10/10
Position 1 in ChatGPT search results = 58% citation chance (AirOps/Kevin Indig); Ahrefs 1.4M prompts: ChatGPT favors its search index; Google: same ranking systems power AI Overviews/AI Mode
How to implement →SEOOfficial guidance
SEO · AEO · GEO
AI Visibility Best Practices
Every practice we have reviewed, scored 1–10 by evidence strength — peer-reviewed studies first, vendor claims last — and ranked live by practitioners reporting whether it worked. Vote on what you have tested; the ranking updates with the community.
YouTube in ~16% of LLM answers (vs Reddit 10%), cited 200x more than any other video platform; AIO citations +34% in 6mo; 85% of YouTube citations in ChatGPT point to specific videos, not channels; run script through an LLM pre-recording
How to implement →AEOYouTubeLarge studyBans are permanent brand damage; domains with heavy authentic Reddit/Quora mentions ~4x citation odds; give more than you take
How to implement →GEORedditCommunity-testedPrinceton 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 studyFan-out visible in ChatGPT DevTools (browse_rewritten_queries) and Perplexity paid; Lily Ray: cluster fan-out queries into topics for content mapping (179 likes)
How to implement →SEOCommunity-testedGoogle'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 guidance27% of sites block at least one major LLM crawler, usually unintentionally at CDN/WAF ('invisible 403'); check GPTBot/ClaudeBot/PerplexityBot in server logs
How to implement →TechnicalLarge studyGeoSource 540 checks: answerability = +109% lift, the single strongest signal; cited pages have the answer in paragraph 1, no fluff in first 200 words
How to implement →AEOLarge studyLinkedIn 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 study- 8/10
Chapters let engines cite specific segments; 'videos answering common customer questions in simple language' = top r/AEO working tactic; mix Shorts (discovery) with 5-15min depth
How to implement →AEOYouTubeCommunity-tested The 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 studyPages with Google traffic but no AI citations are the highest-leverage targets; answer moved to first paragraph -> Perplexity movement in 3 weeks, ChatGPT ~8 weeks
How to implement →AEOPractitioner claimInformational content cited at ~5x the rate of transactional (travel 83%, finance 75% vs SaaS product pages 13%, ecommerce 7%); 'How to choose a CRM' gets cited, 'Our CRM is best' doesn't
How to implement →AEOLarge studyClaudeBot and others struggle with client-side rendering; H1 + first paragraph must be in HTML source, not lazy-loaded or in tabs
How to implement →TechnicalCommunity-testedPerplexity: 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-tested- 8/10
ChatGPT decides which pages to open based on title/snippet/URL similarity BEFORE reading content; human-readable URLs outperform opaque ones
How to implement →AEOLarge study Pages with 5+ standalone quotable sentences cited ~3.2x more; ChatGPT lifts sentences verbatim; 'Context is the biggest challenge' beats buried complex phrasing
How to implement →AEOPractitioner claimPrinceton: 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 GitHub ranks strongly in Google (thus in fan-outs); AI coding assistants recommend repos based on README clarity: what/who/install/example in first screen
How to implement →SEOGitHubPractitioner claimMedium 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-testedThe exact phrases in competitor 3-star reviews are tomorrow's ChatGPT prompts; write 15-20 variations per query type (comparison, problem-first, category)
How to implement →AEOPractitioner claimAdding detailed author bios to 15 articles: citation rate 28%->43% in 4 weeks; caveat: GeoSource found E-E-A-T signals showed -24% correlation (confounded) - use real credentials, not badges
How to implement →AEOPractitioner claimConsistent heading levels = ~40% more likely cited by ChatGPT; headings should state what the section answers, not be creative ('How to do X' not 'Why this matters')
How to implement →AEOLarge studyListicles = 21.9% of all AI citations, ~41% for commercial queries; lists/short sections/tables favored for commercial prompts (Nectiv study)
How to implement →AEOLarge studyGeoSource: explicit definitions = +33% citation lift; vague positioning language gives AI nothing quotable
How to implement →AEOLarge studyGrok 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 claimNative canonical support; ranks for developer long-tail; comments/reactions add UGC signals
How to implement →SEOdev.toPractitioner claimLeslie Venetz method: every post structured around questions prospects ask, FAQs at bottom, published on Substack + site (91 likes/94 comments - one of few substantive LinkedIn posts)
How to implement →AEOSubstackPractitioner 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 guidance83% of commercial-query citations from pages updated <12mo; content <30 days gets 3.2x more Perplexity citations; BUT Ahrefs: average cited page is ~500 days old - freshness matters most for Perplexity + commercial intent
How to implement →SEOLarge studyInstagram infusing search with AI + pulling outside links; weak direct LLM-citation channel - value is Meta-ecosystem discovery + entity reinforcement
How to implement →SEOInstagramPractitioner claimFeed and search fully AI-ranked; @meta.ai taggable in replies surfaces brand mentions; low effort, emerging channel
How to implement →AEOThreadsPractitioner claim1,885 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