As a reminder, this came a couple of days after the official Google guidelines were published, claiming llms.txt or md are not needed.

To be sure, these are different teams and goals. Google’s guidelines are for *search* findability. This one is preparing you for the future when AI agents will perform actions on users’ behalf to help them find API directions, buy products, etc. Still, some alignment wouldn't hurt, would it?

https://preview.redd.it/97l13rb1vd2h1.jpg?width=1819&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e1fb1ee68d14e78b86c18e8e6aa9d220ee3c96e

Source

Been digging into the Google Business Profile Social Media Updates Carousel and wanted to share some findings. Whether you're managing this for local service clients or thinking about what it means for your own agency's visibility, there's something worth paying attention to here.

Quick timeline for context: Google opened social profile connections in GBP in October 2023, deprecated business[.]site in March 2024, launched the carousel the same month, and Instagram officially opened indexing for professional accounts in July 2025 — which significantly widened the content pool available to the carousel.

The angle most people are talking about is the conversion side: active carousel = more credible profile = higher call and direction request rates. That's real and well documented. But there are two things I think are being underappreciated right now — both for client results and for your own agency:

**1. The entity association signal**

Linking social profiles in GBP + implementing sameAs schema on the site pointing to those same profiles gives Google's knowledge graph a cleaner entity map for the business. Per Whitespark's research it's not a direct local pack ranking factor, but it strengthens the semantic understanding of what the business is, where it operates, and what it offers. That matters for long-tail local queries and for how confidently Google surfaces the business in ambiguous searches.

For agencies: if you're not already auditing social profile connections as part of your GBP onboarding checklist for new clients, this is worth adding. Low effort, easy to show as a deliverable, and it compounds with the rest of your local SEO work.

**2. The AI search implications**

This is the one I think most local SEOs are still underweighting — for clients and for themselves. Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT (via Bing index), and Perplexity are all pulling from indexed social content now. For local service businesses, captions that include service-specific language + location context are getting crawled and cited in AI-generated answers. Keyword-rich, location-specific captions are effectively functioning as micro landing pages — doing double duty for social engagement and search indexation simultaneously.

For client work: social content strategy and local SEO can't be treated as separate workstreams anymore. If you're managing both, that's an opportunity to tighten the integration and show compounding results. If you're only managing one, it's a conversation worth having with whoever owns the other channel.

For your own agency GBP: the same rules apply. If you're posting thought leadership or case study content on social and those profiles aren't connected to your profile, you're leaving indexed visibility on the table for your own business.

Happy to get into any of this further — curious what others are seeing on the AI search side with their clients especially.

Interesting concept for Google to start recommending. You need more non-commodity content!

A lot of CMO's claim to be "data driven" and "tech-savvy" but are still hostile toward SEO/Google and have no idea how a brand should have a conversation on Reddit. I know - this sub blocks about 20 spam posts from them a day!

2026 is half way over and 90% of tech CMO's have never stepped foot inside a Reddit thread -confused, dazed and afraid......of their target audience.

Is LinkedIn really where their audience is or is it just a comfortable space within a vacuum chamber?

The big question CEOs should be asking - is my CMO looking for data to support their views or are they actually tech savvy and know where we need to be visible?

After the Google AIO Guide was posted - it should be abundantly clear that AI is driven by SEO

So if CMO's are still talking about citations and how LLMs work and Reddit but aren't active on here and are still holding a grudge against SEO/PPC preferring the confirmation bias of "LLMs recognizing great brands" as is the motto of the ever expanding GEO Expert force: why are they still in a job?

How can a Chief Marketing Officer be scared of Google when it IS the Uni-channel for SaaS, Cybersecurity, FinTech, Cloud, Networking, CRM - you name it?

A few things I'm asking the community to figure out:

• What are the real red flags you'd watch for in a CMO today — the things that tell you they're not operating with current data?
• What separates a genuinely strong CMO from one who's just good at the job description?
• Are we still too quick to celebrate "brand storyteller" CMOs in industries where ICPs are comparing vendors on G2 and Reddit before ever touching a brand touchpoint?
• Do ICPs actually pause purchasing conversations because a company has low brand presence — or does that logic only work in consumer?

Google's official guide on AI search optimization, published tonight

Google Search Central dropped a full guide on optimizing for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and it's worth a read. The mythbusting part stood out to me the most.

They explicitly call out things that don't influence Google AI: llms.txt and special markup, content chunking, rewriting content for AI, seeking inauthentic mentions, overdoing structured data.

What still matters they frame as classic SEO: unique non-commodity content, clear technical structure, real E-E-A-T signals, real backlinks, real brand mentions.

Sounds like GEO is just better-structured SEO :)

Curious how people here are handling AI content at scale — manually prompting ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini, chaining agents with something like Claude Code or Codex, using existing SaaS tools, or have you built something custom?

Asking because I'm thinking about building a keyword-to-article pipeline focused on AI visibility: input a keyword list, AI handles research, outline, and draft optimized for SEO/GEO/AEO — structured answers, citation-friendly formatting, the works.

The publishing piece is where it gets interesting. Web app is easy to onboard, but pushing content to your CMS or platforms requires extra integration work. Local/CLI can use browser automation to handle publishing directly.

So two questions:

1. What does your current AI SEO content workflow actually look like?
2. Would you want a tool that handles the full pipeline including publishing, or just generation?

Open to "this already exists, use X" too lol

I just read Google’s latest guide on optimizing for generative AI experiences in Search, and it made me rethink how people are talking about AI SEO.
A lot of the discussion around GEO/AEO makes it sound like we need a totally new playbook. But Google’s framing feels a bit different to me. It still comes back to many of the same fundamentals: crawlable pages, indexable content, clear structure, useful information, first-hand experience, and content that can actually be trusted.
The foundation may be the same — what’s changed is the standard. If AI systems can summarize generic content instantly, then average “SEO content” probably becomes less useful. Pages may need to do more than answer a keyword. They need to show context, experience, comparison, nuance, and enough clarity for both users and systems to understand why that page should be referenced.
So I’m wondering if AI SEO is really a separate discipline, or if it’s more like traditional SEO with less tolerance for thin or generic content.
Curious how others here are thinking about this. Are you treating AI SEO as its own strategy, or mostly as an extension of the SEO work you were already doing?

Peec is now showing you which ads appear inside your tracked AI answers. Pretty cool! I hope they will create some kind of PPC dashboard for me to track these over time:

https://preview.redd.it/cdx60dqmic1h1.png?width=1606&format=png&auto=webp&s=bcd175661813b85c6facd5e3e7a44cfe656d8a54

Has anyone else seen Google AI suddenly reading business recommendations out loud directly in search results?

For a few days I was seeing voice/narrated AI responses under multiple searches, almost like Google was testing an AI assistant inside Search. Now it seems gone again.

Was this a limited experiment, AI Mode test, or something tied to specific accounts/devices?

Curious if others in SEO/local SEO noticed this too.

Looking for input on Peec ai vs. Profound for AI visibility tracking. Profound looks good on paper but it’s SO expensive. Peec is a fraction of the cost and I’m wondering if the data quality is as good. Hoping to hear from people who have used or evaluated both to help me decide which direction to go.

For context, I’m head of growth at an HR tech B2B SaaS. We’ve got Series A funding.Small team, ~20 people total with 3 in marketing roles. I am evaluating tools for tracking AI search performance. The goal is to determine where and how we’re appearing in AI generated answers. I want to know what sources are influencing our visibility and accurately track and improve performance across LLM platforms.

Looked at Profound and it’s great on paper but holy hell $500/mo per seat pricing is… a lot. Yes I have a budget but as we scale I can already see this eating up a huge chunkof budget and I’m trying to run as lean as possible. Seat costs add up quickly. I do not love this pricing model.

The other tool I’m looking at is Peec ai which has a friendlier pricing model but I want to know if the data quality is still good at their price point.

We’re in a content-rich, highly competitive industry. Basically I’m just trying to track our brand’s visibility compared to 5 or so competitors who have been around a bit longer. Whichever tool I end up going with, only 2-3 people will be using it but I need to share insights across the company. At this point even $1500/mo is way more than I’m comfortable spending. It doesn’t make economic sense right now. It’ll make even less sense as we grow. Right now I’m not doing enterprise-scale prompt testing pipelines. Eventually, yeah, but right now I need solid data we can act on, track, and share across
the company.

Trustpilot just dropped a study (commissioned by Seer Interactive, March 2026)

analyzing 800,000 AI responses across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode.

The headline number: only 1% of AI responses cite a brand with no Trustpilot profile.

That jumps to 53.5% just by having an active profile, and hits 75.3% for brands that

collect 80+ reviews and respond regularly.

Two things stand out to me:

1. Absence isn't neutral

AI tools don't just ignore brands without reviews. According to the study, they

actively describe a missing profile as a warning sign for consumers. That's a

meaningful distinction. You're not invisible, you're flagged.

2. Review sites are now the #2 citation source in AI responses

14% of all citations go to review/trust sites — behind only brand websites. That's

ahead of news sites, forums, and editorial content.

The mechanism makes sense when you think about how AI systems evaluate sources:

- Recency: Trustpilot gets ~200k new reviews/day. Fresh, consistent content.

- Relevance: Detailed experiential data that directly answers "is this brand good?"

- Authority: Domain authority of 94/100. AI systems trust it.

What this actually means for GEO strategy:

Most GEO work focuses on what you control : your own content, structure, schema,

llms.txt. This study is a reminder that AI systems also evaluate what third parties

say about you.

Review collection and response management isn't just reputation work anymore.

It's GEO work.

One caveat : This study was commissioned by Trustpilot. The conclusions directly benefit their platform. The mechanisms described are real — but read with that context in mind.

Curious if anyone here has seen review signals show up in their own citation tracking.

Does the platform matter (Trustpilot vs G2 vs Capterra vs Google Reviews) or is it

purely about domain authority + volume?

On my side we worked on G2 reviews and it has definitely helped get clients from the US. Most of them tell us they came from LLM recommendation.

as a long time domainer, the domain bothers me soo much...;)

lmk thoughts:

https://gamma.app/docs/Hanks-Category-War-Plan-ph09a5spr9ij9o3