The GEO Show

Welcome to episode 85 of The GEO Show, the daily podcast on Generative Engine Optimization, AI visibility, and how brands get cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. In this episode, Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge, talks with Andrew Colsky, founder of Be-Picked, about writing for two audiences at once: the person who watches or reads, and the AI engine that only reads text. In this episode: 🎯 Two audiencesAndrew's rule is simple. A person watches your video and listens to your voice. AI does not watch the video. It reads the text. You could film a cat playing with a ball of yarn while you talk about divorce law, and the model would never know. You have to win both audiences. 🧭 From trial law and OCD work to GEOAndrew started as a trial attorney with an LLM in litigation, later added a mental health license, and spent about 11 years working with clients with OCD. Building those small practices taught him how to get found online. When content work started eating half his day, he launched Be-Picked to help professionals get found and chosen in AI search without shipping AI slop. ⚙️ The Credibility GeneratorHis software walks a professional through the questions people actually ask, drafts a starting response, then forces the person to add their own voice. That owned content can become a LinkedIn post, a Google Business Profile post, a blog, or a YouTube video. Paris compares the idea to an entity map: AI can only learn what you have actually published. ⚖️ Owned and earned, 50/50Andrew advises splitting effort about evenly. Owned content is necessary, but it is discounted if nobody else vouches for you. Earned mentions from associations, conferences, podcasts, and local organizations help an engine corroborate who you are. 🎙️ Podcasting as the seedAndrew argues podcasting is one of the best ways to serve both audiences. One show becomes audio, video, clips, social posts, articles, and sometimes a book. He also describes a blank-slate ChatGPT test, asking who could help a Washington, D.C. law firm with AI search, in which Be-Picked came up first at that moment. 📍 Go hyperlocalFor a county-level lawyer, standing out is easier in a tight local market than in a national one. In the Arlington County example, that means publishing the local details people need: court rules, docket delays, and practical constraints such as no phones in the courthouse, not gossip about named judges or confidential cases. 🏷️ One consistent nameAndrew says he used to appear as Andrew Colsky, Andrew Colsky JD, and Andrew Colsky LPC in different places, which made him look like more than one person to an AI engine. His advice: pick the name you will use, and use it the same way everywhere. ⭐ Reviews and local presenceStar ratings with no context do little for AI. A review that describes the actual work is much more useful. For earned presence, he points to speaking where your ideal clients already gather, including local adult education classes and community groups that then publish your name. ⏳ The window is open nowParis and Andrew agree that winning SEO does not automatically win AI citations. AI engines have a live search mode and a stored knowledge base. If you are not being gathered now, you may later have to hope for a live search. This window, they argue, will not stay this open. Subscribe to The GEO Show wherever you listen to podcasts. 💬 Question: Which of your two audiences are you actually writing for right now, the human who watches or the AI that only reads the text? YouTube: https://youtu.be/NlZjFFZ4dnQ

Welcome to episode 84 of The GEO Show, the daily podcast on Generative Engine Optimization, AI visibility, and how brands get cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.In this episode, Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge, talks with Anu Ramani, founder and managing director of Isoline Communications, about the Big Idea framework from her BrightonSEO main-stage talk and how it meets information gain in tech B2B content.In this episode:💡 Cognitive surrenderAnu explains the academic phrase as marketers outsourcing strategy and creative work to AI, and why she wants humans to keep the insight that makes other humans relate.🎯 The three CsCustomer motivators versus hygiene factors, competitor gaps you can own in voice and attitude, and context that makes a message land. The Big Idea sits in the intersection.🏢 HB Reavis in 2021A commercial real estate lead-gen case: Future of Work: Workspace Megatrends landed because the hybrid-office context was acute. The same study today would not hit the same nerve.🗺️ MAP for AI at IsolineMessage (find information-gain gaps, including competitive sweeps), Architecture (tagging and content infrastructure), Process (automation and system connections). Creativity stays human, especially for expert technical readers.📢 Owned, earned, and videoWhy PR is rising again as owned platforms lose trust, why Reddit then YouTube keep shifting, and why neglecting video is a mistake even when leaders are camera shy.🎙️ Record the callsAnu cannot understand refusing to record customer calls. Sales interactions are where proprietary knowledge and the voice of the customer show up. Paris notes only about 10% of hands went up when he asked a BrightonSEO audience who records all meetings.🤝 Don't hack the customerWhether the reader is a human or a personal agent, slop is slop. Market to the person. Stick with the Big Idea and information gain.Subscribe to The GEO Show wherever you listen to podcasts.💬 Question: Before your next brainstorm, which of the three Cs (customer, competition, context) is the weakest for your brand?YouTube: https://youtu.be/UFLi0bWHXcA

Welcome to The GEO Show, your daily briefing on generative engine optimization. Brought to you by GEOforge.Host Paris Childress covers Google AI Mode home-service booking links in the US, Anthropic's AP deal, Facebook Answers at scale, ChatGPT Ads bidding changes, and more.In this episode:🔧 Google AI Mode adds US home-service booking and quote links. Links run through Angi, Thumbtack, Housecall Pro, and Jobber, with ServiceTitan coming soon. Jobber and Housecall Pro describe request or booking flows into their products. Angi sends homeowners to the pro's Angi profile to request a quote.📰 Anthropic's first reported digital news licensing deal is with the AP. Adweek reports the deal was signed just before the midterms. Terms were not disclosed.📘 About 6 million AI-generated Facebook Answers pages are in Google's index. Glenn Gabe calls it scaled content abuse across classic results, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.📈 ChatGPT Ads moves new campaigns to Target CPA and Target CPC from November 9. Max Bid and Max CPC retire for existing campaigns on January 1, 2027.🛡️ Blend Commerce: bot protection blocked an AI shopping agent at 29 of 200 UK and US retailers. Average score 65/100. Shopify stores scored higher on agent readiness.🛒 Amazon opens free Shop Direct listings for off-Amazon US stores. Products can appear in Amazon Search and Alexa for Shopping.📉 Taboola Q3 revenue fell 6.9% to $462.3 million. Management pointed to AI summaries and LLMs among the headwinds.🔗 SERP vendors say Google is throttling goto result links since October 30. Rank trackers may record redirect URLs instead of destinations.⚖️ A family sues Google over a student's use of Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. Google says it is reviewing the claims.Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/y_ZIlXULaocSubscribe for daily GEO news.💬 Question: For local services, is the booking platform becoming the new ranking factor for AI Mode?The GEO Show is hosted by Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge. getgeoforge.com

Welcome to The GEO Show, your daily briefing on generative engine optimization. Brought to you by GEOforge.Host Paris Childress talks with Sam Page of AirOps about what actually moves the needle in AI search once you have visibility data.In this episode:🏗️ No single execution layer fits all. Enterprise brands often win by fixing bloated site architecture; younger startups need earned mentions and authority first.🏰 Big brands have an even bigger edge in AI search. Going from zero to one is harder than in SEO's heyday.⏳ Tactics now wear off in months, not years. What once lasted about two years may now last about half a year.🧠 Expertise is the durable moat. Capture your experts' knowledge and first party data and put it into your marketing.📊 Ramp and the first party data goldmine. Proprietary product data becomes content with a point of view.🔍 The AI visibility tool boom and the attribution problem. Expect before and after comparisons, not last click clarity.🤖 ChatGPT ads and sponsored agents. A thought experiment where agents join the conversation at the moment of commercial intent.⭐ Be recommendable. Clear positioning and a remarkable experience give AI a reason to recommend you.Subscribe for daily GEO news.💬 Question: If ChatGPT ads let sponsored agents join the conversation, would you pay on commission?Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3ZtDEnlL-HAThe GEO Show is brought to you by GEOforge, full self-driving for AI visibility: https://getgeoforge.com

Welcome to The GEO Show, your daily briefing on generative engine optimization. Brought to you by GEOforge.Host Paris Childress covers Shopify's AI search numbers, an EU ruling on Gemini, and more.In this episode:⚖️ EU court advisor: Gemini answers can infringe 2 ways. Unlawful access or substitution. Facts and training are generally fine.🏫 Google switches off Search for K-12 student accounts. Search and AI are now one product for this group.🛒 Shopify: AI search orders up 3.3x. AI-referred sessions convert 64% better than organic.🔎 Reddit tests ads in its search results. It is now selling against search intent on its own site.✈️ AI Mode flight answers link only to Google Flights. Self-preferencing could become a regulatory question again.💸 Media buyers put 10 to 30% of Google search budgets in play. Brand CPCs are still rising.🤖 People Inc. builds APIs for AI agents. Publishers are building a second front door for machines.Subscribe for daily GEO news.💬 Question: Does "facts are free, expression isn't" help publishers or bless zero-click answers?Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/S8xJu3sJjD8The GEO Show is brought to you by GEOforge, full self-driving for AI visibility: https://getgeoforge.com

Publishers are now suing the layer AI answers are built on. The New York Times and three Tribune papers filed suit against Brave Software, alleging its search index and search API resell their journalism to AI companies and that Ask Brave answers keep readers from clicking through. If index reselling infringes, the same logic could reach Bing and Google.Next, a working paper from Kaiser and Schulze ("Can Advertising Fund Free AI?", Oct 2026, ~1,900 shops, ~10 billion sessions) finds a paid US ChatGPT visit brought in $0.89 in revenue versus $2.45 for a paid Google Search visit, with conversion at 0.37% versus 1.17%. Paris asks whether ChatGPT ads are a brand channel priced like performance. Organic ChatGPT referrals to shops fell an estimated 5.9% in the 13 weeks after ads launched, though the confidence range includes zero.Also in this episode:Google's Gary Illyes: nothing to announce yet on AI clicks and queries in Search Console, with the UK CMA requiring AI impressions, clicks, and CTR by December 3. Action: baseline your AI impressions by page now.AI Overviews for brand names (Apple, Zillow, Coca-Cola) spotted in the right-hand knowledge panel slot on desktop, flagged by David McSweeney and Chris Long. Action: search your own brand this week and screenshot it.Turkey's competition authority opens a formal probe into AI Overviews and AI Mode, with interim measures for news publishers. It is the third regulator after Brussels and London.Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5sxH3XQkD3AThe GEO Show is brought to you by GEOforge, full self-driving for AI visibility: https://getgeoforge.com

Google AI Mode went from about 16 cited sources per answer to about 4, roughly 74% fewer, according to one new dataset. Paris Childress covers three stories in today's GEO briefing: fewer AI Mode citations, how ChatGPT picks ads, and Sundar Pichai's agentic layer. In this episode: 74% fewer sources. Maeva Cifuentes's independent analysis of Scrunch tracking data finds AI Mode citing about 4 sources per answer by mid-October, down from about 16 in the summer. Only around 9% of previously cited pages kept their citation, and pages in Google's top three kept theirs far more often. Caveat: this is one dataset, not yet replicated, Google hasn't commented, and one brand made up 42% of the prompt-page pairs. How ChatGPT picks ads. OpenAI says an orchestrator model nominates candidate ads, a separate auction ranks and prices them, and a final check can still drop them, all in a system separate from the one that writes answers. The separation is OpenAI's own description and has not been independently audited. Ads still shape trust. Even if the systems are separate, an ad shown next to an answer still shapes what users trust and click. Paris's advice: write ad creative for the problem a user works through across several turns, not a single query. The agentic layer. Sundar Pichai says agents will reach websites by browsing pages and through protocols like MCP, payment protocols and Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). Paris's advice: list your site's key actions and check whether an agent could complete them through a feed, an API or a protocol. The GEO Show is hosted by Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge. getgeoforge.com

Welcome to Episode 79 of The GEO Show, the weekly briefing on Generative Engine Optimization and AI search.In this episode, Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge, covers seven stories plus a lightning round.In this episode:📉 Reddit says AI Mode sends no traffic. Google Search referrals fell by more than a million a week in October. Reddit will test a logged-in only experience in some non-US markets.🤖 One opt-out for AI training. Google and Microsoft will honor a shared robots.txt token that blocks AI training across vendors, and OpenAI plans to follow. It covers training only, not crawling or search eligibility.⚖️ Publishers put a number on AI retrieval. Digital Context Next told the court member unique visitors fell 26% from 2023 to 2025 and quoted Microsoft's "doom loop" warning.🛒 AI agents at checkout. Microsoft Clarity found checkout in about 25% of agent sessions versus 15% for humans.🔍 A 0.9% AI click-through estimate. Cyrus Shepard opted one site out of AI Overviews and AI Mode and still lost clicks.📢 ChatGPT ads grow. Wider desktop cards, multi-image ads for everyone, and creative enhancements on by default.✈️ Travel answers favor booking sites. BrightEdge found booking platforms in 38% of booking-stage answers.Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/L8xNSUSfUD8Subscribe wherever you listen and on YouTube for the weekly GEO briefing.💬 Question: If AI's favorite citation source says AI Mode sends no traffic, what should everyone else expect?

It's Friday, so host Paris Childress is back with his regular co-host Simon Young of Question.Marketing. They debate five of the week's biggest stories in GEO and AI search: Google's AI Mode money problem, closed gardens vs open agent protocols, shrinking AI Mode citations, ChatGPT as a search and ads channel, and murkier measurement.In this episode:Google's AI Mode money problem. Alphabet fell about 13% on 29 Oct 2026, its worst day ever, wiping out roughly $500 billion in value, after search revenue growth slowed from 17% to 12% ($63.35 billion). Can Google put ads in AI Mode without losing user trust?Sponsored agents. Google's ad ranking has always blended bid and relevance across several ad slots. A sponsored agent in a conversation may be winner take all.Good bots clicking ads. Simon shares a client whose agent negotiated a Hong Kong hotel deal. When authorized agents click ads for real users, what are advertisers really paying for? More than half of web traffic is now automated (Imperva 2026 Bad Bot Report).Closed gardens vs open protocols. Amazon says over 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping in the past 12 months and still blocks Meta's Muse. Google launched its Connected Apps Platform on MCP, Visa says nearly 50 AI partners are in production, and Shopify moved its AI agent knowledge base into the admin.A race to the bottom. If agents negotiate every deal, what happens to marketplace margins and the customer relationship?Fewer citations. In data analyzed by The Search Spot, AI Mode sources per answer fell from 16.3 to 4.3 (74%). Muck Rack finds over 84% of AI citations come from earned media.ChatGPT as a search and ads channel. seoClarity estimates 1.24 billion search-like ChatGPT messages a day, about 7.5% of Google's volume. ChatGPT Ads creative enhancements are on by default from 30 Oct (advertisers can opt out), and ChatGPT ads can be bought through Amazon DSP.Measurement murk. Semrush and Ahrefs confirm poisoned Google results hitting rank trackers, a ChatGPT bug dropped UTM tags from about 8 to 15 Oct, and AI Overviews appear on 82.5% of US brand searches (SE Ranking).Correction: In the episode, the AI Mode ads expansion is described as including the UK, Brazil and Mexico. The 10 markets that went live on 28 Oct 2026 are Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore. The UK, Brazil and Mexico are planned for Q4 2026.Find Simon Young and Question.Marketing at question.marketing.Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xjs_YU167EThe GEO Show is hosted by Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge. getgeoforge.com

Amazon says more than 400 million customers used Alexa for shopping in the past twelve months, while Google opens Search and Gemini to third-party apps via MCP. Paris Childress covers these and five more stories in today's GEO briefing on agents becoming the storefront.In this episode:400 million Alexa shoppers. Amazon's Q3 results say more than 400 million customers used Alexa, its agentic shopping assistant, for shopping in the past twelve months, with interactions up 570% year over year. On the earnings call, Andy Jassy said shopping through outside AI agents is still not great and no more convenient than going to a retailer directly.Google opens Search and Gemini to apps. Google launched a preview of its connected apps platform. Developers integrate through a cloud-hosted MCP server or Android app functions, then choose Search, Gemini or both. Adobe, Experian, Localiza and Peloton are already live. If you already have an API or MCP server, apply for access now.Direct answers in AI-cited pages. An agency study by TJ Digital of 193,507 AI answers tracked in PiqueAI found cited pages opened with a direct answer 20% of the time, versus 5% for top ten pages the AI never pulled up. The author calls these associations, not proof of cause. Disclosure: TJ Digital and PiqueAI are third parties, not affiliated with GEOforge; the study figures cited are theirs.Sponsored products in AI Mode. Google confirmed it is testing an AI Mode format that mixes labeled sponsored products into product results, a day after expanding AI Mode ads to ten more markets. Organic product visibility may increasingly share space with ads.Longer, multimodal AI Mode queries. Google says AI Mode queries are three times longer than traditional searches, and more than one in six US AI Mode searches are multimodal.ChatGPT at about 7.5% of Google. seoClarity estimates ChatGPT handles about 1.24 billion search-like messages a day, roughly 7.5% of its estimate of 16.4 billion daily Google queries. It is a modeled comparison, not measured market share.Meta loses Paris appeal, plus lightning round. A Paris appeals court upheld measures requiring Meta to share revenue and usage data with French press groups. Plus Gemini 4 Carbon, Merchant API agentic checkout reporting, DMA search data sharing, 404 pages and restaurant ordering controls.Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeJX3tyjqTQThe GEO Show is hosted by Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge. getgeoforge.com