Welcome to Episode 79 of The GEO Show, the weekly briefing on Generative Engine Optimization and AI search.
In this episode, Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge, covers seven stories plus a lightning round.
In this episode:
- 📉 Reddit says AI Mode sends no traffic. Google Search referrals fell by more than a million a week in October. Reddit will test a logged-in only experience in some non-US markets.
- 🤖 One opt-out for AI training. Google and Microsoft will honor a shared robots.txt token that blocks AI training across vendors, and OpenAI plans to follow. It covers training only, not crawling or search eligibility.
- ⚖️ Publishers put a number on AI retrieval. Digital Context Next told the court member unique visitors fell 26% from 2023 to 2025 and quoted Microsoft's "doom loop" warning.
- 🛒 AI agents at checkout. Microsoft Clarity found checkout in about 25% of agent sessions versus 15% for humans.
- 🔍 A 0.9% AI click-through estimate. Cyrus Shepard opted one site out of AI Overviews and AI Mode and still lost clicks.
- 📢 ChatGPT ads grow. Wider desktop cards, multi-image ads for everyone, and creative enhancements on by default.
- ✈️ Travel answers favor booking sites. BrightEdge found booking platforms in 38% of booking-stage answers.
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💬 Question: If AI's favorite citation source says AI Mode sends no traffic, what should everyone else expect?
What is The GEO Show?
The GEO Show is about generative engine optimization (GEO) and AI search: how B2B brands win AI visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Each episode breaks down what is changing in the way AI assistants and answer engines find, cite, and recommend brands, and what marketers should do about it.
The show is built for B2B SaaS marketers, SEO and content leads, and founders who want their brand to show up when buyers ask AI for answers instead of scrolling a page of blue links. If you own organic growth, demand generation, or brand, you will come away with practical GEO tactics you can test, a clear read on the latest AI search news, and better ways to measure AI visibility when traffic alone no longer tells the whole story.
Episodes mix a few formats:
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Solo deep dives on GEO strategy, from how large language models choose which sources to cite to how content, earned media, and brand mentions shape AI answers.
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News breakdowns on the latest moves from OpenAI, Google, Perplexity, and the rest of the AI search landscape, and what each change means for your pipeline.
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Expert guests, including SEO and GEO practitioners, content and PR leaders, agency operators, and founders building for AI search.
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The Friday catch-up with regular co-host Simon Young of Question.Marketing, where the two unpack the week's biggest AI search stories and debate what actually works.
Your host is Paris Childress, CEO of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge. Paris brings a practitioner's view of GEO and AI visibility, focused on what B2B teams can apply right away, not hype.
Learn more about GEOforge at https://getgeoforge.com.
Subscribe to The GEO Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen so you never miss an episode, and share it with a teammate who is figuring out AI search.