-testedGrok pulls live from X posts/threads; a retrievable body of evidence beats one viral post; long-form claim-rich threads outperform quips
How to implement →GEOXPractitioner claimGoogle guide ends with agentic experiences (screenshots, DOM, accessibility trees); 'build an MCP server - when someone asks Claude/ChatGPT the question your product answers, your tool shows up' (1.5K likes)
How to implement →GEOOfficial guidance1,885 treated vs 4,000 control pages: AIO -4.6%, AI Mode +2.4% (ns), ChatGPT +2.2% (ns); Google: no special schema needed. Keep schema for rich results/entity disambiguation only; note one practitioner claims HowTo 1.7x - unreplicated
How to implement →GEOLarge study'Spent $4,200 on an AEO agency for a pool business, got nothing'; The Verge: snake-oil warning; Google now officially warns about third-party AEO/GEO tool claims; r/AEO AMAs charge $1,250-12,500/mo retainers for the tactics in this sheet
How to implement →GEOCommunity-testedGoogle: no requirement to fragment content or write specially for AI; models understand synonyms and multi-topic pages. Distinct from good structure (which helps)
How to implement →GEOOfficial guidanceAhrefs 137K domains: 97% of llms.txt files got ZERO traffic in May 2026, 96% of remaining fetches were bots; no AI bot ever requests a missing one; Google lists it as a myth. Only real use: docs for AI coding tools (Claude-Code = #2 fetcher)
How to implement →GEOOfficial guidanceViral 'a16z declared SEO dead + here's my mega prompt' posts (200K+ views) sell prompts/files that do nothing; every serious study shows SEO fundamentals drive AI visibility; AI tools are ~2% of referral traffic vs search 24% (SimilarWeb Jan 2026)
How to implement →GEOX/TwitterPractitioner claimGoogle: spam systems filter inauthentic mentions; Reddit is shutting down spam GEO subs and banning accounts ('brand visibility jail'); 'disguised promotion has to stop' threads at 145-172 upvotes across r/SEO + r/marketing
How to implement →GEOReddit + AllOfficial guidance
Browse all disciplines on the full best-practices ranking.