u/Ok_Bird7947

I'm a content marketer, been writing SEO articles for last few years. I understand the basics, target keyword, search intent, proper structure, internal links. The usual stuff.

But now everyone's talking about GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and I've optimising my article for AEO/GEO.

But I would like see from my peers, that what does "optimizing for AI" looks like at the content level.

Like, is it

-A different tone?

-More definitions and FAQs?

-Shorter sentences?

-Citing sources within the article itself?

-Something about schema?

Many years ago, way before LLMs, when people learned I was a software developer, they would often perk up and say, "Oh cool, I have an idea for a great app,"

And almost always I would cringe when they explained it in hopes I would build it for them. Mostly because how naive they sounded, thinking they have it all figure out in their head, while knowing how many hours and how much work it really takes to make it a sucess.

Today it hit me. Those people with the "amazing app idea" can now vibe-code a prototype-grade version of their idea. They get excited, launch, and then get discouraged when it fails to gain traction, or starts crashing if it does gain traction.

That experience, the pain of learning how hard it really is to make a successful ecosystem, that's what made me cringe all those years, and now, vibe coders are slowly coming to the same realization many developers had forever ago.

It's so much more than making a thing that kind-of looks like the "simple" image you had in your head. But just like the devs before you, keep at it, learn, adjust, retry. Figure it out. Eventually you will figure out that hidden work, and some day, you might cringe yourself at the innocent excitement of someone else just starting their vibe journey.

That's all. Have a great day.

A potential fine worth 10% of global revenue has a way of changing behavior fast.

Under the Digital Markets Act, the European Commission accused Google of systematically favoring its own services in search results — and now they're forcing a real reset.

Here's what's actually changing:

• Google must automatically display competing and specialized search engines alongside its own results
• The travel sector gets hit first — Google Flights and Hotel Finder lose their monopoly at the top of the page
• Comparison sites and niche players finally get a seat at the table

As Eskimoz, a leading digital acquisition agency, points out: this opens a genuine window of opportunity — especially for specialized players and brands that were building great niche content but remained invisible behind Google's own products.

3 concrete implications:

1. More diversity in results, less self-preferencing from Google
2. Real momentum for alternative and vertical search engines
3. New visibility opportunities for brands that were previously buried

The irony? Google spent years optimizing the SERP to keep users inside its own ecosystem. The EU is now legislating that advantage away.

Whether this creates a genuinely fairer search landscape or just reshuffles who controls the top of the page remains to be seen.

Is this the beginning of more equitable search in Europe — or just regulatory theater?

I used to be all-in on large language models. Built automations, client tools, business workflows..... hell, entire processes around GPT and similar systems. I thought we were seeing the dawn of a new era. I was wrong.

Nothing is reliable. If your workflow needs any real accuracy, consistency, or reproducibility, these models are a liability. Ask the same question twice and get two different answers. Small updates silently break entire chains of logic. It’s like building on quicksand.

That old line, “this is the worst it’ll ever be,” is bullshit. GPT-4.1 workflows that ran perfectly are now useless on GPT-5. Things regress, behaviors shift, context windows hallucinate. You can’t version-lock intelligence that doesn’t actually understand what it’s doing.

The time and money that go into “guardrailing,” “safety layers,” and “compliance” dwarfs just paying a human to do the work correctly. Worse, the safeguards rarely even function. You end up debugging an AI that won’t admit it’s wrong, wrapped in another AI that can’t explain why.

And then there’s the hype machine. Every company is tripping over itself to bolt “AI-powered” onto products that don’t need it. Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini—they’re all mediocre at best, and big tech is starting to realize it. Real productivity gains are vanishingly rare. The MASSIVE reluctance of the business world to say something is simply due to embarrassment of admission. CEO's are literally scrambling to re-hire, or pay people like ME to come in and fix some truly horrific situations. (I am too busy fixing all of the broken shit on my end to even think about having the time to do this for others. But the phone calls and emails are piling up. Other consultants I speak with say the same thing. Copilot easily being the most requested to be fixed).

Random, unreliable, and broken systems with zero audit requirements in the US. And I mean ZERO accountability. The amount of plausible deniability massive companies have to purposely or inadvertently harm people is overwhelming. These systems now influence hiring, pay, healthcare, credit, and legal outcomes without auditability, transparency, or regulation. I work with these tools every day, and have from jump. I am confident we are at minimum in a largely stalled performance drought, and at worst, witnessing the absolute floors starting to crumble.

I haven't seen any information about that, what do you think or not?

Ran an informal study. 500 product-recommendation prompts across ChatGPT's search mode, logged every cited source. Plan was to share the breakdown internally, but now I'm curious whether what I'm seeing is consistent with other verticals or just mine.

What have others observed? Is the source distribution relatively stable across niches, or does it vary a lot by category?

Edit: Thanks, this matches my data surprisingly well. Running my full 500-prompt breakdown against Parse's aggregate for a sanity check before publishing. Will post the writeup here once it is done.

I'm at an SEO conference in my city.

And I met this 22-year-old "SEO expert" who was looking for a job, and he gave me a 20-minute speech about how SEO was dead and that there was no point in working on it.

That now you should only focus on geo-optimization! I didn't say much because I disagreed with him so much, haha, but I listened anyway!

I wanted to tell you about it because it's funny, the opinion of some young people on this subject!

I’ve used AI tools for coding a little, but I found that the quality of the code isn’t very good. As a developer who gets paid to build products, I don’t feel that handing over the entire task to AI is professional. Even with AI, fundamental coding skills still seem to be required.

On top of that, products built mainly with AI feel unstable. and honestly, I wouldn’t want to work with teammates who rely too much on AI for their coding. Am i too anti‑AI? but that’s how I see it right now.

He gave us this directive two days ago... Knowing that I'm an SEO expert by training, I'm really hesitant to resign from my job.

What a stupid idea to want to quit SEO... he must have watched 5 podcasts on GEO and had FOMO to get into it.

And I know what you're going to say, but it's impossible to talk to him... so I think I'm going to leave! People can be so stupid sometimes with this kind of thing.