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All things Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). A breakdown of all that's happening in the world of AI search.
Paris: Hi everyone, and
welcome back to The GEO Show.
We are on episode three , and I'm
recording this on, uh, Monday, August
twenty-fourth, and I've got a bunch
of new headlines to run through
today, so let's get right into it.
The first is that ChatGPT
is doing dramatically more
research for software queries.
So a company called Nective tested four
thousand prompts, and they found that
average ChatGPT fan-out queries rose
from two point one seven to seven point
six one, and software averaged even more
at ten point seven searches per prompt.
And the site appeared, uh, sixty-four
percent of its sampled fan-outs.
So, uh, what is this telling us?
Well, B2B recommendations are
really becoming increasingly, uh,
research workflows within LLMs, not
just single query, query retrieval.
So We're seeing here query fanouts for
more complex B2B software questions and
prompts on the order of about five times
higher than average, from two to 10.
So that's pretty remarkable, and I
think that means that the surface
area of that retrieval, that search
retrieval process, particularly for
B2B software, is much, much greater.
And I think that actually creates more
opportunity for B2B SaaS marketers to
capture that larger surface area through
things like video repurposing or just
simply scaling out long-tail content.
All right, next story is
about Google AI Overviews.
Google AI Overviews traffic may be
materially misclassified in GA4.
It's been observed that a nine-month
data set covering fifty-one thousand
two hundred tracked events and one
thousand six hundred and sixty-one cited
snippets found that twenty-two point four
percent of detected AI Overview events
attributed to direct rather than organic.
So that is not an insignificant chunk.
Uh, twenty-two percent is pretty massive.
So again, this is a reminder to always,
uh, not-- refrain from taking, uh,
Google Search Console, Google Analytics
data at face value, particularly now
in the zero-click world that we're
living in, because what we see is
that, uh, even a big chunk of AI
Overview traffic is being misclassified
as direct rather than organic.
Um, aside from all this, uh, you all
may know that anytime someone clicks
through from an app, let's say they're
using the Chat-ChatGPT app, if they
click through a citation, that will
also show up as direct and, uh, that
will lose the ChatGPT referral string.
So, uh, this makes the attribution
very difficult, um, but, uh, we still
need to, to press on regardless.
Let's move on to the next story.
Uh, Google Research found that
LLMs can often know facts but
still cannot retrieve those facts.
So this is coming from
Google's own research.
Gemini 3 Pro and ChatGPT-5 encoded
ninety-five to ninety percent of tested
facts, but they failed to directly
recall twenty-six to thirty-four
percent of those same facts.
So rare facts and reversed relationships
were particularly difficult.
So This is interesting because I think
that one of our goals with GEO, of
course, is to give facts about your
brand, accurate facts about your brand
to the LLMs, and also position your
pages and your claims, passages, and all
of your content for optimal retrieval.
Because as we know, sometimes the LLMs
will produce an instant answer from
pre-training data, and other times
they will do a real-time search, and we
need to be in both of those channels.
Um, but what is interesting about this
study is that sometimes you can train
LLMs on the correct facts about your
brand, but if the LLMs are going to do a
real-time search and, uh, what's called
a RAG, a retrieval-augmented generation,
uh, they could still get it wrong.
So I think the goal here is still
to, to do both, um, and, and because
that RAG system does rely on search
rankings, that does mean that you
still need to be getting your pages
indexed for SEO and be discoverable when
Google does a real-time search or when
ChatGPT maybe does a real-time search
Let's move on to the next story now
Google AI Overviews can now generate
interactive interfaces, not just answers.
This has come to us from
Search Engine Journal.
Google has started rolling out
Generative UI features into AI Overviews,
including custom layouts, simulations,
and interact- interactive tools.
So these are things like interactive
charts and graphs, calculators.
Uh, this is already global in English
in AI mode with broader AI Overview
availability expected over the coming
weeks as per Search Engine Journal.
So what does this mean?
Well, a lot of us are building these
interactive tools and interactive
widgets and elements into landing
pages and into lead capture,
particularly lead capture assets.
So these are things like calculators,
comparison tools, um, other
interactive widgets that are often
now, uh, one of the things that
gate a U-- uh, an MQL acquisition.
So in order to see the results,
let's say, of a, of a-- some sort
of a calculator, you need to, uh,
provide your name and email address.
So a lot of these conversion, uh, these
conversion-optimized landing pages
driven by these interactive tools are
now really becoming or are facing threat
from the zero, zero-click threat because
Google's own AI mode and AI Overviews
can reproduce those same tools and
widgets right inside of its answer.
So that means that we're all gonna
collectively have to take our landing page
game up another notch and think of other
ways to, to try to capture a, a lead when
Google can reproduce that same interactive
co- content inside of its own answer.
All right, next story is about ChatGPT,
and this is pretty big news because now
ChatGPT Ads are set to arrive in Europe
on August twenty-fourth, which is today.
So OpenAI is expanding into
thirty-one European markets, initially
through its ad solutions team,
agencies, and technology partners.
Self-service access will follow later.
So OpenAI says that the
platform now supports conversion
optimization, GEO targetingรขยยฆ
Uh, sorry, that is geo-targeting,
not GEO in, in the sense of the
GEO Show, but geo-targeting.
Custom audiences, Pixel, and
conversion API measurement.
So that is the full boat of
features from ChatGPT Ads.
So this is really exciting news for
any of us who, like myself, are based
in the EU And have been anxiously
awaiting the rollout of OpenAI's
ChatGPT ads for European targeting.
Our agency, Hop AI, have been using
ChatGPT ads and running them for clients
for probably the last couple of months,
and that targeting has been limited so
far primarily to the US market, but we are
really eager to unlock that for Europe.
And starting from today, it has arrived.
Great news.
All right.
The number six story is probably the
biggest one on the docket today, and
it's one that has been circulating
very heavily over the last few days.
Reddit.
Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations
has reportedly collapsed eighty-six
percent just in the last several days.
According to Promptwatch, Reddit
fell from a three point eight three
average citation share to zero point
five two percent between August
fourteenth and August seventeenth across
millions of monitored AI responses.
And the company, Reddit, says
that the cause is unknown and has
not ruled out a collection issue.
So the interpretation here is that, uh,
this is still very, very early in the GEO
game, and a lot of optimizers have been
really focusing their off-site efforts on
Reddit threads and Reddit optimization.
And what we're seeing, at least for
the time being, is that Reddit as
a citation source has effectively
collapsed and shrunk dramatically.
And I, I don't think any of us saw
this coming, and I think the, the key
takeaway here is the importance of
diversifying your citation building,
your off-site citation building efforts,
not focusing only on Reddit or even
only on, uh, UGC forums, but focusing
on other, other things like, uh, the,
uh, blogs, editorial sites, um, review
sites if you're, uh, if you have a
product or a software, review sites are
really important, and other types of PR
outreach where you can get featured, uh,
around the web in trustworthy places.
Not to mention also content
repurposing, starting with video,
'cause as we've seen, YouTube is
still a major, major citation source.
Uh, in fact, it's the number one
citation source throughout Google's AI
properties, and that hasn't changed.
So, uh, everyone is buzzing about the
Reddit citation share collapse, and we'll
keep an eye on this to see if it starts
to recover or if it stays as low as it
has been over the last ten days or so.
On to the next story,
which is about Profound.
Uh, Profound has made YouTube citations
measurable at the creator level.
They've confirmed that their new
YouTube citation breakdown identifies
cited channels, individual videos,
and video categories, including each
channel's share of YouTube citations.
All right, this kind of follows on
what we had just talked about with the
collapse of Reddit and the stability
of YouTube as a citation source.
Uh, I think that this is very, very
important now to start measuring activity
in YouTube for share of voice metrics
in the same way that you measure a
website, because this is owned media.
Uh, your owned media consists of
your website, but it also consists
of all of your social media channels.
So if you- your YouTube channel or,
or YouTube video within your YouTube
channel shows up as a citation and people
watch that video, then that arguably
has just as much of a positive impact on
your brand favorability than if someone
had seen a link to your website and
clicked through and read a blog post.
They're effectively still
consuming your brand's content.
So I think this is a really important
and a really good move by Profound to
bring in YouTube citation measurement in
at the creator level, and it seems that
they're doing this not only for the brand
channels themselves, but also, uh, at the
category level and at the creator level.
So they are clearly putting a big
emphasis on YouTube, and I do think
this is a strong signal for everyone
looking to up their GEO game.
I think that video, particularly
YouTube, is one of the most important
tactics within that strategy.
All right.
The next story is also coming from
Profound, and that is an AI factual
errors are often coming from stable
brand and earned media content.
So let's unpack this.
Profound has analyzed 158,000 plus
evaluated AI claims and found that
engine-level inaccuracy rates of 4.3
to 6.8%
persist.
And that is not an
insigni-insignificant number.
Um, pricing and billing inaccuracies
represent 24% of those inaccurate
claims, despite being just
12% of the evaluated claims.
51% of brands had at least one inaccurate
claim tied to earned media, while 54%
had one tied to their own content.
And this is research coming from Profound,
and that is quite profound, I must say,
that th-these inaccuracies persist.
Uh, and they persist at a couple
of levels with owned media It's
showing that, uh, let's see.
Yeah, fifty-four percent of the
inaccuracies were tied to a brand's
own content, and another fifty-one
percent of those inaccuracies were
tied to earned media, so that's
your off-site media mentioning you.
Uh, but, uh, that's, you know, this
is kind of troubling, and I think
that pricing and billing, uh, because
pricing tends to, uh, m-maybe if-- In
particular, a lot of companies don't
have pricing pages that display prices,
or if they do, sometimes they still
hide the pricing and try to get you to
click on the button to talk to sales.
And what this does is it leads to the
third party, uh, or at least it leads
to the off-site ecosystem sharing
your pricing through other places.
And if you have a sales team that
negotiates, uh, bespoke pricing
for each customer, which is pretty
common, especially with, let's say,
enterprise-level SaaS, then you could have
a lot of pricing inaccuracies showing up.
So I think that I typically have
always believed that it's a good idea,
in particular, if you're doing any
kind of PLG motion with self-serve,
to always have very clear and
transparent pricing on your website
and to keep that up to, up to date.
In fact, even now, to have it
displayed on the homepage itself so
that it's even easier to access and to
update regularly by AI bot crawlers.
So, uh, stale pricing, packaging,
integrations, certification,
product capabilities, these things
all need continuous monitoring,
both on your website and off your
website, to avoid these inaccuracies.
Because a simple inaccurate
claim by an LLM could actually
cost you a lead All right.
Now we will finish up with the
last story of the day, which is
that commercial intent inside
of ChatGPT is rising rapidly.
And I think that's good news for everyone
in marketing 'cause we're always trying
to hunt down that commercial intent.
So, uh, Profound, again, uh,
third time Profound is cited
here as a research source.
Profound classified a year-long
sample of seven point five million
conversations and says that commercial
intent share rose from thirteen
point nine percent to nineteen point
two percent between June twenty
twenty-five and June twenty twenty-six.
So about five percentage points,
um, which is, I'd say, pretty
significant, and it is still rising.
Uh, this is extrapolated-- This is an
extrapolated estimate, and it puts weekly
commercial conversions at roughly five
hundred and thirty-thir-- five hundred and
thirty-three million versus two hundred
and forty-three million a year ago.
So that is all good news for
everyone who is already optimizing
for ChatGPT as an intent channel
because commercial intent is there.
We've long suspected it, and now
we have some real hard evidence
that it is there, and it is rising.
So your efforts to invest in ChatGPT
as a performance channel to tap
into commercial intent is likely
still a very, very good idea, and I
still believe it's very, very early.
All right.
That's a wrap for today.
Thank you for joining us for episode
four, and we'll see you next time.