Ann Smarty

Checking our clients' digital PR campaigns we did 6+ months ago, I am seeing them become the top cited sources for LLMs, even for pretty huge sites. There's, of course, a lot into that (apart from the fact that LLMs do love citing stats): ✅ Solid organic findability (direct correlation with citability. PR projects that didn't end up ranking well in Google are not cited that well) ✅ Strategic (and ethical) seeding on Reddit I've seen many studies that LLMs seem to "trust" sources that regularly publish authority-driving content (original research, whitepapers, etc). Whether it is because they are like people (original research makes people believe a site is kind of a big deal) or because of all other signals (mainly, organic search visibility), but it surely works! Bottom line: If you want to get cited by LLMs, invest in original research in your niche!

My weekly roundup! This SEO/GEO thing has been absolutely a joy to watch and report on!!! 🔥 State of search report! @semrush published its quarterly search report with some cool findings: Queries are unsurprisingly getting longer; clicks to external sources are surprisingly growing (this correlates with Google's efforts to add more contextual / "entity" links from inside answers, so my personal theory is that it is helping) 🔗 reddit.com/r/AISearchAnalyti… Note: Normally, I'd link straight to the original source, but Semrush requires a corporate email to see it (not even a free email option), which I strongly disagree with, so enjoy my own coverage referencing Rand Fishkin's post referencing the original source, so it's your choice if you want to (or can) download the whole thing. 👉 GEO/AEO Audit and AI Visibility Tracking: Metrics That Really Matter: This is my own attempt to provide some actionable tips to make sense of GEO/AEO metrics, auditing, and tracking. 🔗 annsmarty.com/p/geoaeo-audit… 😱 @randfish did an exclusive AMA in my subreddit, which IS A MUST READ. I love the attribution topic (always struggled with it to be sure), and Rand's take is just priceless. 🔗 reddit.com/r/SEO_for_AI/comm… *IN OTHER NEWS* Overall, this week has been about sustainability, profitability, and the consequent future of AI models as they are now... NONE of this is a surprise to the SEO community (all those tech giants should be listening to use more :)) 👉 Google seems to be starting to tell some truth, acknowledging that AI Mode is not working that well for ads.. (I mean, we've seen this coming since Google's SGE experiment days) 👉 Reddit is struggling with monetization too! Its stock has plummeted (unsurprisingly, after it killed 50% of its mostly legit users in summer). And it now plans to test a login-only experience. I want to see those people registering accounts to read a Reddit thread, then being suspended right away if they try to say a word. This is so much fun to watch! 👉 Anthropic IS GOING PUBLIC, and their plans are to break the record, as they plan to raise an unprecedented amount of money. I have many thoughts here, but instead of sharing them, I recommend watching the documentary " I Can See Everything." It is a little bit reflective of what is going on with AI, only it is much worse now. Also watch this for more context: youtube.com/watch?v=EGC7jht_…

My quick and easy SEO/GEO tip of the week! Analyze AI Answers from BOTH ChatGPT and Gemini to capture and compare: ✔️ Fan-out queries ✔️ Cited domains and URLs ✔️ Mentioned entities / brands ✔️ Listed products ✔️ In-answer ads AND MORE! All you need is the Chrome browser and this extension: chromewebstore.google.com/de… Pretty awesome :)

Unsurprised... reddit.com/r/AISearchAnalyti…

I am not sure if @nathanfielder ever envisioned the actual timeliness of his documentary (I think not), but let's pause and think about it. The movie about the confident fraud coming in the middle of a bigger, global fraud unfolding right in front of our eyes...

GEO/AEO Audit and AI Tracking: Metrics That Really Matter nitter.gq/i/broadcasts/2rJaLjVZV…

Check out the latest article in my newsletter: Is AI visibility tracking useless, and what do we bring up in GEO/AEO audits? linkedin.com/pulse/ai-visibi… via @LinkedIn

Imagine Reddit forcing people to login to read and then banning them for trying to engage (new accounts are auto banned when they try to comment) 😅😅😅 So many stupid, messy decisions lately, Reddit 🤦‍♀️

GEO/AEO Audit and AI Visibility Tracking: Metrics That Really Matter open.substack.com/pub/annsma…

LOOK WHAT I DID 😱 I managed to convince Rand Fishkin to do an AMA over at my subreddit 🔥 I am so thrilled!!! reddit.com/r/SEO_for_AI/comm… Come over ask your questions now and vote for questions from others!!! 🤝

Here are my weekly SEO+GEO articles and trends to keep an eye on: 👉 @davidiwanow interviewed @JohnMu on how soon AI systems will catch up with spammy tactics.... John thinks it is inevitable. Publishers should build a solid foundation that search engines and AI systems will want to surface over the long term, not just take shortcuts (I've been saying this for months now): 🔗 youtube.com/watch?v=-ZA5SNV4… 👉 Is GEO/AEO Just a Fake Money-Making Bubble and Should We All Be Doing "Just SEO"? This is my reaction to the "GEO is a distraction" article from last week... Here I share how I prioritize SEO vs GEO and why: 🔗 annsmarty.com/p/is-geoaeo-ju… 👉 How is GEO changing SEO? This is a thread inside our subreddit (JOIN!): 🔗 reddit.com/r/SEO_for_AI/comm… In other news: 👉 Bing Webmaster Tools launched "AI query gap" analysis, suggesting opportunity queries you may want to optimize for to get cited/mentioned. Check it out! 👉 Copilot seems to block AI tracking, as Semrush announces it will drop Copilot tracking for that reason (the future of AI tracking is questionable) 👉 Google's Philipp Schindler shared that AI mode was yielding lower monetization than traditional search... "Each AI Mode query currently makes less than a traditional search, and he coupled that with the claim that monetization will improve over time." (We already knew this). Over at my sub, we are making bets on when AI Mode becomes the default Google's interface. I think it won't happen until it is reliably monetized (which is what Google is actively working on, expanding AI Mode ads to more countries... What stood out for you this week?

Weekly quick SEO/GEO tip! Last week, we did a quick check to see if ChatGPT can "read" our page. Today's tool by @vanessafox reports whether known AI robots can access your site by checking what robots.txt says and *what the server actually does when each crawler asks for the page*, using the user-agent string each company documents. The tool sends up to 21 small requests to the page from this server: one as an ordinary browser, one under a made-up crawler name, one for robots.txt, and one for each of the 18 crawlers whose user-agent string is documented. Free and easy! Go run your check! vanessafox.com/tools/

Is GEO/AEO Just a Fake Money-Making Bubble and Should We All Be Doing "Just SEO"? nitter.gq/i/broadcasts/1yxBePXze…

Here's my reaction to @Marie_Haynes article and many other articles that were written after hers (you all should definitely check out reactions by @randfish and @iPullRank because they seem polarized while saying the same thing :)). To be sure, I agree with all of them 🤭 : Those that call "GEO a distraction" and those that say that GEO is becoming a huge channel, so businesses cannot ignore it. So is GEO a scam, and should we all be doing just SEO? YES AND KNOW! Here's how I build strategies around both 👇 linkedin.com/pulse/geoaeo-ju…

Bing Webmaster Tools launched the "Topic Portfolio" feature, listing "Opportunity queries" you may want to seek visibility for. 👆 As a reminder, Bing Webmaster Tools only reports on Copilot (and its integrations) visibility, which is still good enough because I am surprised to see Copilot as the #2 AI traffic driver for some of my clients, right after ChatGPT (screenshot #1) 💡 The new section can be filtered by category, and it gives you ideas on queries you currently drive visibility from, as well as some "gaps" you may want to optimize for. A cute little report that I will use for content and product category ideas, for sure. It is interesting to see the competitor-driven queries there. I'd definitely note these as competitors to investigate further. When brand or product names appear in fanouts, that's definitely a top signal that these companies are doing something right! Have you played with it yet?

Is GEO/AEO Just a Fake Money-Making Bubble and Should We All Be Doing "Just SEO"? open.substack.com/pub/annsma…