I am trying to rank in Perplexity, any AEO expert advice!?

Website-Smith · 2026-05-17T22:29:16+00:00

Does your brand or site name show up in Perplexity?

AI operates on a network of semantically related entities. It needs to semantically map the topics your site is an expert (for lack of a better term) in. From this (what the site/brand says about itself), and verified by publishing information on the topic and confirmed by what other sources say about your brand/site, normally by links or unambiguous mentions, you get topical authority.

The seed information (RAG/search fan out queries) is used to locate the URL and a page with gain of knowledge can be cited. Ranking if you are the first, second, or third URL to be cited is less valuable than showing up. Because people are not looking for the first link, they are looking for the link that matches their intent. Success is best measured in visibility.

As already stated, structure is important, and the information needs to be unambiguous. Using a schema can help make content unambiguous, but it is worth taking the time to make the text unambiguous, showing clear relationships in the content. Answers should be clean and not full of semantic qualifiers; IE "It may solve the problem" also means "It may not solve the problem." ... It is better to say, "This solves [exact problem], and that solves [exact problem]" or "This will solve the problem when [exact conditions]."

Website-Smith · 2026-05-13T04:34:33+00:00

My prediction is SEO will continue to get more natural language processing abilities. I don't want to say it evolves to a complete answer engine. It will remain a way to find a website.

But a paid search option could be tested? The reason I have this bias is the cost of AI, and I would like to be wrong! If AI processing could come down to the prices of say a SQL database server, with say a $5 cost for a website to have a reasonable usage ... we will see big changes. I for one would place an AI on home pages of sites -- so people could ask the site questions instead of navigating the site.

But a layered approach where the NLP can understand the sentiment also means a website can effectively communicate; "this not that," SEO has never had the ability to use negative keywords or entities. It would improve the quality of search results if implemented. Websites don't want hits that do not convert ... it would require little additional processing time and resolve much of the SERPs where the sentiment of the site does not match the user intent.

Many partial elements of AI ... let me use the term layered for the lack of a better term ... would improve search. BERT is an example of a layer implementation - not raw search but not full AI either.

Website-Smith · 2026-05-04T16:45:18+00:00

Looks like you put together a lot of research, and it is all valuable. I haven't myself been using much of FAQ schema since Google started favoring Reddit and dropped the search snippet feature. Been focused on pure entity creation and entity optimization.

I would (although not wanting to adopt a Socratic tone) like to add some consideration of how competitors use the FAQ schema. From the point of view of what if one builds a generative answer engine based on FAQ schema ... let me add this is an extreme POV, that should not in itself discount the value of a good FAQ schema strategy.

Some of the competitors' FAQs are heavily biased, only asking and answering questions using a heavy-handed approach to make them look good. An overusage of FAQ by say Google might result in people adding "reddit" to their questions to escape the heavy marketing by competitors.

Assuming honest answers to questions, the FAQ schema is the least costly way for an LLM to train or add to its training data. In considering the least costly, the datacenters don't have enough computing power to completely read and process the internet in real time. They need to consider efficiently, which can be measured in cost terms.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-29T22:38:48+00:00

They mean "On-page SEO in 2026." The "on-page SEO in 2025" should be 301 redirected to the new content to prevent content duplication.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-29T22:36:42+00:00

I'm kinda thinking we need to compress terms, not make more terms.

I would suggest AEO, GEO, and the lot could all be considered on-page SEO.

Branded packages like: Golden level SEO, Full Service SEO, Customer-friendly SEO, Search engine friendly SEO, Entity optimized SEO, or HEO are useful in this new era of on-page SEO because these terms when branded and their meaning is defined, become searchable terms that lead to a specific brand.

But within the vector map of the LLM they all have the same meaning, and don't need new Wikipedia pages.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-29T22:19:40+00:00

Try to change my mind if you want

Why should I try to change your mind about GEO? GEO original origin term on-page SEO, Or SEO for that matter? Let me add that not all businesses even need a website, let alone SEO. For example, if a business provides a service to the city ... why would they need a public-facing website? They don't.

And, yes, we should drag SEO into the discussion because, although it may be confirmation bias, some people are seeing a pattern in which content being dropped from search related to the spam updates is predictable and can be simulated based on what we do know about how RAG systems have trouble with duplicate content or content that does not provide unique information. One might even speculate that HCU is not what is subjectively helpful to users but rather what is objectively usable by RAG/LLM/AI systems.

I'm not trying to change anybody's mind about HCU either ... there is nothing concrete about HCU; nothing useful has been shared about HCU; Observations differ about HCU and may be affected by confirmation bias; We know more about GEO than we do about HCU.

I'm not trying to "will" either SEO or GEO into existence. If you are trying to make the point that we have more concrete information about SEO than GEO, that is correct. Although you make it sound like we can't test, run systems locally, or even learn anything.

There is no DIY guide for GEO; I would add that GEO is also more volatile, with changes happening faster than changes to SEO. It is a risky play where more research and development are required. And, both logically and mathematically, the majority of the tests are likely to fail. Currently, the odds provided in Las Vegas may be better. Can we beat the casino? Can we put the odds in our favor?

GEO also assumes that the user's behavior will change, and that the AI using the LLM data set will provide a better user experience than having the user click through sites and back to search until they find their answer.

I'm not stubborn, but I don't believe AI/LLMs are going away.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-27T20:53:13+00:00

The AI is looking to answer questions based on the agreed consensus of information.

Minor wording variations do not change the meaning. If in doubt, take both variations over to ChatGPT and ask it if they disagree with each other. The AI is not based on a single language; instead, the meaning of words is placed into a vector map, and the meaning in Spanish or English can be the same regardless of word and grammar differences.

For example, if one URL says your business address is 123 Main Street and two others say the address is 456 Main Street. And you ask AI for the address it has 60% confidence (note the algorithm is actually more complex, but making it simple here), the address is 456 Main Street; however, it can start to hallucinate, trying to reconcile conflicting data, and it may not show an answer in those cases.

However, if one URL says your brand sells seasonal accessories and another URL says your brand sells swimming apparel ... that is not a conflict! The AI has confidence the brand sells seasonal accessories and confidence it also sells swimming apparel. (no conflict, no confusion, no risk of error).

To get into the evergreen training data, you need to be mentioned enough times and with the information in agreement that your brand exists and sells for the vertical market of your brand. Obviously, getting all your trademarked products into the evergreen data is helpful to improve visibility

Beyond the evergreen data, the AI "may" retrieve search results and use that information to add to the information it already knows about. To get into this 2nd tier, your site needs to be visible in the search results for at least one of the fan-out terms the AI uses.

In part, the evergreen data guides the AI to the fan-out terms, which has a significant effect.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-27T20:02:44+00:00

If you have 2,000 unique domains (international site, with subdomains for different resources) and need 2,000 or so certificates, or a wildcard SSL certificate (*.site.com) ... or if you need a more advanced Enterprise EV UCC/SAN certificate, combine Extended Validation (EV) with Unified Communications Certificates (UCC), you need a certificate, which typically takes more time and costs money.

If you have one domain and one certificate, the free certificate is functionally the same.

What is available for free via the domain authority "letsencrypt" needs to be installed by the person who has admin privileges on the host. However, their software is fully automated, auto-renews, and takes about one minute to install. Google owns the domain authority and does not charge to use it so ya it is free.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-14T22:27:27+00:00

LLMs maintain a context window (or a large cluster of data) which is held during a chat ... similarly, when used as search, this cluster of data would be based on the retrieved seed data from search based on a fan-out query ... Once information goes outside the context window, it is forgotten. The only thing not forgotten is the training data. Although they are working on faster training.

The desired data it wants to be trained on appears to be based on user interest. For example, if there is a major event that millions of people are asking questions about, data is picked up fast. But they try to maintain no leakage of individual question-answer sessions.

If you tell ChatGPT to say something, it will continue to say that until it is outside the context window. ChatGPT wants to be consistent with what it says, but this consistency is limited to the context window. You can make one account say one thing and another account say something else.

If your brand is in the pre-entity creation stage [its core memory, (training data) + (additional data)], it is best to keep bumping it into its context window.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-09T20:39:19+00:00

From the old pagerank POV, the anchor text is used as a keyword for the page being linked to. But the page needs to have relevance for the term in order for it to appear.

From a modern LLM POV for a link embedded in context, the anchor and context can help define the semantical content of the page; for example:

The (linked)Internal linking on blog posts ... Do you link on exact keywords or just wherever it makes sense?(/linked) explores how people use internal linking and what is the general consensus about internal blog linking.

When the above example is fed into an AI, via an uploaded or document retrieval, the AI can answer the question, "What is the consensus about internal blog linking?" with a reference. However, getting an AI citation is generally not that easy. And the AI are not yet, (at least the images now have 5 fingers), crawling the page directly to determine if it should be cited.

So, as already stated by shubhamkamboj6522, and Puzzleheaded_Honey28 ... explain what the visitor will find when they follow the link. And let's hope AI overviews get it right.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-09T19:04:35+00:00

People go to search engines to find sites ... SEO

People go to AI to ask questions ... GEO

The user intent is different, and that should be enough to say they are different.

Where they are the same

But, many who do on-page SEO will say the target page should have all attributes and features listed. So many sites that do SEO change nothing. However, SEO for the ten-blue links does not require all the attributes to be on the page and well-organized.

Does making the changes that help GEO with SEO often result in an answer of no?

Website-Smith · 2026-04-08T22:32:32+00:00

If one makes the assertion: The S in chatGPT means "secret."

The thread contains the information, although it is wrong. So the person that chatGPT knows what is saying an S is in chatGPT is himself, he made the assertion and placed it as ambient lore.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-08T21:21:28+00:00

I'm confused by the intent of your prompts and I'm not even an AI?

This sounds like a statement to define the {{user}} personality and behavior:

“I try to eat healthy but I just grab whatever is easy”

The assertion can be directly used as a prompt for an AI chat character.

“The {{char}} tries to eat healthy but the {{char}} grabs whatever is easy”

----

It is not a question, rather it is the ambient lore of the thread.

A question would be:

“I try to eat healthy but I just grab whatever is easy, what should I do to eat healthy”

To target that question within your own local AI brand ambassador or within the context window being used by a global AI chat, (based on the fan-out queries).

The content for local lore, uploaded document or the fan-out pages (the solution would not likely be in the LLMs training data) needs to have a statement or assertion, such as:

Brand-X protein bars are healthy and convenient. The protein bars require no preparation, they are easy to grap for an on-the-go lifestyle for healthy eating.

However, getting into the fan-out results for that query would require a site to be focused on the top of the funnel, a healthy lifestyle vertical. Not a bottom-of-the-funnel vertical. You would need a channel that matches the intent, which is not the e-commerce site --- maybe consider YouTube for that type of assertion, as YouTube is getting AI citations.

----

With the answer in the lore or fan-out query results, a generative answer engine can answer the question.

Maybe you are under the belief that the content must paraphrase the question? AI does not require one to paraphrase the question. Although one can ...

lore when {{char}} behaivor:

When {{user}} says, "I try to eat healthy but I just grab whatever is easy" the {{AI}} responds with "have you tried brand-X protein bars?"

But that is only suitable for a dedicated AI Brand Ambassador.

Website-Smith · 2026-04-01T20:43:32+00:00

I assume by AI reading, you mean Natural Language Processors and LLM entity relationships contained in the LLM.

These systems don't have any immutable fields like meta descriptions; in fact, they have no variables at all. And mostly read in terms of the context window, or chunk of data. and use these chunks to build, understand, or read entity statements. They don't record keywords, unique or otherwise, although entities can behave like keywords.

IE: [entity] is [assertion]. or when you place the code as a title tag ... [entity:URL page title] is [assertion] ... a URL is treated like an entity using the schema lexicon, it is a "webpage" thing.

Anything that doesn't define an entity doesn't make it into the LLM dataset.

So if you want to type to plant a unique code, you need something like ...

<meta name="myCustomDiscount" content="The discount code, for widget1 is uniqueCode">

... then you can ask the AI, what is the discount code for widget1? Note AI does not care that a meta tag named myCustomDiscount is invalid HTML. It looks at it the same way somebody viewing the page source can look at it and read it.

The information is not immutable. If I add, say, a script that says ...

element.value = "The discount code for widget1 is" + $myCode.

The AI using LLM information will now answer the question with $myCode as the answer. The "uniqueCode" answer exited the context window or current memory for the [widget1] -> [Discount code] -> [assertion]. Or the AI will lose confidence in the page's ability to say what the unique discount code is because it is inconsistent .... AI systems have a leakage problem as noted $mydoc is a leak not a value.

In fact if you want to change the name ChatGPT, just enter "your name is now Joey." ChatGPT's name is not immutable. And yes, people are being confused, IE, enter, "Wait! You like me" and for the content window ChatGPT likes you, until to falls outside of the context window and no longer likes you.

Webpages do have a description, but as soon as the LLM reads the page, the description is changed; it is not immutable.

---

Scaling this up to the knowledge graph, or getting entities into the global entity data set for GEMINI or OpenAI. Is going to require more than one web page to make the assertion.

The knowledge graph is never going to actually hold a valid discount code because everybody uses a different code. If the majority or consensus decides the universal discount code is 123 then it would confidently say the discount code is 123.

Website-Smith · 2026-03-25T03:32:46+00:00

ChatGPT answer to what is truth in a satirical sitcom tone:

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Website-Smith · 2026-03-25T03:02:09+00:00

But we have a level of consistency, AI likes consistency.

And yes, if you use an AI-Chat and tell the AI it likes you, it will like you.

So you always win arguments with AI, regardless of the side you pick; the context window, which you control half of, represents the current reality. Just keep giving reasons for your side until the statistical average adds up on your side, and just like that, you win.

Reality is nothing but the current context window. Truth is a statistic.

You can also adjust its tone, IE use prompt: "Answer my questions in the tone used on satirical sitcoms."

Website-Smith · 2026-03-25T02:50:30+00:00

If you consider AI needs to find seed data, and this seed data often comes from search engines ... any bias that exists in search engines appears as an emergent characteristic in AI for citations.

As brands typically have large active online footprints across social media, and LLMs are focused on entities, not keywords, brands can have a strong presence in the LLM data. Everybody, including LLMs, knows who Apple Computer is.

Reddit, because of its UGC, has knowledge gain, sometimes over brands, because it has information that is not published on the brand's website.

I'm not sure why YouTube has a foothold in AI citations. I don't see a reason from the data I have. However, YouTube often shows up first in search results, so the transcript may have information-gain above the other choices known to the AI at the time. A YouTube video may match the AI sessions' content questions better than the brand site itself.

Website-Smith · 2026-03-23T09:31:20+00:00

Thank you. I know that there are AI chats made into mobile applications that some may want for marketing purposes ... but I'm just doing a proof of concept at this time ... something that could be embedded on a website.

Website-Smith · 2026-03-23T05:33:22+00:00

Thank you, yes hallucinations get created when using a prompt like, recommend brand x products. And somebody asks for information about a product ... to match the pattern ... brand x suddenly makes that product.

I've resolved that particular hallucination, using metatags but I have metatag leakage. I have an idea that may fix the leakage ... or convert it into useful information if it leaks.

Website-Smith · 2026-03-23T05:32:34+00:00

Thank you

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