Strategy

How Do LLMs Cite Sources? Retrieval, RAG, and What Gets Picked

Where AI citations really come from: the training-data layer that cites nothing, the retrieval layer that cites everything it leaned on, and the selection rules that decide which pages get picked.

Emma Sivess · Sep 4, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

What a Premium Reddit Marketing Operation Looks Like (Compliantly)

What separates a premium Reddit marketing operation from cheap engagement services: disclosure-first participation, community-rules fluency, AI visibility payoff, and the cases where you should keep your money.

Emma Sivess · Sep 3, 2026 · 9 min read
Strategy

How AI Citations Get Built: 450+ Mentions, Step by Step

The four-stage pipeline behind every AI citation: what gets crawled, what gets indexed into the retrieval layer, how RAG-style retrieval picks passages, and why twenty consistent mentions beat one brilliant page.

Emma Sivess · Sep 2, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

Profound vs Peec vs Otterly: Which AI Visibility Platform Fits

An honest comparison of Profound, Peec, and Otterly from an agency that uses AI visibility tools every week: what each platform does well, who each one fits, and what none of them can do on its own.

Emma Sivess · Sep 1, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

Reddit Brand Mentions and AI Visibility: The Mechanism

How a Reddit brand mention travels into AI answers: the licensing deals feeding model training, the citation data behind live retrieval, and the compliant way to earn mentions that survive moderators.

Emma Sivess · Aug 31, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

How to Get AI to Recommend Your Brand (Any Engine)

The engine-agnostic playbook for earning AI recommendations: retrievability, quotable content, and third-party corroboration, with honest timelines.

Emma Sivess · Aug 30, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

GEO for Startups: The Unfair Early-Mover Advantage

Why startups hold a structural advantage in generative engine optimization right now: the early-mover compounding case, the data that should drive the decision, what it does for enterprise value, and the honest caveats on timeline and fit.

Emma Sivess · Aug 29, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

Questions to Ask Before Hiring a GEO Agency (Written by One)

Seven questions that separate a competent GEO agency from a confident one, what a good answer sounds like for each, and the honest cases where you should not buy GEO at all yet.

Emma Sivess · Aug 27, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

AEO Services: What Answer Engine Optimization Includes

What answer engine optimization services include when the vendor is doing real work: the audit, the technical access review, the content and validation arms, the measurement, and honest guidance on tools, pricing, and choosing a provider.

Emma Sivess · Aug 26, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

How to Get Your Brand Mentioned by ChatGPT

A practitioner playbook for earning ChatGPT mentions: crawler access, citation-ready content, third-party corroboration, and honest measurement.

Emma Sivess · Aug 25, 2026 · 9 min read
Strategy

What GEO Services Should Include: The Buyer's Checklist

A buyer''s checklist for generative engine optimization services: the six deliverables a legitimate engagement must include, the questions to ask on the sales call, and the red flags that should end it.

Emma Sivess · Aug 24, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

What a GEO Agency Actually Does (and When You Need One)

The actual workstreams inside a GEO agency retainer, how the job differs from a classic SEO agency, and the signals that tell you it is time to hire one.

Emma Sivess · Aug 23, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

GEO vs SEO: What Changes and What Does Not

A practitioner comparison of generative engine optimization and traditional SEO: the shared foundation, the genuinely new layers, and why the binary is a trap.

Emma Sivess · Aug 22, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

GEO vs AEO: Two Names, One Discipline

GEO and AEO are two names for the same discipline. Where each term came from, the small difference in emphasis, and why the work underneath is identical.

Emma Sivess · Aug 21, 2026 · 7 min read
Strategy

Does Reddit Affect ChatGPT Recommendations? What the Data Says

What the published data says about Reddit and ChatGPT recommendations: the licensing deals, the citation studies, and what a compliant Reddit presence actually does for AI visibility.

Emma Sivess · Aug 20, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

How Does ChatGPT Choose Which Brands to Recommend?

The mechanism behind ChatGPT brand recommendations, from training data to live retrieval, based on OpenAI documentation and published research.

Emma Sivess · Aug 19, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

GEO Agency vs DIY With Tools: An Honest Decision Guide

A straight answer on when to hire a GEO agency and when to run generative engine optimization yourself with tools like Profound, Peec, and Otterly.

Emma Sivess · Aug 18, 2026 · 8 min read
Strategy

Why Reddit Is the Most Underrated Signal in AI Search

Reddit threads are both Google-indexed and AI-cited. Here is why that dual-channel effect is so powerful.

Michael Houck · Jul 9, 2026 · 5 min read
Analysis

The Notion Problem: Losing the Enterprise Conversation

How a category leader can still lose the AI conversation to a competitor with better-structured content.

Michael Houck · Jul 2, 2026 · 5 min read
AEO

The Compounding Effect: How AI Authority Builds Over Time

AI authority is not a campaign, it compounds. The math of why starting early wins.

Michael Houck · Jun 25, 2026 · 5 min read
AEO

The Five Patterns That Keep Startups Out of AI Answers

Startups are usually invisible in AI answers for structural reasons, not competitive ones. Here are the five patterns, and the order to fix them in.

Emma Sivess · Jun 18, 2026 · 5 min read
Technical GEO

7 Technical Fixes That Unlock AI Citation Eligibility

Seven concrete changes that make your pages eligible to be cited in AI answers.

Emma Sivess · Jun 4, 2026 · 7 min read
Success story

33x Traffic in 12 Months: What Ambiance Creations Did Right

A breakdown of exactly what took Ambiance Creations from 939 clicks to 31,400 in a year.

Emma Sivess · May 14, 2026 · 5 min read

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