AUG '26 INDEXThe August 2026 Cited Index is live — See where Indian brands stand in AI search
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GEO Insights for Brand Marketers

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How Google AI Mode Decides Which Brands to Recommend (and Why It Cites Your Competitor)

Google AI Mode gives only about three sources per answer, the fewest of any engine, and its top source is Amazon. Where AI Overviews rewards being everywhere, AI Mode rewards being the obvious answer, the same company playing almost the reverse game. Here is how it picks the few brands that make the cut.

By Salman ShaikhRead article →
GEO Explainer4 min read

How Google AI Overviews Decides Which Brands to Recommend (and Why It Cites Your Competitor)

Google AI Overviews casts the widest net of any engine, about ten sources per answer, and it leans hard on social. In the Cited Index its top source is Instagram, then YouTube, then Amazon. It rewards being present everywhere. Here is how it picks brands, and why breadth beats depth for it.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer4 min read

How Gemini Decides Which Brands to Recommend (and Why It Cites Your Competitor)

Gemini is the one AI engine that mostly reads your own website. In the Cited Index, 72% of its citations are brand sites and just 2% are community, the opposite of ChatGPT. If you have only optimized your own pages, Gemini is the engine you are already playing. Here is how it picks brands.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer3 min read

How Perplexity Decides Which Brands to Recommend (and Why It Cites Your Competitor)

Perplexity shows its work: every answer comes with its sources. In the Cited Index it reaches deepest into niche and long-tail sources, led by YouTube, then Reddit, then publishers you have probably never optimized for. Here is how it picks brands, and why your competitor keeps appearing in the citations.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer5 min read

How ChatGPT Decides Which Brands to Recommend (and Why It Cites Your Competitor)

When ChatGPT recommends a brand, it is repeating what its sources said, and its single largest source is Reddit. In the Cited Index, ChatGPT is the least likely of the five engines to just read your website. Here is how it builds a shortlist, and why your competitor keeps making it.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer5 min read

Why Every AI Visibility Tool Gives You a Different Share-of-Voice Number

Run your brand through two AI visibility tools and you will get two different Share-of-Voice numbers. Neither is wrong. Each tool quietly makes three decisions that move the number, and once you know what they are, you can finally read the metric instead of trusting it.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer8 min read

The Understandability Gap: Why Indian Brands Get Crawled But Not Cited

Across 186 Indian brand scans, Accessibility scores 79.3%. Understandability scores 49.7%. The 30-point gap is the reason your GEO scan looks fine and AI engines still pick someone else. Here's the data, the diagnosis, and the three page-template patterns that close it.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer9 min read

The Cited 8: 8 Metrics That Actually Measure AI Visibility (And How to Track Them)

A single AI Visibility Score hides more than it reveals. The Cited 8 framework maps 8 measurable dimensions across 3 layers — giving your team a complete diagnostic, not just a dashboard number.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer9 min read

The 3-Layer AI Visibility Stack: Why Fixing Your Website Doesn't Fix Your AI Visibility

18 brands with above-median GEO Scores still have below-median AI Visibility Scores. The gap isn't technical — it's structural. Here's the framework that explains why.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer6 min read

What Narrative Is AI Building About My Brand? (And How to Find Out)

When ChatGPT ignores your brand in category recommendations, it's not a bug — it reflects an AI narrative that's either weak, absent, or working against you. Here's how to diagnose it and what to do next.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer8 min read

If llms.txt Doesn't Drive Citations, Why Did Anthropic, Cloudflare, and Stripe Implement It?

Trakkr says zero correlation. Anthropic and Stripe implemented it anyway. Both sides are right — they're measuring different things.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer10 min read

Why We Don't Chase Prompt Volume (And What We Track Instead)

Prompt volume for AI search doesn't exist — it's estimated. Here's why intent coverage, competitive gaps, and mention consistency are better signals for your GEO strategy.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer7 min read

What Is a GEO Score? We Built a Free AI-Readiness Scanner

SEO has Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights. GEO had nothing — until now. We built a free scanner that gives any website a 0-100 AI-readiness score in 30 seconds. Here's what it measures and what we found.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer8 min read

GEO vs SEO: What Indian D2C Brands Need to Know in 2026

GEO isn't replacing SEO. It's the layer you're missing. If your brand ranks well on Google but doesn't get mentioned when someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation — you have a visibility gap that traditional SEO will never close.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →
GEO Explainer7 min read

What is GEO — and why every brand marketer needs to pay attention right now

Search is changing faster than most marketing teams have noticed. When a consumer asks ChatGPT for a product recommendation, traditional SEO means nothing. A new discipline is emerging to fill that gap — and most brands are completely unprepared.

· By Salman ShaikhRead →