I've been obsessing over this for a while now.

Google traffic has dropped on a few sites I work on, nothing crazy but definitely noticeable but weirdly I'm starting to see visits coming from Perplexity and ChatGPT in my analytics.

The thing is I have no idea if my brand is actually being mentioned or recommended by these tools or if I'm just getting lucky. There's nothing in Search Console that tells you this.

Anyone actually tracking this properly? Feel like I'm flying blind and GEO is just becoming too important to ignore now.

Hi everyone,

I'm working as a Digital Marketing Executive at a financial services company. I recently completed our new company website, and yesterday I submitted it to Google Search Console.

Now I want to focus on AI SEO / Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) so that our brand not only ranks well on Google SERPs but also starts getting recommended by AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, etc.

Our plan is to publish high-quality blog content consistently (almost every day) and build topical authority over time.

I'm looking for a practical roadmap from people who are already working on AI SEO/GEO.

I'd really appreciate any roadmap, resources, or advice from people who've already been through this. Thanks in advance.

I have noticed that many writers and creators are now using AI tools to help with writing, but sometimes the generated text feels too robotic or unnatural. This is why AI text humanizer tools are getting more attention because they try to make content sound more like it was written by a real person.

For bloggers, marketers, and students, readability matters a lot. A piece of content can have the right information but still feel boring if the tone is too mechanical. Humanizing tools can help improve sentence flow, word choices, and overall style.

I am curious about how effective these tools really are. Do they actually improve the quality of AI-generated content, or do they only make small changes that do not make much difference?

What has been your experience with AI text humanizers? Do you think they are useful for improving writing, or is manual editing still the best option?

I set something up today for my own site and for a client that I thought might be useful to share, but I’d also be interested to hear how others are handling this. A lot of AI tool traffic seems to get mixed into standard referral or direct traffic in GA4, which makes it harder to understand whether platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, etc. are actually sending users to the site.

Today I set up a separate way to track AI traffic in GA4 using Custom Channel Groups / regex, so AI-related sources can be separated from standard Direct or Referral traffic.

The regex I used was based around known AI referrers, for example:

.*(chatgpt|openai|perplexity|claude|anthropic|gemini|copilot|microsoftcopilot|you\.com|phind|poe|copy\.ai|jasper|writesonic|character\.ai|quora|google).* 

The goal wasn’t to make it perfect, but to at least stop AI traffic from being completely buried in Direct or general Referral traffic. I’m still testing and refining it, especially because some AI-driven visits may still appear as Direct if no referrer is passed.

Curious how others are doing this, are you using Custom Channel Groups, regex filters, Looker Studio segments, UTM rules, server logs, or something else? and are there any AI referrers you’ve found worth adding that are easy to miss?

Would love to compare approaches.

1. Don’t worry about all the new names. Good GEO, AEO, LLM SEO is good SEO

Right now you may be thinking, “If AI has changed Search so much, why isn’t your SEO guidance changing, too?”

You’re right that AI has transformed what Google Search is capable of. But one constant is our commitment to matching people with what they’re looking for. The foundations we built are still intact and built to last. Generative AI features like AI Mode are built directly on top of our core ranking systems, while AI techniques, like fan-out, allow for Google Search to highlight a wider and more diverse set of helpful links.

Your existing investment in solid, foundational SEO is your launchpad for AI success. That’s why good SEO is good GEO (or AEO, or AI SEO, or whatever). The great thing about focusing on a solid foundation is that it gives you permission to stop wasting time on misleading tactics.

Building in public a bit here. We track how often brands

show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI answers.

Three decisions caused the most pushback from early users.

Curious if others have thought about this.

We only measure weekly. On purpose.

Early users wanted daily tracking. We said no.

Here's why: AI visibility doesn't move day-to-day.

What actually drives whether ChatGPT recommends you

is your content, citations, mentions, G2/Reddit reviews,

structured data. That stuff moves in weeks or months,

not overnight.

So if you measure Monday vs Tuesday, any difference

in your score is noise, not signal. The engine just

rolled the dice differently. Not because you improved.

Not because you got worse.

Daily tracking is expensive and misleading.

Weekly is a real signal.

Question: do you think weekly is enough?

Or would you want daily even knowing it's mostly noise?

We run each question 3 times and report a rate, not a yes/no.

AI engines are non-deterministic. Ask ChatGPT the exact

same question 3 times and you'll get 3 different answers,

often with different brands mentioned.

So "did you appear?" from a single scan is basically a coin flip.

We run each prompt 3 times and report: mentioned in 2 out of 3,

so 67% probability. That's a real estimate. A single answer is not.

Question: how do other AI tracking tools handle this?

Do they measure once and call it done?

Because that seems like a pretty broken metric to me.

We split prompts into layers and branded questions

don't count toward your main score.

Not all prompts are equal.

Buyer-intent, so "best issue tracker for dev teams",

is where you actually want to appear. Around 55% of scans.

Category questions like "how do small teams manage sprints"

cast a wider net, still unbranded.

Competitor-anchored prompts like "alternatives to Jira"

catch people who are actively shopping the competition.

And then branded prompts like "what is Linear?"

test whether AI actually knows you correctly.

The key decision: branded prompts are excluded

from your headline score.

Why? Because if the question already names you,

of course you'll appear. It would inflate your number

by 15 to 20 points artificially.

So branded questions get their own section:

does AI know you accurately? Not: how visible are you?

Question: does this split make sense to you?

Would you want branded included in the main score

or does that feel like gaming the metric?

Genuinely curious what people think. Especially if you've

tried to track AI visibility yourself and ran into

similar problems or solved them differently.

What's your take?

I am working on building a Generative Engine Optimization(GEO) strategy for an ecommerce firm and I want to test a few hypotheses on what works and what doesn't.
To test the hypotheses I wanted to know if I make a change on my website then how long do I have to wait for the LLM's(Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity) RAG system to start showing the impact of my changes in their citations/rankings?

Any help/reference will be great.