What the threads actually say.
The six threads that carry the whole debate. Every link goes to the real discussion, so you can check our reading of it.
The sub's biggest GEO debate. Top answer, with 33 points: what's old is new. Keyword stuffing has become answer stuffing, except answer stuffing is accidentally useful to human readers. The sites winning AI mentions have the same signals as SEO winners: authority and links.
Read the thread on Reddit →The hardest sceptic thread. OP looked inside the GEO tool platforms and found generic AI API calls in expensive dashboards. But buried in the comments is the counterpoint that matters: an agency set up proper UTM tracking for a client and sees 5 to 10 quote requests a week arriving from ChatGPT. About 15% of that client's leads. The tools may be thin. The traffic is real.
Read the thread on Reddit →An agency owner asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude for the best app designer in London. Same competitors every time. His business, never. The top reply nails why: LLMs surface names that appear repeatedly in best-of lists, reviews and articles. Pages you don't own. If you only exist on your own website, you barely exist to AI.
Read the thread on Reddit →Revenue does not equal AI visibility. Five competitors named, including one the founder had never heard of. The useful advice in the thread: build pages that answer the literal questions buyers ask AI, and get into comparison articles.
Read the thread on Reddit →The most technical thread and the most useful. When you ask ChatGPT a question, it quietly breaks it into several ordinary search queries and reads the results. So AI visibility means ranking for the questions AI asks on your behalf. You can literally watch the fan-out happen in your browser's dev tools.
Read the thread on Reddit →300,000 domains analysed: llms.txt has zero effect on AI citations. A follow-up on 137,000 sites: 97% of llms.txt files are never even fetched by AI bots. The sub's running joke is "RIP llms.txt, for the 999999999th time."
What Reddit gets right.
This page is the lesson.
Full disclosure: this page has Reddit in the URL because AI assistants append "reddit" to searches when they want honest opinions. You found this page the way ChatGPT finds everything. That is the entire lesson of AI SEO in one sentence: be present, be useful, and be structured so machines can read you.
We track AI visibility for every retainer client with real prompt-level data, not vibes. Where you show up in ChatGPT answers, which sources the AI reads, what moved this month. SEO and GEO in one retainer, because they are one job.
This is the thinking behind our SEO + GEO retainer.
Book a free callQuestions, answered.
Is GEO just SEO rebranded?+
Mostly, yes. About 80% of the work overlaps. The remaining 20% is specific: entity disambiguation, machine-readable structure, third-party citation seeding, and tracking how AI assistants actually describe you. We sell them as one retainer for exactly this reason.
Does llms.txt help you get cited by AI?+
The best available data says no. Studies across hundreds of thousands of domains found no citation effect, and most llms.txt files are never read by AI bots. We add one anyway because it costs five minutes. Anyone charging you for it as a deliverable is selling snake oil.
Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitors and not me?+
Because they are named in articles, lists and reviews across the web and you are not. AI assistants recommend names that appear repeatedly in context on pages the business does not own. Fixing that is citation work, not website work.
Do AI assistants really send business?+
Yes, measurably, and modestly for now. Agencies on Reddit report tracked ChatGPT referrals converting to real quote requests. We see AI referrals in client analytics too. The volume is small but it compounds, and the businesses getting cited now are building a lead the late arrivals will pay to close.
How do I check what AI says about my business?+
Ask ChatGPT the questions your customers would ask, in a fresh chat with no history. If you are invisible, that is your baseline. We run this properly with prompt-level tracking across hundreds of customer questions as part of every retainer, and the first report is part of our free audit.
Is optimising for AI search worth it for a small local business?+
Yes, and it is cheaper for you than for anyone else. Local AI queries have thin competition, so a well-structured site with consistent citations can own its niche quickly. The same work improves your Google rankings, so nothing is wasted even if AI referrals stay small.
More Reddit, summarised: what Reddit says about Fresha and is SEO worth it, according to Reddit.
Get found. Get cited.
Book a free call. We will show you exactly what AI says about your business today.
Or email: hello@sorttheclicks.com