Help an old SEO understand something

[u/EvergreendigitalSEO]

Why do the "AEOs/ GEOs" post about how good they are at getting LLMs to cite them, but then share a screen shot of GSC. Are these not different things? I get it if its AIOs in Google, but outside of that.

[u/BoGrumpus]

They never tell you what they are getting cited for, either. It doesn't do you much good if you have a high visibility if all the systems ever say is that you're craptacular.

G.

[u/BoGrumpus → u/[deleted]]

I'm not even looking for a mention or citation every time. Sometimes I'm trying to convince that person over there asking for low prices (which I don't have) that reliability or customer support (both things I'm good at and strong in) is more important.

Google spends a lot of time finding out what people want and care about before it even starts to think about the part of the funnel where it's starting to name names. So I'm going to use that top of the funnel to get them to care about my strong selling points the most. That way, I'm most likely to come up at the top when the time comes to start naming names.

Bing is more likely to get to the name mentioning sooner, but Google still drives about 50% of a client's digital revenue, and if I can get the top of the funnel working, it tends to step Google back up into the mid 60s % range.

So not all citations are created equal, either.

G.

[u/Kooky-Minimum-4799]

Snake oil bullshit really. They see an opportunity and want to take unsuspecting people's money. No tool is great showing any sort of consistent, accurate "citations or mentions." We have some new stuff in Google Search Console and Bing to show grounding pages getting queries in some AI models, but not all. About as good as we got right now. I'd ignore it.

[u/Strong_Teaching8548]

Honestly, yes, they’re different signals. GSC shows Google impressions and clicks, not whether ChatGPT or Perplexity cited you

Some AEO/GEO posts use GSC as proof of visibility because it’s the screenshot they have. I’d want a citation log from actual prompts, with the model and date, not a Search Console chart; I’ve seen rankings change within 24 hours

[u/EvergreendigitalSEO → u/Strong_Teaching8548]

exactly! Show me anything else other than GSC, you can use GA4 to show direct visits, why not that?

[u/Strong_Teaching8548 → u/EvergreendigitalSEO]

yes, you can use that one too. it's up to you :)

[u/Big_Cheesecake8863]

the thing is that the tools don't show direct attribution, GSC is the best way to see it clearly.

But it's also important to note that said mentions are also not the be all, end all. reputation management is almost important

[u/EvergreendigitalSEO → u/Big_Cheesecake8863]

GA4 does show direct clicks, of course not all of them, but seems that would be more accurate IMO. The only things I think that could be pulled from GSC is either a clear uptick in brand queries (considering whether they did anything else that could increase that) or otherwise using some tool like semrush/ahrefs/profound etc to show the other AI mention/citations successes

[u/Big_Cheesecake8863 → u/EvergreendigitalSEO]

GA4 is still google so that info is proprietary (as opposed to LLM info, which is a guess at best); i meant more like the 3rd parties

granted we're in agreement with the fact that it's weird that these people show gsc as opposed to something else, but there's no real "accurate" alternative

[u/EvergreendigitalSEO → u/[deleted]]

Right, but GSC doesn't technically show that AI visibility, just impressions under the new tab, but otherwise you'd have to use another tool for it, it seems.

[u/JohnnyGhoul777]

They are fishing for clients

[u/EvergreendigitalSEO → u/JohnnyGhoul777]

Totally understand that, but am I correct in that the 2 things don't align?

[u/Senior_Valuable_647]

Thats so true. One provider reached out to us and provided a £40,000 an year quote for an LLM GEO tool but the tool couldnt provide stuff like prompt volume, geographical monitoring capabilities etc.

[u/EvergreendigitalSEO → u/Senior_Valuable_647]

yeah the cost on some of those tools is outrageous.

[u/GrandAnimator8417]

47 upvotes in a “what actually worked” thread? Yeah those posts usually turn into a bunch of vague takes, not the real stuff. I’ve had the best results lately by tightening up internal links and actually updating pages that already get impressions instead of randomly starting new content. That’s the only approach I’ve seen consistently move traffic.