Understanding AEO/GEO

[chrismcelroyseo]

This time last year, approximately 76% of citations in Google’s AI Overviews came from the top 10 organic results. In early 2026, research from Ahrefs showed this overlap dropped to 38%, while BrightEdge found it as low as 17%.

Again according to a study by Ahrefs says brand mentions have a strong correlation of 0.664 with AI visibility. Backlinks have a lower correlation of 0.218. Mentions are approximately three times more influential than traditional backlinks for AI inclusion.

*”Unlinked mentions—text written about your brand on other websites—have very little impact on SEO, but a much bigger impact on GEO… LLMs derive their understanding of a brand’s authority from words on the page, from the prevalence of particular words, the co-occurrence of different terms and topics, and the context in which those words are used.”* — Ryan Law, Director of Content Marketing, Ahrefs

*”When it comes to brand visibility in AI Overviews, online brand mentions appear to be more impactful than link building. We found moderate to weak correlations between link metrics and brand mentions in AI Overviews.”*

[https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/)

You can believe whatever you want or you can just look at the numbers. That being said, doing high quality SEO work will still get you mentioned more but it’s not a matter of just putting up a bunch of thin content and building a bunch of backlinks and having a high DA.

https://preview.redd.it/pm9f9tdbps0h1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=2fbfbdf7d2cb91cbefff8cfee6fadaa37a92d304

[Nyodrax]

GEO/AEO is still just SEO.

The only difference is that now beyond search, AIO and LLM responses are also a channel for visibility.

But remember: LLMs do not rank content. They aggregate via QFO.

Content was important in the past because it helps you build topical authority, reach ICPs at the TOFU, and support internal pages.

Now, it still does that, but topical coverage impacts the likelihood/frequency you will show up in during QFO in generating LLM responses.

Why?

SEO: I am getting clicks on a how to blog because people were looking for that how to info

AEO: I am appearing in LLM responses because the query someone typed in, when expanded into 5 relevant topics, are all topics I cover on my website, and am the authoritative source on.

Hope that helps

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[ElizabethRule]

Do you work for an agency or inhouse? What industry? First thing you should look into is if your business or clients actually get traffic and more importantly conversions from LLMs. I would bet it’s small fraction of what comes from search if any at all.

[hella_akbar]

SEO is still king. Those terms are thrown around by the gurus that have something new for sale every quarter.

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[WebLinkr]

>First off – I love this Subreddit. I come here at least once a day to learn

Thanks so much u/Manacell – so pleased to hear this!

>I’ve done some test searches on LLMs for random things like ‘what is the best bed?’ or ‘most budget-friendly kitchen knife’, but it seems like it’s just returning the exact same SEO results on Google? I don’t see any huge difference with AEO/GEO compared to SEO other than it’s possibly a snake oil marketing term to seem like the new hype thing.

Yeah – its SEO. Depending on the prompt the QFO can match the query and so the results can match 1:1.

With drift in the Query Fan Out – the results still match 1:1

[WebLinkr]

Here’s the problem that GEO/AEO creates

# Pretending that LLMs are their own search engines

The propaganda presented on X, Reddit and LinkedIn has people running around and they are based on certain keyword triggers like:

* Did AI kill SEO
* Its not about links but mentions
* AI loves to “cite” Reddit or YouTube
* E.g. We studied 16k brands and
* ChatGPT cites Reddit 5.63% of the time
* You need LLMS.txt
* Recycled SEO Myths: Freshness, EEAT and Schema
* AI Crawlers like “Freshness”
* AI crawelrs like information gain
* AI cralwers like real content
* AI Crawlers like PR, video etc

# What it means

CEOs, CMOs, Marketing VPS/directros are constantly worried about how do we get into reddit, youtube, etc

# How to combat it

I’ve been talking to the same group of SaaS CMOs for about a year and it takes me an hour to unwind the propaganda and then next week, they’re back to “how do I get cited”… Its a daily onslaught – this is not about arguing or data. Its about you experimenting and showing progress.

Share actual case studies with actual data and show that they are reading “claims of case studies” – there’s nothing behind them – they’re just articles with made up numbers and outcomes that magically suit their Point of View

# Debunking the myths

There are already some serious case studies that debunk freshness, schema and Reddit.

Reddit ahs sued all of the LLMs for scraping content – NONE of them “train” on Reddit EXCEPT Gemini. So why do they all “cite” Reddit? You guys all know this: Because Google has a fetish for Reddit content for the past 2 years!

# Get their prompts and start ranking in them

So figure out how to reverse engineer those prompts and start inserting your brand/product into them

heres an example post of GEO propaganda I just found

https://preview.redd.it/t2e9z13p8w0h1.png?width=1138&format=png&auto=webp&s=10e3560c4ea7ee700fd58c56563c6623b964e39d

[WebLinkr]

# Help Fight the AEO/GEO Propaganda

Please consider doing some/any of the following

* Please downvote bots and subs in your stream – it re-educates Reddits algorithms
* Please report them to bot_bouncer
* If you’re a mod, please implement bot_bouncer
* If you’re in a sub swamped with bots, ask your mod to put in bot_bouncer
* Tag the posts with spam so other suers dont waste their energy

#