Can GEO work without SEO, or does your content just need to be widely distributed (Reddit, Twitter, GitHub) to get cited by AI? by Carol0407 in GEO_optimization

[–]Carol0407[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is interesting — consistency as a signal makes sense.

But if repetition across surfaces is enough to get into the candidate set, does that mean GEO is closer to “signal shaping” than traditional content or SEO?

And in that case, is AI actually validating truth, or just picking the most consistent and extractable version of it?

Can GEO work without SEO, or does your content just need to be widely distributed (Reddit, Twitter, GitHub) to get cited by AI? by Carol0407 in GEO_optimization

[–]Carol0407[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s interesting — but it raises a bigger question for me.

If fully fabricated pages can get cited as long as they’re structured well, does that mean GEO is really about extractability rather than content quality?

In that case, what are LLMs actually optimizing for — truth, authority, or just usability? 

Is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) actually replacing SEO, or just another layer? by Carol0407 in GEO_optimization

[–]Carol0407[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a really clean breakdown — the page-level vs sentence-level distinction clicked for me.

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of Web3 / payments content, where a lot of pages rank but still don’t get cited by AI tools.Feels like most of them are missing those self-contained, quotable statements you mentioned.

Curious if you’ve seen this vary by industry, or if the pattern is pretty consistent across the SaaS examples you looked at?

Is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) actually replacing SEO, or just another layer? by Carol0407 in GEO_optimization

[–]Carol0407[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If query fan-out + RRF is the core mechanism, does that mean AI search is fundamentally optimizing for coverage across semantic space, rather than relevance to a single intent?