Posts and videos featuring Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) hacks and formulas are flooding the web. We reported recently on one such hack focusing on press releases. But when you consider the kind of content on which the AI models rely for their answers, it may be more efficient to revert to good, old-fashioned PR and marketing.

Links from this episode:

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  • 2025 Report Reveals Average B2B Content Volume Triples: Budgets Barely Budge
  
  
  • ChatGPT is sending less traffic to websites – down 52% in a month
  
  
  • How a content brand became a trusted resource for LLMs
  
  
  • Networks, Not AI or Search, Are the #1 Trusted Source Amid Information Overload
  
  
  • Many are sharing charts about Reddit and Wikipedia dominating AI search mentions, desperately trying to crack the code
  
  
  • AI-Powered Search: Adapting Your SEO Strategy
  
  
  • How AI is reshaping SEO: Challenges, opportunities, and brand strategies for 2025
  
  
  • 2025 AI SERP Changes: New Strategies To Gain Local Search Visibility
  
  
  • Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results
  
  
  • AI Mode in Search gets new agentic features and expands globally
  
  
  
  

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, September 29.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Hi everyone, and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 479. I’m Neville Hobson.

And I’m Shel Holtz on Thursday Neville, you and I are going to interview Stephanie Grover, who is the marketing and PR director at Horowitz Agency. This is a marketing agency that works with law firms, production companies, and other professional service providers in the US and Canada.

And we’re going to talk, be talking about GEO generative. Optimization, generative engine optimization. I’m not altogether sure, but it’s a hot topic and I thought I would take today’s episode to set the stage for that because we’ve all seen the headlines recently. Chat, GPT, traffic referrals to websites plummeted more than 50% in a single month.

This summer, and that’s not a blip. It’s a structural change in how these large language models are surfacing content. [00:01:00 ] OpenAI tweaked its ranking and suddenly chat GPT Beca became began citing fewer sources, leaning more heavily on places like Wikipedia and Reddit. Useful for users. Yeah. But if you’re a brand counting on visibility, it’s a gut punch.

And meanwhile, the volume of content keeps exploding. A new B2B study found content production has tripled year over year, which could be partly attributable marketers flooding the zone with content in the hopes. LLMs will hoover it up and they’ll show up in AI search results. Interestingly, that tripling of content volume has not been accompanied by commensurate budget increases.

Mm-hmm. But we’re producing more content than ever but it’s not necessarily better content or content that LLMs are actually going to use. So no surprise that there’s a scramble for the supposed hack that will unlock, sorry. Unlock. Okay. Unlock [00:02:00 ] rhymes with hack. What can I say? So no surprise that there’s a scramble for the supposed hack that will unlock generative engine optimization.

GEO. Some companies are starting to figure out that it’s not about gaming the algorithm, though. It’s about trust. Sylvia la this chief marketing officer at Kenji shared a fascinating case study on LinkedIn. Her team created the sequence, it’s a standalone content brand with its own domain separate from the corporate site.

The idea was simple. Create a community driven media hub. Human high quality, free of fluff. The unexpected bonus that came from this is that LLM started treating the sequence as an external authority. When asked about can g chat, GPT doesn’t just reference the company, it references the sequence. In other words, by building a trusted resource that stands on its own apart from the central [00:03:00 ] brand site, they built credibility, not just with their human audience.

But with the algorithms too that aligns perfectly with something else I saw from Liza Adams, another CMO. Who pointed out that the reason Wikipedia and Reddit dominate AI citations isn’t mysterious, it’s because they directly answer real questions using the same plain language. Real people use Adams contrasts two types of marketing teams, the ones who do the hard work of auditing their content, listening to customer language, and creating genuinely helpful answers.

The ones chasing quick fixes and shortcuts. Her takeaway is that there is no algorithm hack AI amplifies what’s already there. If your content is genuinely useful, trustworthy, and present in the watering holes your customers rely on, the algorithms will pick it up. If it’s not, there’s no trick. That’ll save you.

Now, add one more layer to this. What people themselves actually trust according [00:04:00 ] to new LinkedIn research networks, our peers, our colleagues, people we know still rank as the number one trusted source of information far ahead of. AI searches or even traditional search engines. In fact, 43% of professionals say their network is their first stop when they need advice at work and new.

Nearly two thirds say colleagues help them make decisions more confidently Now. Think about that for a second while marketers obsess over how to get cited by chat, EPT, or Gemini, the real influence continues to live in trusted human connections. That’s also changing how brands approach content. LinkedIn reports that 80% of B2B marketers are increasing investment in community driven content.

Bringing in creators, employees, and subject matter experts, they understand that credibility doesn’t come from corporate channels alone. It comes from trusted voices. People want to hear from. So where’s that leave us in? A [00:05:00 ] messy transition is where that leaves us. Generative AI referrals are volatile.

Content volume is ballooning. Everyone’s chasing GEO or a EO or A-I-S-E-O or whatever acronym you want to use, but the truth is the winning strategies are old school in the best sense. Build trust, answer real questions, and put your content where your community is already paying attention. Kenji’s story shows that if you can create a true content brand, it can earn authority with humans and with machines.

Liza Adams reminds us that shortcuts don’t work answering real questions and real language does. And LinkedIn’s research makes it clear that even in the age of AI are human networks still shape the bulk of decisions. So stop chasing algorithms, earn trust. That’s the real path to visibility in a generative search world.

Good. Good assessment there. Shell, I [00:06:00 ] think we’ve talked about this a lot on recent episodes of this podcast. One that comes to mi