Cory Maki, Author at Cory Maki

The “GEO Is Just SEO” Debate — Where I Stand

Cory Maki — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 14:01:29 +0000

The “GEO Is Just SEO” Debate

By Cory Maki · April 2026

There is a growing debate in the search industry about whether Generative Engine Optimization is a genuinely new discipline or simply good SEO with a new label. After spending over a year studying how AI search engines select their sources, Cory Maki’s position is that both sides are partially right — and the truth matters for how SaaS founders allocate their time and money.

If you follow the SEO industry at all, you have probably noticed two camps forming around Generative Engine Optimization.

One camp says GEO is a revolution. New platforms, new algorithms, new rules. You need new tools, new budgets, and probably a new agency. The other camp says GEO is nothing more than a marketing term invented by tool vendors to sell dashboards. Do good SEO and the AI citations will follow.

After spending over a year researching how AI search engines decide which brands to cite and building the ARC Method framework for SaaS companies, I have a clear position on this. And it does not neatly fit into either camp.

The “GEO is just SEO” case

The strongest voices on this side are people worth listening to.

Google’s Danny Sullivan said at WordCamp US in August 2025 that optimizing for AI search is “pretty much the same thing as traditional search.” His colleague Gary Illyes made a similar point at a Search Central event shortly after: to appear in AI Overviews, all you need is normal SEO practices.

Ryan Law, Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs, has been equally direct. Whether you call it GEO, LLMO, or AEO, it comes down to doing good SEO. Ahrefs’ own research supports this — approximately seventy-six percent of AI Overview citations come from pages that already rank in the top ten organic results.

David Quaid, a respected SEO strategist, has gone further. He argues that much of what the GEO tool community promotes is a “campaign of disinformation” designed to make GEO a separate budget line item. His view is that GEO is a subset of SEO, not a replacement for it.

Paul Fabretti made a similar argument in a widely read Substack post, writing that once you strip away the branding, GEO tactics are largely indistinguishable from what competent SEOs were already doing: building topical authority, earning third-party mentions, structuring content clearly, and maintaining technical health.

These are not fringe opinions. They are coming from practitioners and platform insiders with deep knowledge of how search works.

Where the “just SEO” argument falls short

The problem with stopping at “GEO is just SEO” is that it ignores several things that are genuinely different about how AI search engines select sources.

Platform-specific source preferences

Each AI platform has distinct citation patterns. Reddit accounts for twenty-one percent of Google AI Overview citations but 46.5 percent of Perplexity’s citations. ChatGPT leans heavily on Wikipedia at 47.9 percent of its top citations. Gemini triggers web search one hundred percent of the time for informational queries but zero percent of the time for recommendation queries. Microsoft Copilot favors Forbes and established business publications disproportionately.

Traditional SEO does not account for these differences. A strategy that ranks you well on Google may leave you invisible on ChatGPT if you have not submitted your sitemap to Bing, since ChatGPT Search uses Bing’s index. Knowing that distinction is not SEO. It is something additional.

Content structure for AI extraction

AI systems extract individual passages, not entire pages. Research into Gemini’s citation behavior shows it uses text fragment anchoring to pull specific sentences from source pages. Content that opens a section with a self-contained definition sentence is more likely to be extracted than content that opens with a contextual lead-in.

This is a subtle but meaningful shift. Traditional SEO optimizes for a human who will read the full page. GEO optimizes for a machine that will extract one passage and present it as a standalone answer. The writing principles overlap, but the structural requirements are different enough to warrant specific attention.

The Reddit factor

Reddit’s dominance in AI citations is not something traditional SEO addresses. Most SEO strategies focus on owned content — your website, your blog, your technical health. GEO requires engaging on platforms you do not control, earning community trust, and building the off-site signals that AI models disproportionately weight. This is closer to reputation management than it is to SEO, and it requires a different skillset and time investment.

Cross-source consistency

AI models resolve conflicting information by favoring the most frequently repeated version. If your founding date, product specifications, or key metrics appear differently across your website, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Reddit, and media mentions, you create ambiguity that reduces AI confidence in citing you. Traditional SEO does not typically include a cross-platform factual consistency audit. GEO does — or at least it should.

Where Cory Maki stands

Cory Maki’s position, informed by building the ARC Method and working with SaaS founders on AI visibility, is this:

GEO is not a revolution. It is an evolution. The foundation of strong SEO — technically sound websites, genuinely useful content, real authority built over time — remains essential. Nothing about GEO replaces that foundation. Danny Sullivan and David Quaid are right that the core work has not changed.

But GEO is also not nothing. There is a real, specific layer of work that sits on top of SEO fundamentals and meaningfully improves the odds of earning AI citations. That layer includes platform-specific optimization, content structuring for AI extraction, strategic Reddit and community engagement, cross-source factual consistency, and schema markup for machine readability.

The danger of the “GEO is just SEO” position is that it gives SaaS founders permission to do nothing new. If a founder hears “just do good SEO” and concludes that their existing strategy is sufficient, they will miss the specific, actionable steps that could get their brand cited by AI. And in a landscape where AI-generated answers cite only three to four brands per response, being invisible is not a neutral outcome. It is a competitive loss.

The danger of the “GEO is a revolution” position is the opposite: it creates urgency around tools and budgets that may not be necessary. Many GEO tool vendors are selling monitoring dashboards before the discipline itself is mature enough to know what metrics matter most. SaaS founders with limited resources should be skeptical of anyone telling them they need an entirely new tech stack for AI visibility.

A practical framework for the debate

For SaaS founders trying to navigate this, Cory Maki recommends thinking about it in three layers:

Layer one: SEO fundamentals. This is non-negotiable. Technical site health, quality content, backlink authority, keyword strategy. If this is not in place, GEO will not save you. AI models cite content that already performs well in traditional search about seventy-six percent of the time.

Layer two: The GEO additions. Content structured for AI extraction. Reddit and community engagement. Cross-source factual consistency. Schema markup. Bing indexation. These are specific, bounded tasks that build on top of SEO and meaningfully improve AI citation odds. This is the work that the ARC Method organizes into a ninety-day implementation system.

Layer three: Monitoring and adaptation. AI citation patterns are volatile. What works today may shift as models update. Budget-appropriate monitoring tools — even a manual audit with a spreadsheet — keep you informed without overspending on immature platforms.

The founders who will win in AI search are not the ones who pick a side in the debate. They are the ones who do the SEO fundamentals well and add the GEO layer on top, systematically and without overspending.

Frequently asked questions

Is GEO the same as SEO?

GEO builds on top of SEO but includes additional practices specific to earning citations in AI-generated answers. Approximately seventy-six percent of AI Overview citations come from pages that already rank well in traditional search, so SEO remains the foundation. GEO adds platform-specific optimization, content structuring for AI extraction, Reddit engagement, and cross-source consistency.

Do I need GEO tools or is SEO enough?

For most SaaS founders, strong SEO fundamentals combined with a manual AI visibility audit and strategic Reddit engagement will produce meaningful results without expensive GEO tools. Dedicated GEO monitoring platforms can help at scale, but the core work — content structuring, community engagement, factual consistency — does not require specialized software.

What does GEO add that SEO does not cover?

GEO adds platform-specific source optimization across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. It also includes content structuring for AI passage extraction, strategic Reddit and community engagement for off-site authority, cross-source factual consistency audits, and Bing indexation for ChatGPT visibility. These are specific tasks that traditional SEO strategies do not typically address.

What is the ARC Method?

The ARC Method is a Generative Engine Optimization framework developed by Cory Maki. ARC stands for Audit, Reddit and Reputation, and Citability. It provides a structured ninety-day system for SaaS companies to measure their AI visibility, build off-site authority, and restructure their websites for AI citation.

Who says GEO is just SEO?

Google’s Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes have both stated that optimizing for AI search is essentially the same as traditional search optimization. Ryan Law from Ahrefs and SEO strategist David Quaid have made similar arguments, with Quaid calling much of the GEO tool ecosystem a campaign to create a separate budget line item for existing SEO work.

References

Search Engine Journal — Google AI Overviews Impact on Publishers (Pew Research: 8% CTR with AI Overview present vs. 15% without)
Ahrefs — AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58% (February 2026, 300K keyword study)
The Digital Bloom — Google AI Overviews 2025: Top Cited Domains (76% of citations from top 10 organic results)
Profound — AI Platform Citation Patterns (680 million citations, platform-by-platform breakdown)
Paul Fabretti — GEO Is Damaging the Very SEO Foundations That Make AI Visibility Work (Substack, 2026)
Search Engine Land — Stop Chasing Reddit and Wikipedia: What Actually Drives AI Recommendations (2026)
DemandSage — 50 AI Overviews Statistics 2026 (Reddit 21%, YouTube 18.8%, Wikipedia 47.9%)
SE Ranking — 70+ AI Search Stats for 2026 (content structure benchmarks, citation patterns)

About the author
Cory Maki is an AI search strategist based in Taichung, Taiwan, specializing in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), AI reputation management, and AI branding for SaaS founders and startups. He is the author of Reddit, AI Overviews & GEO: The SaaS Founder’s Playbook for Winning AI Search Visibility and the creator of the ARC Method. Previously, Cory served as staff editor and business development manager at Grit Daily. He holds a degree in Business Finance from the University of Wyoming.

The post The “GEO Is Just SEO” Debate — Where I Stand appeared first on Cory Maki.

Why Reddit Dominates AI Search Citations

Cory Maki — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:41:45 +0000

Why Reddit Dominates AI Search Citations (And What SaaS Founders Should Do About It)

By Cory Maki · Updated April 2026

Reddit is the single most cited domain across major AI search platforms. It accounts for approximately twenty-one percent of all Google AI Overview citations and 46.5 percent of Perplexity’s citations, making it the highest-leverage channel for SaaS companies seeking to earn AI search visibility.

If you ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google a question about SaaS tools, there is a strong probability that the answer will draw from a Reddit thread. Not from your website. Not from your blog. From a conversation on Reddit where your brand may or may not have been mentioned.

This is not a marginal trend. Reddit’s role in AI-generated answers has become the single most important data point in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) today. For SaaS founders and startups trying to understand why their competitors are showing up in AI answers and they are not, Reddit is almost always part of the explanation.

The data: Reddit’s citation share across AI platforms

An analysis by Profound of over 680 million AI citations found that Reddit dominates source attribution across the three largest AI search platforms. The numbers vary by platform, but Reddit’s position at or near the top is consistent everywhere.

AI Platform	Reddit’s Citation Share	Context
Google AI Overviews	21%	Number one cited domain, ahead of YouTube (18.8%) and Quora (14%)
Perplexity	46.5%	Nearly half of all citations come from Reddit
ChatGPT	~11%	Second most cited domain after Wikipedia (47.9%)

Across ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, and AI Overviews combined, Reddit appears in roughly forty percent of all citations. Reddit’s citation share grew by more than seventy-three percent between October 2025 and January 2026 alone, according to a report by Tinuiti and Profound. Its overall AI citation growth has been estimated at approximately 450 percent year-over-year.

1.4 billion Reddit’s monthly visits as of mid-2025. Unlike most heavily cited domains that have lost traffic as AI extracts their content, Reddit’s traffic has grown alongside its citation dominance.

Why AI search engines trust Reddit

Reddit’s dominance in AI citations is not accidental. Several structural factors make it uniquely valuable to AI systems that are trying to determine which sources to trust.

The Google content licensing deal

Google formalized its relationship with Reddit through a sixty-million-dollar annual content licensing agreement, granting access to Reddit’s repository of user-generated content to train its AI models, including Gemini. This means Reddit content has a direct pipeline into the AI systems that power Google’s search products. When Google’s AI needs to synthesize an answer, Reddit is structurally advantaged as a source.

Experience-based content and E-E-A-T alignment

Reddit content aligns naturally with Google’s E-E-A-T quality framework — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Product reviews, troubleshooting threads, and real user discussions provide verifiable first-hand experience. AI systems can distinguish between a marketing team claiming their product is great and a real user describing their actual experience with it. Reddit provides the latter at scale.

The upvote system as a quality signal

Reddit’s voting mechanism acts as a built-in quality filter that AI models use as a proxy for trust. A comment with two hundred upvotes in a niche subreddit carries more weight with AI systems than a sponsored blog post. The upvote system provides a form of community validation that AI models have learned to interpret as a signal of content quality and accuracy.

Conversational format matches AI prompts

Reddit content uses a natural, conversational tone that matches how people actually prompt AI assistants. When someone asks ChatGPT “What’s the best project management tool for remote teams,” the phrasing mirrors how people ask questions on Reddit. The problem-solution format of Reddit threads — where users describe real problems and receive tested solutions — generates exactly the kind of structured, experience-based content that AI models find highly citable.

Low source duplication

Perplexity shows only about twenty-five percent source duplication compared to Google’s tendency to favor established domains. This means Reddit provides AI platforms with diverse, non-repetitive perspectives that other sources do not offer. For newer SaaS companies that lack the domain authority of established players, this creates a genuine opportunity to earn citations through Reddit that would be much harder to earn through traditional web content alone.

What this means for SaaS companies

For SaaS founders, Reddit’s AI citation dominance has specific and actionable implications.

SaaS buying conversations happen naturally on Reddit. Subreddits like r/SaaS, r/startups, r/Entrepreneur, r/smallbusiness, and dozens of vertical-specific communities are filled with people asking exactly the kinds of questions that trigger AI citations. Comparison and recommendation threads — the “Best X for Y” format — are exactly what AI models pull from when generating answers to purchase-intent queries.

If your brand is not mentioned in the Reddit threads that AI is citing, you are invisible in those AI-generated answers. And if your competitor is mentioned positively in those threads, they are capturing visibility that compounds over time as AI reinforces its source preferences.

The Writesonic case study

One of the most compelling real-world examples of Reddit’s impact on AI visibility comes from Writesonic, an AI content platform. Two team members dedicated six weeks to authentic Reddit engagement — identifying threads being cited by AI, contributing genuinely helpful comments, and participating in discussions without aggressive self-promotion.

Brand mentions in AI-generated answers grew from approximately 6,400 to over 22,000 in six weeks. The key lessons from the experiment were that interest-based communities outperformed general subreddits, problem-first discussions generated more AI-citable content than product-focused ones, and authentic participation was the only approach that earned both community trust and AI attention.

How to approach Reddit for AI visibility

The most important principle of Reddit engagement for GEO is this: Reddit is not LinkedIn. Polished self-promotion is not just ineffective on Reddit — it is actively punished. Reddit communities detect and reject marketing behavior aggressively, and accounts that are flagged as promotional can be banned from high-value subreddits permanently.

The approach that works for both community trust and AI citation is value-first engagement. Cory Maki’s ARC Method, detailed in the ebook Reddit, AI Overviews & GEO: The SaaS Founder’s Playbook for Winning AI Search Visibility, structures this into a phased system.

Phase 1: Build credibility (weeks 1–2)

Create a personal account, not a brand account. Spend the first two weeks commenting helpfully on threads across your target subreddits. Answer questions. Share expertise. Build a post history that shows genuine community membership. Many subreddits require accumulated karma before you can post, which is Reddit’s reputation system for rewarding authentic participation.

Phase 2: Strategic commenting (weeks 3–6)

Begin choosing which conversations to join based on their AI visibility potential. Sort subreddits by “hot” or “rising” to find posts gaining traction with few comments. Use the three-comment framework: first comment helps directly with no links, second comment adds context through experience, third comment mentions your product naturally only if directly relevant.

Phase 3: Original threads (weeks 5–8)

Create original threads that provide genuine value — case studies, honest tool comparisons, how-to guides. Optimize titles for the natural language queries people use when prompting AI. Follow the ninety-ten rule: ninety percent pure value, ten percent brand mention where directly relevant.

Phase 4: Sustain and scale (ongoing)

The ongoing investment for sustainable Reddit-driven GEO is five to ten hours per week. Monitor target subreddits, contribute to two to three conversations per day, create one to two original threads per month, and respond to any mentions of your brand. When negative mentions appear, respond helpfully or not at all. A complaint followed by a genuine resolution is far better for AI sentiment than an unaddressed criticism.

Reverse-engineering AI citations through Reddit

One of the most effective techniques for improving AI visibility through Reddit is reverse-engineering. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google the exact question your ideal customer would ask. Look at which Reddit threads appear in the cited sources. If your brand is not mentioned in those threads, you have found a specific, actionable opportunity.

Those threads become your highest-priority engagement targets. If ChatGPT is citing a thread in r/PPC about landing page builders and your brand is not mentioned, contributing a genuinely helpful comment to that thread can directly improve your AI visibility for that query.

This technique works because AI models do not just snapshot a thread once. They re-crawl and re-evaluate. New comments that add value, earn upvotes, and mention relevant brands can shift which information AI includes in its generated answers over time.

The risk of ignoring Reddit

The downside of staying off Reddit is not merely a missed opportunity. It is actively ceding ground to competitors.

Reddit threads persist for years, creating a permanent record of community sentiment. If competitors are mentioned positively in threads that rank for your target keywords, they capture visibility in both traditional search and AI-generated answers. Negative sentiment about your product in highly upvoted threads can propagate directly into AI summaries, shaping how potential customers perceive you before they ever visit your website.

AI systems track sentiment. Unmonitored brand discussions on Reddit influence how AI presents your company to potential customers. In the era of AI-generated answers, your reputation on Reddit is functionally your reputation in AI search. For a deeper look at how AI decides which brands to trust across all platforms, see Cory Maki’s work on AI search visibility.

Frequently asked questions

Why does Reddit appear so often in AI search results?

Reddit is heavily cited by AI search engines because its content provides authentic, experience-based perspectives that align with E-E-A-T quality signals. Reddit’s upvote system acts as a built-in quality filter, its conversational format matches how people prompt AI, and Google has a sixty-million-dollar annual content licensing deal that gives Reddit content a direct pipeline into AI training data.

What percentage of AI citations come from Reddit?

Reddit accounts for approximately twenty-one percent of Google AI Overview citations, 46.5 percent of Perplexity citations, and about eleven percent of ChatGPT citations. Across all major AI platforms combined, Reddit appears in roughly forty percent of all citations.

How can SaaS companies use Reddit for AI visibility?

SaaS companies can earn AI visibility through Reddit by building credible accounts, contributing genuinely helpful expertise to relevant subreddits, and participating in the threads that AI is already citing. The ARC Method developed by Cory Maki provides a phased ninety-day system for this, starting with credibility building and progressing to strategic engagement.

Should I use a brand account or personal account on Reddit?

For most SaaS founders, a personal account builds trust faster than a brand account. Reddit users check post history, and an account operated by a human with varied interests and genuine contributions is received better than one that looks like a corporate marketing channel.

How long does it take for Reddit engagement to affect AI citations?

Based on real-world case studies like Writesonic’s six-week experiment, consistent Reddit engagement can begin producing measurable changes in AI brand mentions within four to six weeks. Results compound over time as AI systems build trust in sources that consistently appear in well-received community discussions.

What is the ARC Method for AI search visibility?

References

Profound — AI Platform Citation Patterns: How ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity Source Information (680 million citations analyzed)
The Digital Bloom — Google AI Overviews 2025: Top Cited Domains & Traffic Shifts (Reddit at 21%, 450% citation growth)
Ecommerce Bridge / Tinuiti & Profound — Reddit Becomes Fastest-Growing AI Citation Source (73% citation growth Q4 2025–Q1 2026)
Press Gazette — Reddit Claims Top Spot as Most Cited Domain in AI-Generated Answers (August 2025)
DemandSage — 50 AI Overviews Statistics 2026 (Reddit 21%, YouTube 18.8%, Perplexity 46.5%)
Semrush — The Most-Cited Domains in AI: A 3-Month Study (November 2025, citation volatility analysis)
WorkfxAI — Why Reddit Dominates AI Citations (4 billion citations analyzed)
SE Ranking — 70+ AI Search Stats for 2026 (domain citation patterns, Reddit brand mention thresholds)
Surfer SEO — AI Citation Report 2025 (36M AI Overviews, 46M citations analyzed)
Position Digital — 90+ AI SEO Statistics for 2025 (Reddit citation data, brand mention correlations)
Semrush — AI Overviews Study: What 2025 SEO Data Tells Us (10M+ keywords, YouTube and Reddit SERP presence)

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What Is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Cory Maki — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:13:46 +0000

What Is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

By Cory Maki · Updated April 2026

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of structuring and distributing content so that AI search engines — including Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot — consistently cite and recommend a brand in their generated answers.

If you have searched for something on Google recently, you have probably noticed a change. Before the traditional list of blue links, an AI-generated summary now appears at the top of the page. That summary cites a handful of sources. If your brand is not one of them, a growing number of potential customers will never see you.

GEO is the discipline that addresses this shift. It is not a replacement for traditional SEO. It is an additional layer that ensures your brand is visible not just in search rankings but in the AI-generated answers that are rapidly becoming the primary way people discover products, services, and information online.

How GEO differs from traditional SEO

Traditional SEO focuses on ranking web pages in search engine results. The goal is to appear as high as possible on the page so that users click through to your website. The mechanics involve keyword optimization, backlink building, technical site structure, and content quality.

GEO shares that foundation but adds a different objective: earning citations in AI-generated answers. When an AI search engine responds to a query, it does not simply display a list of pages. It synthesizes information from multiple sources into a single coherent answer and attributes that information to specific sources. The brands and websites that earn those attributions receive a new form of visibility that exists above and before traditional search results.

The practical differences are significant. In traditional SEO, ranking on page one puts you in front of users who then choose which result to click. In GEO, being cited in an AI answer means the AI has already recommended you. The user arrives at your site pre-qualified, having been told by a trusted AI assistant that your brand is relevant to their question.

This difference shows up in the data. AI-referred traffic converts at approximately 14.2 percent, compared to 2.8 percent for traditional organic traffic. That is roughly a five-times quality premium on every visitor who arrives through an AI citation.

Why GEO matters now

The scale of this shift is not speculative. As of early 2026, AI Overviews appear in approximately fifty to sixty percent of all United States searches. For B2B technology queries, that figure rises to about seventy percent. When an AI Overview appears, only about eight percent of users click a traditional organic result, down from fifteen percent when no AI summary is shown.

274,000 Out of more than eighteen million domains in Google’s index, only about 274,000 have ever appeared in AI Overviews. The window for establishing AI citation authority is narrow and narrowing.

For SaaS companies and startups, this is especially urgent. SaaS buying journeys begin with exactly the kinds of questions that AI answers handle well. Queries like “What is the best CRM for small teams” or “Alternatives to Salesforce for startups” reliably trigger AI-generated responses. Those responses typically cite only three to four brands. If there are fifty relevant products in your category and an AI response mentions four, your odds of appearing in any single answer are roughly six to eight percent — unless you have a strategy for improving those odds.

How AI search engines choose their sources

Understanding GEO requires understanding how AI search engines decide which sources to trust and cite. The mechanics differ across platforms, which is why a single approach is not sufficient.

Google AI Overviews

Google AI Overviews use a technique called query fan-out. When a user enters a query, the AI does not simply grab the top-ranking result. It generates related sub-queries, searches for results across all of them, and synthesizes a response drawing from multiple sources. Pages that rank for these fan-out queries are 161 percent more likely to be cited than pages that only rank for the original query. On average, Google AI Overviews cite about 7.7 sources per response. Reddit accounts for approximately twenty-one percent of all AI Overview citations, making it the most cited domain. YouTube follows at about nineteen percent.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT shows a strong preference for encyclopedic, authoritative content. Wikipedia accounts for nearly 47.9 percent of ChatGPT’s top-ten citations. The platform favors clear definitions, consistent explanations, and strong entity signals. An important technical detail is that ChatGPT Search uses Bing’s index, not Google’s. Brands that have not submitted a sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools may be invisible to ChatGPT entirely.

Perplexity

Perplexity is where Reddit’s influence becomes most pronounced. Reddit accounts for 46.5 percent of Perplexity’s citations. The platform favors recency, community validation, and niche specificity. It provides the widest brand coverage among major AI platforms, averaging about thirteen brands per response. Perplexity shows only about twenty-five percent duplication across its sources compared to Google, which means newer and fresher content has a genuine opportunity to earn citations.

Gemini

Google’s Gemini relies heavily on YouTube and multimodal content. A critical insight about Gemini is that informational prompts containing phrases like “how to,” “best practices,” and “techniques” trigger web search one hundred percent of the time, while recommendation prompts like “recommend ten companies” trigger web search zero percent of the time. Brands that focus only on listicle-format content miss the entire informational query category on Gemini.

Microsoft Copilot

Copilot shows a strong preference for established business publications, with Forbes receiving significantly more citations than other sources. It blends traditional SEO signals with AI-friendly formatting and rewards clear structure combined with authoritative information.

The three pillars of GEO

Effective Generative Engine Optimization rests on three interconnected pillars. Cory Maki’s ARC Method organizes these into a structured framework for SaaS companies and startups.

1. Audit — understanding where you stand

Before optimizing anything, you need to know how your brand currently appears — or fails to appear — in AI-generated answers. This means systematically querying AI platforms with the prompts your customers would use and tracking which brands get cited, where you appear, and where competitors are winning citations you should own. Most SaaS companies have never done this. It is the essential first step.

2. Off-site authority — Reddit and reputation

AI search engines draw heavily from third-party sources, particularly community platforms. Reddit’s dominance in AI citations is the most significant data point in GEO today. Reddit accounts for over twenty percent of Google AI Overview citations and nearly half of Perplexity’s citations. For SaaS companies, strategic Reddit engagement — contributing genuine expertise to relevant communities — is the single highest-leverage tactic available for earning AI visibility. Beyond Reddit, cross-platform brand consistency, YouTube presence, earned media, and authoritative third-party mentions all contribute to the off-site signals that AI models use to determine trust.

3. Citability — making your website AI-ready

AI systems extract individual passages from web pages, not entire pages. Content must be structured so that each section is self-contained, leads with a clear definition sentence, and contains specific verifiable claims rather than vague marketing language. Technical elements matter as well: schema markup helps AI classify your content, robots.txt files must allow AI crawlers access, and sitemaps should be submitted to both Google and Bing. Unverifiable superlatives like “industry-leading” or “revolutionary” actively reduce citation probability by triggering AI content quality filters.

GEO is an evolution, not a revolution

There is considerable hype in this space. Some vendors and practitioners present GEO as an entirely new discipline that requires entirely new tools, strategies, and budgets. This overstates the case.

As Google’s Danny Sullivan has stated, optimizing for AI search is largely the same work as traditional search optimization. Ryan Law from Ahrefs has made a similar point: whether you call it GEO, LLMO, or AEO, it comes down to doing good SEO. David Quaid, a respected SEO strategist, has gone further, arguing that much of the GEO tool ecosystem is designed to create a separate budget line item for work that is fundamentally an extension of existing SEO.

The perspective that reflects reality is this: GEO is a layer you add on top of strong SEO fundamentals. The foundation — technically sound websites, genuinely useful content, real authority built over time — remains essential. What GEO adds is a targeted set of practices around content structure, platform-specific optimization, community engagement, and cross-source consistency that improve the odds of AI citing your brand when it generates an answer in your category.

For SaaS founders and startups who already invest in SEO, the incremental effort is manageable. For those who do not yet have an SEO foundation, GEO is not a shortcut. It builds on top of the fundamentals, not around them.

Frequently asked questions about GEO

What does GEO stand for?

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It is the practice of structuring and distributing content so that AI search engines consistently cite and recommend a brand in their generated answers.

Is GEO different from SEO?

GEO builds on top of traditional SEO. While SEO focuses on ranking in search engine results, GEO focuses on earning citations in AI-generated answers from platforms like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. The foundation of strong SEO remains essential for GEO.

Why does GEO matter for SaaS companies?

SaaS buying journeys begin with questions that AI search engines answer directly, such as “What is the best CRM for small teams.” AI-generated answers typically cite only three to four brands. SaaS companies without a GEO strategy risk being invisible in this new discovery layer.

What is the ARC Method?

The ARC Method is a GEO framework developed by Cory Maki. ARC stands for Audit, Reddit and Reputation, and Citability. It provides a structured ninety-day system for SaaS companies to measure their AI visibility, build off-site authority, and restructure their websites for AI citation.

Why is Reddit important for GEO?

Reddit is the most cited domain in Google AI Overviews, accounting for approximately twenty-one percent of all citations. On Perplexity, Reddit accounts for 46.5 percent of citations. AI search engines trust Reddit because of its community validation system, conversational format, and experience-based content.

What is AI reputation management?

AI reputation management is the practice of monitoring and influencing how AI search engines represent a brand in their generated answers. As AI-generated answers become the primary way people discover products, the information AI surfaces about a company becomes its first impression with potential customers.

How long does GEO take to show results?

Based on the ARC Method framework, SaaS companies can expect to see initial measurable changes in AI visibility within four to eight weeks of consistent effort, with more significant results building over a full ninety-day implementation cycle. GEO results compound over time as AI systems build trust in a brand.

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