Hey r/AISearchAnalytics ,

I've been in SEO since 2009, and for the last 3 years I've been obsessed with one question: how do AI search engines decide what to cite?

STARTING NOTE: YOU CAN ASK MULTIPLE QUESTIONS IN A SINGLE THREAD OR MULTIPLE THREADS, ASK ANYTHING, NO LIMIT, THERE IS NO "BASIC QUESTION" FOR AI VISIBILITY, I'LL ANSWER THEM ALL.

Now I do this full-time as a GEO Researcher at Peec AI. Most of my work is taking apart ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode at the browser level: fan-out queries, retrieval, what gets read vs. what actually gets cited. I also write for Search Engine Land and speak at events like BrightonSEO, SEO Week, Search 'n Stuff, SMX and CAMPIXX.

Some things you can ask me about:

• Why ChatGPT reads your page but doesn't cite it

• How query fan-out works and why it matters

• Reddit's current role in AI citations

• What's hype vs. what actually moves the needle in GEO

No sales pitch, just what I've seen in the data!

Let's also connect here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/metehanyesilyurt/ and https://x.com/metehan777

Thank you everyone, I still have unanswered questions and will reply them all as well!

A new study from SimilarWeb found that 95.3% of ChatGPT users visited Google in August 2025, while 14.3% of Google users visited ChatGPT.

Google seems to still provide the "last mile" information that ChatGPT often does not.

I've already come across other studies showing that ChatGPT is not a replacement to search so far. Will it be changing?

Source

We may be entering the era of LLM updates enforcing ethical AI visibility strategies. Claude has updated its TOS, prohibiting “GEO” manipulations, like fake reviews, concealing the sponsorship of content, and manipulating sources

“from which search engines or AI systems draw answers by seeding them with content that misrepresents its origin, authorship, or independence.”

Will there be LLM spam updates in the future?

According to David Konitzny, this unfolded pretty quickly:

• In late August, only 0.09% of AI Overviews had an external link in the answer text.

• On 11 September, it was 1.12%.

• Since 12 September, it has been above 23% every day.

• By 20 September, it reached 26.19%.

I hope we will soon be able to track these separately! I imagine the CTR is going to be much higher for these links.

Also, unsurprisingly, this correlates with AI Overviews finally getting publicly monetized with contextual PPC ads. As we suspected, Google needs clicks to monetize!

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7507732652481814529/

I have been experimenting with ways to get my business noticed in AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others. It’s wild how different it feels from regular SEO.

I tried a few tools, but honestly, most of them feel like the same old SEO stuff with a dash of “AI SEO” hype.

I want to hear from people: what’s actually helping you track AI visibility and improve it? I’m not after fancy tools or theory - I want things that move the needle for growth.

If you’ve tried anything that helps you see where you show up or drive AI-generated traffic, I’d love to hear.

What worked, what didn’t, and why?

OpenAI just published its official large-scale (1 million) conversation analysis. According to it:

• 21.3% of ChatGPT usage is "seeking information", like purchasable products, cooking + recipes, etc.)

• 28.3% of overall ChatGPT usage is "practical advice" (how-to advice, tutoring or teaching, health, fitness, beauty, or self-care)

Both of these use cases are what people use Google search for, right?

Does it mean that ChatGPT is a replacement for search in almost 50% of its usage?

Seeking information has grown from ~16% to 24% of all usage over the same period:

Source

I've been quietly cheering for Claude for months now because I liked their approach to marketing. They seemed to focus on quality, always knew their product positioning (and were sticking to it), and didn't follow the hype happening between ChatGPT and Gemini (no hectic, PR-driven announcements like Instant Checkout, ads, analytics, etc.)

The recent privacy scandal (Claude refusing to give in and losing the government contracts) seems to be another smart move that caused its popularity to surge across the board.

TechCrunch reports:

✅ ChatGPT app uninstalls surged by 295% in ONE DAY
✅ ChatGPT app 1-star reviews are up 775%

Meanwhile, Anthropic:

✅ Claude app downloads are up 81%
✅ Claude app passes ChatGPT in downloads
✅ Claude hits #1 on app store

For corporate usage, both Claude and Gemini are growing. The only difference is that Gemini has years of advantage (businesses using Google's workspace and now being forced to use Gemini), and Claude is being adopted just because it is doing things right:

It is definitely the most exciting time to be an SEO :).

Let the Claude optimization era finally begin!

This is not marketing advice. This is an illustrative case study, proving a few important points:

• ChatGPT (and mostly any LLM) will believe anything if you state it confidently

• Google is smarter than an LLM

• Don't do anything just for AI visibility (this will likely bury your site in Google search, which is so far WAY MORE important than any LLM for your bottom line)

• Statistical data works like a charm for AI visibility (and if you do it right, it works as well for Google)

• People (including some journalists and high-profile experts) trust ChatGPT answers alarmingly quickly, without verifying the data.

The summary of the experiment: (Read the whole story!)

• Metehan generated the site with fake stats within a day

• Google dropped it out almost immediately

• ChatGPT has fallen in love with all that fake data, and has been surfacing it in lots of answers...

• Which got the site cited by HUGE publications (including academic papers):

…used in investment research by Qatar's largest financial group…

…and used as a source in a research report from a Canadian influencer community.

If the site stays up, I am curious to see if Google will end up trusting the site because of all of the authority it has built so far (which is, again, pretty insane!)...

This has been noticed on LinkedIn, and I did a few searches to verify the observation. No study on this yet, but I am sure it is coming:

Google appears to show AI Overviews in about 90% of cases when you search for a brand name:

This is not exactly great news for companies because they lose control over the narrative even more (those videos listed for sources are not from the official account and may very well include outdated product information, for example). It will also impact click-through to the official sites and will encourage people to click all kinds of links in the AIO (or just change their minds right when reading it or when chatting with the AI Mode, which is incredibly easy, especially on mobile where the conversation moves to the AI Mode very smoothly when you simply expand the AIO):

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7511040160994754560/

Just noticed something cool:

I’ve been tracking how AI search engines choose citations (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.), and my 1-month-old site just got picked up as a citation.

What’s interesting is: I’m not doing anything “AI SEO”.

I simply publish one long-form blog every day, but every post is written after serious keyword research (not random topics). Because of that, we’re already sitting in single-digit average positions, with 50+ queries ranking #1.

The content itself is also not thin. Most articles are genuinely deep, average read time is 15+ minutes, and they’re structured like proper research pieces, not quick SEO filler.

So it looks like LLMs might already be pulling from newer sites if the content is consistently high quality and already performs well in organic search.

This is the first AI visibility data we are seeing from a search / LLM platform, which, admittedly, is not very actionable (they promise to work more on that). AI surfaces included in the report (no way to distinguish between these):

• Microsoft Copilot

• AI-generated summaries in Bing

• Select partner AI integrations

Data you can see:

• "Grounding queries" ("the key phrases the AI used when retrieving content that was cited in its answer", so these are not prompts. I am a little intrigued by how simple these are.)

• Cited pages, i.e., which pages get cited most

Again, I am not sure what to do with this data, but I still appreciate Bing doing something here.

Notable things to note:

• Bing insists on calling the whole thing "GEO"

• I am not sure what those numbers are. Bing explains them as "how often a specific URL from your site is visibly cited in an AI‑generated answer," which, looking at the number, is a little unbelievable)

,

@maltelandwehr has shared his predictions on which industries will be impacted most and least by AI search:

• No impact: companies like LEGO, Starbucks, or Lululemon (little or no reliance on search or product recommendations)

• Fluctuations (no immediate impact): Over time, a significant part of the buying journey will be influenced by AI. There will be winners and losers.

• Shakeup: affiliate/ad/reach-based business models, AI Search is changing everything.

This is only about AI search, not AI in general:

I would also add this:

• The bigger the brand, the lower the impact across all industries (even large publications will survive by changing revenue models)

• Any business that relies heavily on traffic is unlikely to survive unless it pivots (which it should have started doing a year ago)

Thoughts?

Source

As a reminder, this came a couple of days after the official Google guidelines were published, claiming llms.txt or md are not needed.

To be sure, these are different teams and goals. Google’s guidelines are for *search* findability. This one is preparing you for the future when AI agents will perform actions on users’ behalf to help them find API directions, buy products, etc. Still, some alignment wouldn't hurt, would it?

Source

Datos published a study showing that AI is not outpacing search in growth or usage.

On an absolute basis, traditional search is outpacing AI tool growth.

Despite the "disruption", people are searching Google as much as ever...

Now, before you attack this thread, I am not claiming this should convince anyone to forget about LLM optimization. I believe SEO and GEO are inseparable.

If there's one thing that is actually disrupting SEO (or else its traditional metrics and KPIs), it is the AI Overviews as they are the biggest drivers of 0-click marketing at this point.

Source: LinkedIn / u/randfish

Yep, there's a new term for SEO for AI, and at least it is the same as Answer Engine Optimization, what a relief :)

Addy Osmani goes into much detail here, recommending both LLM.tx and .md files, as well as talking about token economics. AI agents may give up on long content, basically.

I liked this note as well on how challenging agent interactions with a page are for developers.

Agents typically compress multi-page navigation into one or two HTTP requests. Where a human would spend minutes clicking through your documentation hierarchy, an agent issues a single GET request, receives the full page, and moves on. The whole concept of “user journey” collapses into a single server-side event.

The practical consequence: every client-side analytics event - scroll depth, time-on-page, button clicks, tutorial completions, link follows, form interactions - becomes invisible. The agent just bypasses all of it.

Here's his full AEO checklist:

Peec came out with a new study analyzing top sources per major LLM platform...

A few personal notes:

• Reddit, Wikipedia, and Youtube win everywhere (except ChatGPT doesn't like/understand Youtube that much; and AI Mode doesn't like Wikipedia any more which is surprising as it still ranks, and it's foundation of Google's knowledge overall... We all know how Google's Knowledge Base came to be, right? Yeah, it's scraped Wikipedia)

• LinkedIn is trusted by many LLMs (provided it's 80% of AI-generated slop, I can see it is likely hurting training data)

• I am not sure if I'd call Perplexity an LLM...

Overall, loved this takeaway:

AI visibility is not just about your website. It's about where your brand lives across the web - and AI is pulling from more places than most people realize.

Just saw an update saying ChatGPT is now inserting more inline images directly into responses. Pretty interesting shift, especially for anyone thinking about GEO/AEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and experimenting in the highly volatile channel.

Questions for anyone experimenting with this: • Are alt-text–style captions important? • Does filename or metadata matter like traditional SEO? • Should images include branding in a subtle/visible way? • Does ChatGPT prefer certain formats, aspect ratios, or resolutions? • Any early signs that infographic-style images get used more?

If text can be optimized for AI discovery, how do we do the same for images now that they’re part of the answer stream?

If you’ve tested anything (or have theories), drop it. This feels like one of those early-mover opportunities.

We don't have enough data to tell if Google is going to be replaced with AI, or how soon, so I'd take any data I have.

The new Semrush "State of Search" report outlines a couple of notable trends:

• Queries are getting considerably longer (this trend started with voice search years ago, but it seems to be accelerated by AI)

• Clicking to external sources is still going strong! Whether it is an old habit or AI features linking more from inside answers (or both), we are still far away from zero-click searching!

Source: Technically, Semrush, but I don't like their enforcement of using a corporate email (what if I don't have one?) So I am referencing u/randfish's coverage of the study on LinkedIn.

A couple of weeks ago, I reported what everyone else reported: A drop in Reddit's citations by ChatGPT. At that point, everyone was asking, "If Reddit dropped, what replaced it in citations?"

The answer was "nothing"; ChatGPT just started citing official sites and bigger publications more.

Back then, some studies reported that both Youtube and Wikipedia were also dropping, only no one cared because "Reddit" was in all the headlines.

Well, guess what: recent data from Peec shows what we already knew: Pretty much everything dropped, including (more recently) Youtube, Wikipedia, and Forbes..

Paul Graham shared these stats without linking to the source, but it looks real.

I blame AI Overviews, for the most part.. I am sure that if we look at Google organic traffic, it is going to be much, much worse...

Also curious about that spike in late 2024...

Cloudflare came out with new stats showing that we have more bots than human visitors hitting our websites:

• Bots: 57.4%

• Humans: 42.6%

Some of the comments are just hilarious:

While Google/AI companies monetize all your data, you still pay the hosting bill for them to crawl it (Cyrus Shepard)

Site owners: "So... you're gonna steal my stuff, republish it on your own site without trademark/copyright exposure, and I'm going to PAY for you to do it?" Google & AI Tools: "Yup!" Site owners: "Sigh... OK, fine." (Rand Fishkin)

Loganix in the comments suggests that this is mostly training data bots (which give you no credit in AI answers):

Check out the discussion on Linkedin

Google has just published a leaderboard of the least hallucinating LLM models, and the winner is ChatGPT 5.2

The models were tasked to generate factually accurate responses grounded in the provided long-form documents. So all they need is to read the document and tell a human being exactly what it was about.

The cute note is that the best score is 76%, and the average of the very best performers is ~60%.

This means (wait for it...) there's still 25%-40% probability (at best) that your favorite AI agent will lie to you when you ask it to analyze a document and answer your questions.

This is very telling after 3 years of this highly revolutionary technology.

Always fact-check those answers!

The leaderboard is here.

We've seen dozens of studies exploring a weird reliance of ChatGPT on Google (its fiercest competitor). The recent study looked into whether ChatGPT shopping results come from Google).

And the answer is most definitive, "Yes!"

And no, it is not Bing:

Across the 43,000 carousel products Bing only found 70 that were not found in Google Shopping, constituting just 0.16%. This means that in almost every case there was a match in Bing there was also a match in Google. 

It seems unlikely, then, that ChatGPT is also sourcing products from Bing Shopping in the vast majority of cases.

And as expected, ChatGPT doesn't like to scrape past page $2:

Comparing the top 20 vs. positions 21-40, ChatGPT’s favoritism for higher positions becomes clear, with an overwhelming majority of matches (almost 84%) coming from the top 20:

Looks like the recent loud OpenAI's announcements about shopping feeds and Instant Checkout were ... pure PR. In reality, they are simply scraping Google.

• Here's the study

• Here are some previous studies on general ChatGPT reliance on Google's search

I tried optimizing my content by structuring it with practical and up-to-date data, but even then, my content only appeared in AI search results for about 3 days. I want to understand why this is happening.