/seo-geo

name: seo-geo
description: >
  Audit and improve content for AI Overviews and answer engines, including
  citability, entity clarity, crawler access, brand signals, and passage
  structure. Use when the user asks about AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT,
  Perplexity or Gemini citations, GEO, or AI search visibility.
user-invocable: true
argument-hint: "[url]"
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: AgriciDaniel
  version: "2.6.0"
  category: seo

AI Search / GEO Optimization (May 2026)

Primary Source: Google's AI Optimization Guide

Google's official position, published under Search Central docs:

> "From Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is > optimizing for the search experience, and thus **still SEO**."

Read `references/google-ai-optimization-guide.md` for the full synthesis, myth-busting list (`llms.txt`, chunking, AI-rephrasing, mention-farming, all rejected by Google as ineffective), and the Who/How/Why test for content quality.

Audits should frame GEO findings as **SEO fundamentals applied to AI-search surfaces**, not as a separate optimization discipline. When community recommendations contradict Google's primary source, defer to Google and note the contradiction in the report.

Key Statistics

Third-party figures below were not re-verified on 2026-09-23. Quote them only with their source and date, or leave them out.

| Metric | Value | Source | |--------|-------|--------| | AI Overviews reach | 2.5 billion+ monthly active users, reported from Google I/O 2026 keynote coverage; not confirmed on a Google-owned source; 200+ countries | Third-party I/O reporting | | AI Overviews query coverage | ~50% of queries (third-party measurement; varies by country) | Industry data | | AI Mode monthly users | 1B+ (Google, I/O 2026, 2026-05-19) | Google (blog.google) | | AI Mode model | Google upgrades it often (Gemini 3.5 Flash became the default on 2026-05-19, and newer Flash models have shipped since); never tie advice to a model | Google (blog.google) | | AI-referred sessions growth | 527% (Jan-May 2025) | Third-party (attributed to SparkToro; not re-verified) | | ChatGPT weekly active users | 1 billion+ (reported August 2026; 900 million in February 2026) | OpenAI, via press reporting | | Perplexity monthly queries | 500+ million | Perplexity |

Critical Insight: Brand Mentions > Backlinks

**In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands, brand mentions correlated about 3x more strongly with AI visibility than backlinks did.** (Published 2025-12-12; it follows Ahrefs' May 2025 AI Overviews study. This is a correlation across brands, not evidence that adding mentions causes citations.)

| Signal | Correlation with AI Citations | |--------|------------------------------| | YouTube mentions | ~0.737 (strongest) | | Reddit mentions | High | | Wikipedia presence | High | | LinkedIn presence | Moderate | | Domain Rating (backlinks) | ~0.266 (weak) |

**Only 11% of domains** are cited by both ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews for the same query, so platform-specific optimization is essential.

---

GEO Analysis Criteria (Updated)

The category weights below (25/20/15/20/20) are this skill's own heuristic for prioritizing a checklist, not a measured model. Never present the resulting score as a predicted citation rate.

1. Citability Score (25%)

**Self-contained answer blocks** are easy for AI systems to quote. Third-party studies suggest roughly 130-170 words; this is a readability heuristic, not a Google requirement (Google's AI optimization guide says you do not need to chunk content for AI). And **~44% of AI citations come from the first 30% of a page** (SE Ranking study), front-load your most citable, self-contained answer rather than burying it below the fold.

**Strong signals:**

• Clear, quotable sentences with specific facts/statistics
• Self-contained answer blocks (can be extracted without context)
• Direct answer in first 40-60 words of section
• Claims attributed with specific sources
• Definitions following "X is..." or "X refers to..." patterns
• Unique data points not found elsewhere

**Weak signals:**

• Vague, general statements
• Opinion without evidence
• Buried conclusions
• No specific data points

2. Structural Readability (20%)

Third-party studies report that **most AI Overview citations come from top-10 ranking pages** (figures around 92%), with a large share from below position 5. The source is not recorded here and the figures were not re-verified; quote them only with a source.

**Strong signals:**

• Clean H1->H2->H3 heading hierarchy
• Question-based headings (matches query patterns)
• Short paragraphs (2-4 sentences)
• Tables for comparative data
• Ordered/unordered lists for step-by-step or multi-item content
• FAQ sections with clear Q&A format

**Weak signals:**

• Wall of text with no structure
• Inconsistent heading hierarchy
• No lists or tables
• Information buried in paragraphs

3. Multi-Modal Content (15%)

Multi-modal content can support selection in AI answers (third-party claims only; no primary source gives a figure).

**Check for:**

• Text + relevant images
• Video content (embedded or linked)
• Infographics and charts
• Interactive elements (calculators, tools)
• Structured data supporting media

4. Authority & Brand Signals (20%)

**Strong signals:**

• Author byline with credentials
• Publication date and last-updated date
• **Recency**: in SE Ranking's 1.3M-citation study, content updated within 3 months was cited about 3x more often. That is a correlation; no AI search system documents a staleness cutoff. Refresh pages whose facts, prices or screenshots have changed rather than on a fixed clock.
• Citations to primary sources (studies, official docs, data)
• Organization credentials and affiliations
• Expert quotes with attribution
• Entity presence in Wikipedia, Wikidata
• Mentions on Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn

**Weak signals:**

• Anonymous authorship
• No dates
• No sources cited
• No brand presence acr