How the GEO Playbook Is Challenging SEO With Paid Citations, Reddit & AI Search

Edward Sturm: we are talking about GEO versus SEO on this episode of the show. Let's go. We are joined by David Quade and Calum Kennard, a new face to the podcast. Calum, thank you for coming on.

Uh, Calum, you're at Clicksl- ClickSlice, and you help brands rethink how SEO, AI search, PR, and content strategy fit together in a world where traditional search behavior is disappearing and AI-mediated discovery is becoming the new front door to the internet. And your rep said to me, "Traditional SEO is primarily focused on helping pages rank and earn clicks from search results, while AEO focuses on helping AI systems understand, trust, and surface content when generating answers.

What makes this conversation timely is that search behavior itself is changing. As more users turn to ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity for answers, visibility is no longer only about where you rank. Increasingly, it's whether you're included in the answer at all." Calum, thank you again for coming on the show.

Can you break that down? Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Um, and yeah, really excited to speak with yourself as well there, David, too.

David: Nice to meet you Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: um, awesome shirt by the way, David, and I've already, um, complimented Edward's as well, Compact Keywords, which is brilliant branding. Edward Sturm: Thank you. Thank you Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So yeah, I'm the head of sales here at ClickSlice. So for a bit of background on myself, I've got over, over 10 years', um, sales and marketing experience as well, especially on the go-to-market side.

Um, so I'm in a pretty awesome position to be speaking with lots of different business leaders when it comes to both the SEO side and the AEO, GEO, AI search side as well, whichever acronym, you know, you'd, you'd like to use for it. But essentially, over the last six months, every single day, I've been speaking with multiple business leaders, uh, from both the local side, you know, l- local size, all the way up to kinda like, you know, the nine-figure kinda like global brands, um, on their SEO and their AEO, and essentially how both of them fit together.

Um, what we're seeing at the moment is a lot of change, and the way I see it is when it comes to, let's say GEO verse SEO, is they are completely different. Um, and if you want to approach ranking for them, um, you do need completely different strategies for both, and that's something that we specialize, specialize in, and we've helped multiple clients do at ClickSlice. Um, the way I see that how they tie in together is SEO has become a fundamental infrastructure layer of AEO, GEO How would you like to process that one, guys?

David: Oh, just, just, um, waiting to hear how they're different and why they're different Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah, really good question. So the way I describe it is this. SEO is a very two-dimensional medium of search. It's primarily at its most fundamental layer about keywords and getting traffic for those key- keywords.

So for example, if you're a service business, you'd be focusing and you get 80 to 90% of your conversions coming from service pages. If you're an e-commerce brand, let's say you're on Shopify, uh, you'd have a similar amount of conversions coming from your collection pages. Or if you're on, um, WooCommerce, it would be your category pages, right? Um, essentially it's about ranking for keywords and getting traffic.

When it comes to AEO, you're dealing with answer engines, and it's a lot more third dimensional because you're not… You know, it's like the average, um, keyword, uh, on SEO, you know, on, on Google or Bing, you know, is like 3.37 words. That's the average phrase. When it comes to answer engines, the average phrase, you know, the average prompt you could say is actually 23 words.

The intent is completely different and it's multilayered in the aspect of, um, on Google Search, you type in a keyword such as, um, you know, best natural moisturizers. I use Sukin as a moisturizer brand. It's very good for your skin. Um, uh, but when it comes to AEO, you n- you know, you might actually kind of have a multilayered conversation with this answer engine, this AI, this LLM, right?

So you might actually have 20 different prompts within that conversation, each of them having a different kind of usage. Um, does it use SEO to use some of these, you know, to, to find answers? Yes, it does. Um, so you ask a question on a, ask a question on an answer engine, um, what are the top five, um, brands for X, Y, and Z?

It will look at 30 different sources, you know, using query fanouts, q- query fanout topic coverage. I know that you've been speaking about that in depth. Um, and it'll extrapolate that data and give you an answer based off of what it says. So in that aspect, it, you know, SEO does play a, a fundamental role, but how it… The intent behind that, um, is completely different.

And, you know, when you're using these platforms like Profound, um, and when it comes to placing these citations, um, to influence what answers they provide, it's a very different strategy to traditional SEO. So that's how they're different. So SEO, two-dimensional. Um, AEO or GEO, that's, it's more three-dimensional and it's a lot more comprehensive.

Um, so that's how I best describe it David: Okay. So let-let-let's, let's dig into the word different and not how it's used, right? So there's how it's used, which is an empirical problem, requires empirical data. A recent study by either Semrush or SE Ranking showed that actually the average length of a prompt is actually only about 30% longer than a Google search.

That's the average, right? So I understand that some people use more, right? Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah. I mean, some prompts can be over 2,000 words David: whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yeah, thanks. So, um, the average length is a bit - is actually just a little bit longer, right? I understand that you're talking to a couple of companies a day. I talk to a couple of companies a day.

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These pages rank on Google and convert so much better than normal that when I discovered this years ago, I couldn't believe this was allowed. It's less work too. The average compact keywords page is only 415 words. Compact Keywords is a 13-hour deep course on getting sales with SEO.

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It works with AI, it's less work than traditional SEO, and it makes way more money. You can get it now at compactkeywords.com. Back to the podcast.

David: if we look at a s- a study that looks at like hundreds of thousands of users and the average prompt is long. So yes, w- there are like 1% power users, but that's about difference in use, right? And so I think what our, our listeners want to find out today is why geo and SEO are different, not the intent, not the prompt history, because at the end of the day, if you ask about, you know, the best airline or the best, um, hotel, there's only a certain segment of, of providers, right?

It's not like just your whole history. So, so Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I'll, I'll throw that question back at you then, David. All right. So for example, um, our operations director and CEO have just come back from the Masterminders and, uh, SEO conference in Manchester and, you know, the consensus there was SEO and AEO are completely different.

And in fact, the only… Every single industry is treating them as different. Every single, every t- every single company industry I speak to, they are treating them as different. The only kind of industry that kind of is arguing that they are the same thing seems to be SEO. David: Okay.

Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So I'll throw the question back and say, I'll say, why do you think they're the same? David: So I'm just gonna repeat what I just said. So, you speaking to 10 companies or 100 companies or going to a conference for AEO and everyone saying that it's different, I get it. Your opinion is it's different.

I'm not debating that your opinion is that it's different. I'm asking on behalf of the audience and myself, what is the difference? Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Sure. Um, I, I think I already pretty much described and summarized the difference quite well David: Okay.

So I, I can un - I, I can see how I can get into fanout, because I have hundreds of thousands of them, through SEO, and I know that I didn't appear there before I did SEO to get there. So I can see how I can get there through SEO. You said it's different. You tell me how it's different Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So So when it comes to SEO, like I'm not arguing that SEO is not a fundamental - doesn't play a fundamental role in, in, the infrastructure layer of AI search David: So ha- I, Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Well, that's the difference ends because it - 'cause how it's, how it's diff- s- sorry to, to interrupt.

How it's different is, so the strategy in David: So we're, we're both on the same page that SEO- Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: which that you would go for AEO visibility is different to how you would rank for SEO. You use SEO as a kind of, l- like I mentioned, the infrastructure layer as part of that, but it's still different in the aspect of… Yeah. David: Yeah, you, you So when you say Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: oh David: is different, that's where you stay, right? And then you can describe how it's different Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah.

So I think a really good study is one by, from Ahrefs recently, um, where 34% of the top citations, um, LLMs actually providing are actually from pages with no SEO value whatsoever. Okay? So what's actually happening there is you need SEO to obviously be visible. So when these LLMs are kind of doing that search, um, the website needs to be obviously indexed, right?

But then what they're actually doing is they're then looking at the other kind of, let's say, pages within that website, and then they are using those as citations. So in that aspect, I think that's one aspect of how LL- how LLMs are using search in, in a very different way to SEO. Um, obviously they need to be indexed. They need to be discoverable.

If you have really good SEO, a lot of the time you are going to appear in AI search. Um, but it's not going to be very targeted. You know, if you look at the top queries within those query fan-outs, you'll find phrases like comparisons and reviews David: Cycle on 2026, 2025, Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: absolutely. And, you know, and when you look at, when you look at those, um, statistics, it's kind of like it is using SEO as that, as that layer, as I said, but it's operating in a fundamentally different way to traditional SEO.

So it's same, same but different. You, you know, there is definitely an argument that, yeah, they're kind of the same thing because they overlap and you kind of need kind of a certain degree of SEO to- for AEO to work at the moment. Um, but the way I think it's different, um, is it, it's a completely different strategy. It's a lot more third dimensional.

For example, um Within an LLM, the way I kind of talk about it with clients is you kind of have the full marketing funnel from the top of the funnel, discovery, awareness, all the way to the bottom of the funnel, action, um, and decision-making all within one conversation on let's say ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini. And it starts off with those kind of like query fan-outs where you're looking at comparisons, you're looking at reviews, you're getting those listicles, um, you're getting kind of like, you know, the top seven companies that do X, the top five e-commerce brands that do Y.

All right? And then you get into the reviews, the comparisons between them, the ingredients, um, you know, the services, the quality, and then you might have 20 different prompts all within that same conversation David: Okay. um Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: isn't that completely different from SEO? Isn't that a completely fund- That's a fundamental change in how people search and how people make decisions David: can I can I just Okay so let's just steal man your argument right So you're saying so you're saying that if I go and ask a search engine for the topbased water bottles uh let's just say um topbased sparkling waters right It'll recommend either Perrier or um Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Dehydration.

Mm-hmm David: Um but when I go to um put that in as a prompt it'll change the prompt And so it might add like top reviewed um most or and it'll add maybe twenty twentyfive Like you said it changes the query a little bit right That that's what you said right Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I mean, yeah, so it uses, it, it, it uses those, it uses those queries to, um, David: that Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: at, David: the Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: to, to, to se- to, to use Google Search essentially, yeah David: because it can't actually access Google's index It has to perform a search So it changes the prompt and it breaks it into the query fanout and in the drift the query fanout is different from the prompt So it gives Google a different um set of queries It's the same as when you use Google and you type in like best SEO company NYC and Google lists all of the best SEO companies NYC and Gemini which is an LLM uh sends a query fanout that says like What are the top SEO consultant experts in New York And spells out New York right So it's like two different phrases and that's why people always think like Oh I can't get into AIO because I'm visible like in organic search but I'm not visible in the AIO all you have to do is figure out what the query fanout is and add that to your um organic search right So sometimes it's easier right Like it's a lot easier to get into index for like best SEO experts twenty twentyfive um than it is for best SEO expert full stop right That's actually a lot harder And so a lot of sites could be losing traffic or not even relevant at that topic then become relevant in the AIO search And so effectively all you have to do is change what add to what you rank for and not just rank for the search but rank for the prompt query and then that's how you're visible Because hold on a second Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I mean David: in the result of pages sent back by Google the LLM can't make it up from nowhere You have you have to be in the result set whether it's ten or twenty or thirty pages Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: That's kind - that's kind of true, but it's also a little, a little bit simplistic because there's also multiple layers to that.

So you've also got competition, so you've also got other rival, um, firms going after those, you know, those query fan-outs too. Um, and then, you know, which is often based on, um, how well optimized is it for AEO and how specific is it to those prompts? Um, how specific is that company, um, company sentiment as well? Obviously, sentiment is a big driving factor within AEO too.

So for example, you might rank for all of your different query fan-outs, and you might have incredible visibility. But if the LLMs have a negative sentiment of your brand, you might appear, but they're gonna recommend - they're gonna be recommending your competitors too. So you're absolutely right in one aspect, but like I mentioned with AEO, there is that kind of - it's a lot more three-dimensional and there's a lot more to kind of think about at the same time David: Okay So you said the LLMs Do you work with um ChatGPT and Gemini Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Uh, yeah, all, all of them.

So, David: Okay Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: so as, as an agency, we use Profound, um, which is, you know, in, in our opinion, it's the, the best tool. It's the, you know, the first to market, and we're actually partnered with them as well. David: Mmhmm Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: so David: had some I've had some Profound's like early beta testers give up on geo and and say Look we're getting all of our business from SEO for like um marketing automation searches so so if you take Gemini which is a full LLM Google actually wrote the public document that defines the query fanout right And so Google um Google's LL like are somewhat similar to like ChatGPT somewhat similar to Perplexity right So if you go to Profound Profound and you put in all of your prompts um Profound will run those prompts and then give you the query fanouts for you to create content for right Cause I have several Profound accounts and that's how it works Right So it's giving you the keywords and it says if you write content or produce content for these keywords or if you reach out to these pages that rank and ask be in those pages you might get mentioned right And like you said the criteria might be different Like if for example if you're cited in one article you might not get mentioned but if you're cited in five articles you have a higher chance of being mentioned right And so Google released their document on um GEO and they said there's absolutely no difference between what you need to optimize for Gemini as you do for SEO or any other LLM because at the same time they're the infrastructure engine as you said for most of those LLMs Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah.

Um, so, so I took a little bit of a look into this before the call. Um, so ChatGPT, um, it will tend to u- when it actually does these searches, it will use a mix between Bing and Google to, to find these things. Gemini will u- obviously use Google 'cause it's Google. Uh, Perplexity will use, um, Bing and Google, and then Claude, not too sure what Claude Yeah.

David: Which is a Google like term Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I actually asked, I actually asked Claude, um, you know, "Are you using Google David: Yeah is Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: or Bing?" Um, and it basically just said, "I don't know." David: Yeah Um XX will tell you it uses itself right That somehow magically in the last six months they've built their Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah David: right search engine But but they all use either X uh And they don't use actually Google directly They use uh tools like SerpAPI right to scrape it cause Google actually blocks people from scraping it So Bing is a Google clone Brave Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah.

David: a Google clone X is a Google clone Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah David: um the end at the end of the day you have to appear in the query fanout or you're not gonna appear unless you're a household name right So Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Mm-hmm. David: household names So like IBM and Microsoft will come up if you're learning on a particular forum or if you're learning your large language model is being trained to to learn the English language and the use of it There might be some very big brands like you may hear about Bruce Clay right Cause he's the father of SEO so he could come up in a lot of documents And so that might be fundamental and instrumental to what the LLM knows right So the LLM might already know about Bruce Clay and then it might do some grounding right Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So, so David, so is your, is your argument… David: I just wanna finish my Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Oh, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Go on David: Sso basically what I'm saying is that if I see set of LLM results same as Profound right And I see that it's not we're not coming up with a particular prompt and then Profound gives me back the keywords that the query fanout's broken into We add those keywords we start to appear for those prompts And so you said that SEO is twodimensional because it's just about ranking for keywords but pages can rank for multiple keywords And at the end of the day the only way for Bing or Google to return results is from a set of keywords And it can't do it any other way Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: yeah.

So I think when it comes to query fan-outs, what we're talking about is a very small aspect of AEO in general. Um, but it is an important layer, and I think it is still that layer which is SEO does play an important role. Does it mean, does it mean that SEO and AEO are the same thing? No, I don't think it does David: Okay So what what you said it's a small part So why is it a small part How much of it is a small part and what's the other part Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Well, a large part of it as well is to do with the, the citations you would acquire.

So where you'd actually place these fan-outs, these queries, right? So if you look at some David: do you mean how do you mean where you would replace the spare nuts I don't understand Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So, David: where Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: so if you, if you look at, so if you look at, if you look at other th- other aspects of AI, if you look at sentiments, so if you literally look at the public relations element of what's being said, um, it's a lot more kind of … It's a lot more content-focused and narrative-focused.

David: But where does that happen Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Hey, let me finish my point. Hang on. David: Okay Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Uh, if you look at where to place citations, so where to place these data points in which these LLMs are referencing certain brands, products, services. Um, but obviously you can pinpoint where they are in Profound and then place them strategically, you know, be it Reddit or, or be it, I don't know, The Guardian or something.

Um, or, um, you know, if you look at all of the different aspects of … And if you look at prompts as well, so if you look at, you know, the intent behind certain prompts, and then if you look at the, uh, disparity between the visibility between different LLMs, you start to realize that when it comes to placing certain phrases within q- query fan-outs to rank for certain prompts is actually just a very, you know, it's a pa- it's a part of the, the whole pie But it's just, it's, it's an important part, but it doesn't… David: different Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: It's different, right?

It's, it's just one, it's one aspect. So, so, so saying that, you know, using SEO keywords within query fan-out and then saying that AEO is the same as SEO because of that, it, to me, like that argument doesn't stack up when you see SEO as that infrastructure layer David: I I get it and I I'll refrain from saying that you said it right So um let's say you're in Profound and you say Okay I really want to be the top four marketing agency for law right Which I'm currently working on And Profound comes back and says You need to appear in bestrated um law marketing agencies by Forbes magazine that article's first right And so then you email out and you say I'd like to be placed in your article that you wrote But where is Prom Where where is Profound getting that article from Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So what Profound does is it runs these prompts within its system.

Um, so for example, some of our prompts, we've executed them over 3,000 times and David: But hang on a second Where did Where does it execute the Cause Profound isn't an LLM right So where does it execute the fanout Cause you said earlier it places the QFO So I just So the audience can follow along maybe try this at home Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: All, all it, all it does, David: where does the where Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: all it… David: query fanout placed Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: You, can, you can see, you can see the query fan-outs, um, you know, yourself.

You can, you can inspect it yourself. But also, all- David: are they Where where do they live Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: The fan-outs. David: Mmhmm Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Where do they live? So the queries, um, all I know is that you can, you can inspect it, um, within this, within ChatGPT.

So if you go on ChatGPT, you can type in the code, um, the, sorry, the, um… David: Yeah EdEdward has a Eddie and Edward and I Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: have a URL and you can inspect it. So, so all Profound does, David: where Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: it, it just take, it takes that information, all right? It takes that and then it, it looks at the fact and it has a nice, awesome dashboard where it displays all of that data, right? That's, that's all it does.

And then… But essentially what Profound does is it finds that and it looks at all the different citations, all the different queries, and it gives you recommendations on, on where you can actually put them. All right? So as a team, you can do a few, two different things. You can take it all as kind of gospel on, on Profound, um, and you can just do exactly what it tells you to do as a strategy.

Um, or you can do it in a more strategic way as well. So obviously you can look at, you can look at the different, um, queries. You can maybe think of, all right, well, what's some other queries that could potentially be working here as well? You look at where to, where to place them.

You know, there, there's an awful lot of thought when it comes to, to AEO, AEO strategy within Profound, um, or any other tools that you might be using for that matter as well. Um, but, but yeah, you know, I think when it comes to, like, what we're talking about here in this conversation, the fact that we're having it is just kind of proof and evidence that it's, you know, it's a, it's a whole new discipline. David: I think it's Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: It's, it's a whole new method of marketing David: I think it's Le let's not use con let's let's try not to use conjecture as evidence right So I I think it's I think it's accepted that Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I'm a bit David: think it's Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: conjecturing.

I'm head of sales. Um, but no, go ahead David: I think that it's I think that S that SEO gets you into the result set of the query fanout because I don't know of any other way that Bing Search Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I, I agree it does. Yeah. David: right Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: with that, yeah David: then Profound can look at the underlying query fanout and tell you that if you appear for those you'll get cited or if you can't rank for those cause not all of their clients can you can appeal to some of the other people that rank for it So the the query fanout is created by a defined process right That all of the LLM companies share So what is the difference between what we do in SEO to get into that citation list and what you do in AEO That that's the question from the start And um I think we've been at this for a while and I think the audience just wants to know not what the SEO part is but the different part That's just If we could just like let's focus on the different part for a second Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Sure, yeah.

Um, in that one aspect, because you focused on the one aspect where there isn't too much difference, I, I do, I believe, um, when it comes to that fanat- you know, it is very tied into SEO. And as I mentioned David: a different it's just a different prompt right So Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Well, as I, David: in the Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: as I mentioned, you know, it still uses SEO in a, in a certain degree to, to find these things. It's, it's - SEO is the infrastructure layer of David: So Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: AI search David: the nonSEO part That's the question Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: The non-SEO part.

The non-SEO part is a, is a really, really good question, and I think a lot of people probably would have a different answer to that. My answer, my specific answer to that is a complete … Is that it requires a different mindset and strategy. So for example A re- I think a really good example of this would be when you're creating AI citations. Typically, what we can do when we create a citation, be it on someone's website in the form of, let's say, either a blog post or a guide, or as an external citation on another, um, external site, could be we can target about four to five different prompts per citation or a few different topics.

Okay? When it comes to SEO, you know, you could argue that that's quite similar. Instead of targeting prompts, you know, we're targeting keywords. David: Mmhmm Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: But once - When - If you look at the kind of prompts and the kind of topics that come up via that more third-dimensional conversation that you're having, it is a bit of a different story when it comes to strategy because it's a - you have to be a lot more specific, and you have to also think what kind of, kind of prompt or what kind of conversation within the marketing funnel is actually being had here.

So, for example, when it comes to SEO, there's two main types of keywords, right? There's the intent - you know, there's the transactional keywords, um, and there's the informational intent keywords. When it comes to LLMs You get to be a lot more specific to what, what the purpose of that prompt is. So for example, you know, if you're looking to buy some new trainers, um, you'd be looking at the color, you'd be looking at the size, you'd be looking at the reviews, you'd be doing all of those different things all within the same kind of conversation that's been happening.

David: Because you can't do that with Google right You can't look at different color Like that's why we all have black Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: You, you, you can't, you c- David: It's very frustrating in summer cause they pick up a lot of heat here in Florida right Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: You, you can, you can, David: a way to have like a Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: you can do that with SEO but not to the s- nowhere near to the same degree David: No no You only have two intents right Is that what you said Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: No one can deny that.

No one can deny that David: so you said you only have two intents in SEO right Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: No, two type, two, two main types of general keywords David: just just two main types Cause yeah cause in your your English is limited when you arrive at a Google search bar You're you're not allowed to use all of the English vocabulary But the thing Well obviously you are Sorry I was being sarcastic But you're at a prompt right and you say Okay look I'm in Denver I wanna find a dentist in Denver right Just cause alliteration is awesome So you're still using the full English language right It it can't find It can't move a dentist to Denver that doesn't exist right So it what no matter what you put in it as your prompt it still has to arrive at a query it can give a search engine right eeven though you could have a very colorful conversation and Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Doesn't David: about like how you had braces as a kid and you were bullied as a kid because you had braces Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah David: say Well look I now need braces again because my wisdom teeth came out and they pushed my teeth it still has to turn that prompt with all those extra intents into a search engine query fan out does Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So, so it depends, right?

So on LLMs David: No no no no no no It's it's it's a binary It's a yes or no question right It's not a it's it Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I'd say it's, it is though because like it David: It's a yes or no question It has to break into a search that a search engine can understand It it has to It's like you you Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: language models don't always make search engines though, do they? Sometimes they will ha- sometimes they'll, they'll give you a response based off of training data, um, or some- David: a third type of Well hold on a second We we've had this discussion before where training data is nineteen exabytes it's twentyfive trillion gigabytes of data So there's X amount of training data It doesn't know every dentist in Denver in Hackney in London in Dublin Ireland in Cape Town South Africa in Perth Australia in Moscow and in Shanghai and Buenos Aires and Bucharest It doesn't right So Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I agree.

I agree. So, and that's, that's when search comes in. Yeah David: You you can't impact the impact the training because the model is already built And if you were If you got into Claude Five you're not in Claude Five So let's just stop that So iit has to break the prompt into a query or there's unicorns in the system So you pick Do you want do you want unicorns or do you want it ha it has a query fan out Because you just said every prompt you put in Profound will find the query fan out for you Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I, David: that Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: yeah, I agree.

You've already, you've already mentioned that, David. So, but, but when it come, when it comes to being different though, it's like, you know, I've mentioned the sentiment, I've mentioned obviously the, the strategy around different citations, how you'd actually formulate, David: You haven't You said the Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: content completely David: They're Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: differently. I've also, you know, haven't even talked about kind of conversion rates or kind of- David: No no Conversion rates are Sorry we're nowhere near conversion rates Let's just come back a second You said the intents are different Give me the types of intents that are different because I don't believe you and then tell me how um Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Okay.

The intent might not be different, but I would say it's a lot more complex and a lot more efficient. Um, so for example, I want some red trainers. I type in red N- or, and I want some Nikes. I'd type in red Nike trainers onto Google, right?

Um, when it comes to LLMs, you can get, go a lot deeper about what you'd like, um, and you can actually get it to do the search for you. Essentially, what L- these LLMs are doing is they're outsourcing SEO for us in a lot of ways as that infrastructure layer. All right? And that's really kind of the main difference between, between things, and that's what it's a main difference David: said they're the s you just said that they're the same thing and that's why they're Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So different.

It's, it's, it's fundamentally different. If you are using, right, if you're using an LLM to do search for you, and it's able to look at 30 different sources all at once, extrapolate the data and give that to you, all right? That is completely different from you typing in, "I want some red trainers," and doing a search on Google. David: Cause it doesn't give you 30 results Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: No, it… I mean, come on.

Like, that is so, that's game- that's so game-changing. In, like, if you… And I do want to go into conversion rates because it backs, it backs up. It has a conversion… Google Search, sorry, Google Search, on average, it's got a con- and same with Google Ads as well, conversion rate around two, 2.4% conversion rate.

Okay? Across… This is across, uh, e-commerce, the service industry, the tech sector, right? Okay. Now, if you actually go and you look at the conversion rates when it comes to LLMs, it's closer to, like, 14% conversion rate.

David: That's don't have Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Like, David: for all Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: for- it's like 48% David: data for some Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: of people, people, people trust these LLMs David: but it's only one Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: like David: specific Okay but it's one percent Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: it's their therapist. They trust, they trust it with their lives David: Okay it's one percent of traffic We're not we're not in a position to move users from Google to LLMs right OpenAI is struggling with that So let's just come back to I'm setting out my strategy is I want to be visible in Google and I want to be visible in Gemini Google said you do the exact same thing There's nothing different you can do There's no schema there's no LLMs there's no chunking Um we wrote the book on We've got Gemini It's the world's largest LLM by usage and we say that you need to get into the query fanout and it's the exact same thing And you're saying it's different and we would love to know what the difference is when you said the strategy and the mindset is different forget the mindset of the user but for the business owner what's different Is the difference that instead of just ranking my own page I'm also trying to ask someone else and blag my way onto their page Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Okay, cool.

So if you're doing traditional SEO, you're rank- as mentioned before, you're ranking for those keywords and you're gonna be very limited to the results that you get within LLMs. Um, using the data that we would, we would have within Profound, we'd look- be looking at sentiment, we'd be looking at visibility, we'd look at where you're appearing. We'd be looking at your target prompts, how to formulate data around those specific prompts. Then you're - It's a completely different strategy to what you'd be doing on SEO, um, and it would yield far greater results when it comes to AI search.

You know, this is, this is… David: if I have Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: But that's, that's how it's different. You know, it's - I feel like, I feel like you're trying to… It's the same thing because, like, there's a fundamental layer where you're kind of doing the same… David: asked Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: You used query fan-outs as your argument there, but, like, I, I don't think that holds up David: you do that's d I'm just asking what you do that's different And you're just saying that well the prompts change and you have to appear for different prompts And Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So, so you're thinking - David: that Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I get it.

You're, you're thinking of it as a tech. So you're - the way you're, you see it, all right, you're looking at the technical aspect, all right, of because it's using, you know, Google Search, using these keywords when it comes to the query fan-outs, um, it's exactly the same. There's no difference. What I'm s- and you're, you're using that as like the, the main thing.

What I'm saying is that is still SEO to a certain degree, but that is the infrastructure layer. Where the core difference is, it's the strategy in which that you target, implement, and execute the, uh, your, your content, your placement, and your overall marketing strategy when it comes to AI search. So for example, if you- David: be in SE why can't that be a part of SEO I don't know That's what I don't understand Cause I I have like 90000 citations Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So it's a brilliant question That's brilliant.

Why can't it… And I think that's the crux of it, isn't it? Like, why can't it be part of SEO? Um, I think that's more of a semantic thing. I think it's more of a… I think over the years there's been, like, SEO has solidified itself as its own discipline.

Um, you know, you, you, you do backlinks, you do on-page optimization, you do your keyword research, um, you do your technical SEO, you remove penalties, X, Y, and Z. Everything that you're doing is essentially to rank for keywords in Google and get traffic and sales. Now AEO's come along and it's created an equally complex, um, way of es- essentially targeting ranking on LLMs with a lot of overlap with SEO. Why can't that just be an extension of SEO?

Do you know what? It pos- it probably can, but the thing is, people are calling it GEO and AEO David: Well I call it SEO Edward calls it SEO Um that's a majority Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: industry calling that though. And from David: the SEO industry is the bigger Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: a marketing perspective, from a marketing perspective, I, I disagree with that. I think you should go forward with the times and go with what people understand.

Um, and, you know, is there a strong case for it to be part of SEO? Absolutely. I think there is, especially coming from an SEO. I, I think there is.

David: agree on that Yeah Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I, do agree, but I also think there's just an equal, um, argument that it is something new. And do you know what? I think people have decided it is something new You've got AEO, you've got AI search, you've got GEO, you've got all this debate around all these different things. David: Yeah there's there's people who are trying HEO there are people who are trying AEO AI SEO and and I think answer engine optimization is something different right But um Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: There's a lot of debate around that David: to me like can you do AEO without SEO Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Oh, that's a good question.

Um Do you know what? I think you can, but I just think it's … I, I think you can to a certain deg- it de- it, you can, but it depends to which degree. So for example, if you want … If you … I think you can do, you can do AEO as long as your page is indexed and findable, um, even if it has zero SEO value. Yeah David: so so basically if you can't be found in Bing or Google you can't really do AEO right Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I believe so.

However, that said, if you were to get ex… David: You've got one Um Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: No, but, but we do work with clients that are very, um, they have very strict brand guidelines. Um, one of them is a very, very prominent designer in New York. Um, and, and the whole crux of their strategy is they will not do their own hosted content, right? So no blog post, no, no AO optimized pieces on their website itself.

It's full on, um, external citations. So we're looking at things like David: But how how do those external websites show up right Like so let's say they get a quote on Forbes or they get a quote on Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah David: someone else's blog or G2 or Capterra cause G2 and Capterra invest a lot in SEO right I mean in fact G2 and Reddit never did anything for AEA right They built their sites for SEO Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Again, it's that, it's that infrastructure layer.

Yeah David: Right So you can't do AEO without SEO but SEO could include AEO And I think that's really what we're saying Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah. SEO is a fundamental layer at the moment of David: is there anything Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: AI David: that you do to above SEO like um and knowledge management Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: What do you mean? David: Well a lot of GEOs talk about for example um the way to get increased visibility is to inject um their clients into knowledge graphs right And so what a lot of tools that we can see are doing is they generate hundreds and hundreds of prompts uh which in turn generate thousands and thousands of uh query fanouts which then to Google makes it look like there's a huge amount of activity on a on a brand with the hope of injecting and it's kind of like a black hat technique into an LLM Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah.

So that's not something that, that we've been doing. Um, but I have seen some success in that area. Um, can't actually remember the name of the firm that are doing it, but essentially they've been doing that. They've, they've essentially been doing that.

It's a bit like kind of if there's like programmatic SEO, it's, they've been doing kind of like programmatic AEO where they've essentially been doing that, and they've just been deleting any kind of, any of the content citations that just haven't been working for them, only leaving the ones that have worked. I don't know if that's going to continue working for them, um, and or, or if that's going to continue working, but it's a very interesting area of expertise. The question I want to, I guess, put to you guys would be, what are your thoughts on the future of search?

And, 'cause at the moment, something that I do get asked by a lot of clients and, and business leaders is, you know, at the moment SEO is, is important when it comes to AEO to a certain degree. Are we ever gonna get to a point where- It will stop being important. So that infrastructure layer of SEO for AEO, GEO stops, stops being a thing. I don't think it will.

I don't think that because these LLMs that at the moment they require, they require Google and they require SEO and they require all these different data points to provide answers, to train their models, um, to do all these different things. Um, you know, it's almost like we need some kind of new kind of form of search altogether, um, to replace that. What do you think? David: So I think it's a bifurcated market and two things have already happened Um so I've I've been in SEO for a long time right Um I I founded my first agency with TRex and um he he unfortunately was killed a rock from the sky hit him uh it was a long long time ago anyway And um basically uh this I I My first job in in South Africa was actually installing the internet in companies So I would literally install 36 36 by 6 366 um US Robotics modems into companies and that's how we Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Pretty, pretty awesome.

Yeah David: at the time the W3C consortium was building like the world referral model They Edward Sturm: David, David Friedsre - Oh David: which took another ten years to complete and went took out Adobe uh Acrobat MaMacromedia Flash if you remember that which is very problemsome And what killed it was actually the iPhone cause Steve Jobs refused to put it on the iPhone But at the time we realized that the the old binary 8bit 16bit system wasn't fit for purpose and we knew that there were lots of limitations built into systems For example if you want to watch a movie it was delivered in a series of files It wasn't actually streamed then the cloud came along and people realized we can't go back and reinvent binary We can't go back and change right So for example when you watch a video at 1080 that's that was that infrastructure was way too big to manage in 2000 Now we're at 4K and even computers with a thousand times the memory and processing power can barely keep up with 4K right Like a 4K video is like An hour's worth of 4K video is like indexing 30000 sites or 30000 web pages right It's a phenomenal waste of of of space But the cloud is built on two standards Microsoft Windows NTFS which I think was designed in 1992 and Lin or and Linux FS which was designed around the same time And so we just built on it And I think you're right I think if you look at PageRank the only people that can replace PageRank are brand CMOs and brand marketers who are not SEOs And in their mind since day one they've replaced it Anything could replace Their threeyearold nephew could replace PageRank right The problem is that PageRank is a trilliondollar um algorithm Google's revenues today are founded by uh 5 of their company works in search right The the ads team don't technically work in search They sell the benefits of search And so everyone has copied them Bing Yandex Baidu have all copied Google Um Brave Search is just a clone if you were uh a Perplexity which isn't even an LLM or you were a Gemini or wherever for you to come up with that infrastructure cost I reckon would cost about a trillion dollars in today's money Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I don't see it happening anytime soon.

David: Can't happen So Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah David: right If if you're not in that query fan out because there are so many billions and billions of pages and options you can't get into a re a a an engine unless you're a household name right Which would mean you would need to do so much advertising that you replace a word in the English language So you would you would be the Google of search you would be the Microsoft of of enterprise uh enter enterprise software right Uh which I don't think is possible for most brands I don't see that happening for ninetynine point nine nine nine percent of of Which is like Six Sigma right It's almost perfection the only other way for most brands to get into an LLM is to figure out the drift in the query and optimize to those And that's something I've been doing for two years And while I get like 10000 organic clicks per month in Bing and in Copilot and whatever part of ChatGPT is in there um I get about 60000 citations The amount of traffic I get is probably under 20 clicks uh for all those citations because I think what happens is that you modify your prompt and you get lots and lots and lots of citations that people don't even read Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah.

And not, not all citations are equal as well. You know, it's like if, David: Absolutely Yeah Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: especially, Reddit, you know, if you look at most industries, Reddit will be the top cited domain. You know, if you look into Profound, then you actually look at the kind of actual top citations that are constantly used for the majority of prompts. Reddit's nowhere near, near to be seen.

David: I Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Do you know what I mean? David: I I absolutely adore Reddit I I get one and a half million views a month on Reddit I don't use my own brand name and that's why I think it's so successful I I refuse to use my own brand name on Reddit Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: It depends on the industry as well. You know, it's like, it's for example, we have, um, one client within the AI voice space and, um, Reddit is actually a really, really awesome place to, um, to put citations and, and to work on it from an AI perspective because it's actually … It's a top-cited domain, but if you actually look at the top citations, a lot of them are coming from Reddit as well.

But for the vast majority of other industries that aren't very developer-focused, which is obviously a very kind of, one of the strong points of Reddit, it's got a very strong developer community. Um, you know, Reddit isn't always the best place to, to put them. So it, David: right Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: it depends on the industry for sure as well. Um, but, David: I let you I Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: but- David: into an inside secret So myself and EEd sometimes you know when we when we're we're doing our podcast and we have like a little chat while the file's uploading from my side um talk about when Reddit became so popular Um you said you've been in the industry 10 years Do you remember when Reddit became so popular So we have our own tin hat theory here if you want to weigh in on it Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Um, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't really know.

Reddit became a big thing for me about three and a half years ago, but for a different reason, and it was because I was very much focusing on targeting, um, developers within like the Web3 crypto blockchain space. Edward Sturm: I d- I did that too. I was doing parasite SEO for crypto on Reddit in 2018 Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah. Yeah.

Edward Sturm: yeah. Yeah, Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I feel Edward Sturm: I know Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: like that, Edward Sturm: you're talking about Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: maybe that played a big, a bit of a role because obviously crypto became really popular and everyone wanted to kind of, you know, be the next big crypto millionaire. Um, so I think may- maybe that played a big role, but it really, I think it … Reddit's just had win after win. You know?

It's, it's like the only social media platform really where kind of it's still very unfiltered and it's still very real. Um, and I feel, I feel like people really resonate well with that. And it's like when it comes to LLMs, it's just bloody brilliant because it's the place people can go to, to get an unfiltered real opinion on something rather than kind of like the PR marketing filtered content that you'd get on a blog post. So I th- I think it's a … I think it was multiple steps.

I think it's just been growing prominence David: So you can you can Here's my theory right My theory is that it rose to prominence during HCU the Google helpful content update when it replaced mi when they just kicked millions of sites out of the Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah. Yeah David: So that was interesting because that happened correct me if I'm wrong that was like a year before Reddit's IPO and then Google did a deal to allow Gemini to s to uh learn on Reddit It was the only one that allowed And last year obobviously Reddit sued Perplexity because they were doing it for free I think that's really interesting that because efeffectively Google created that band for Reddit results So no matter almost no matter what you're searching for it will show Reddit And funny enough if you go to Ireland where boardsie is the number one forum boards shows up It takes up half the space of of Reddit but Reddit gets all that special space And I think it's really nifty because that's essentially what Reddit's IPO is based on right Is like if Google takes that away and puts someone else there then ReReddit is gone right Because uh Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Mm-hmm.

David: Reddit can only be in the citation if Google surfaces it and because Google is surfacing it so much Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah. So what you're saying David: of my SEO one of my S Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: is Reddit is essentially, yeah, Reddit is essentially bound to, uh, to Google. Yeah. David: It is It it pr pretty much right Because they had nowhere else to send it And and and it was funny that they did it because they Google's AdSense really stretch over Reddit And and so they really put a gave Reddit a huge boost in advertising revenue I don't know if that was in the deal or not but uh probably not That's probably the tinfoil hat part Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Well, all I know is it's, it's brilliant, you know.

It's like, um, especially for the more technical, um, industries, Reddit is doing re- you know, uh, when it comes to AEO in particular, Reddit is, has been a fantastic service that we've been able to provide, um, alongside the, the standard kind of hosted Edward Sturm: t- can you talk about what you were doing for the artists who didn't wanna do, who didn't wanna do posts on their own site? I think that that'd be a pretty interesting story Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah, absolutely.

Um, so essentially they - it's a very - I can't mention who it is 'cause of NDA, but, um, they're a, a very prominent, um, fashion, let's say fashion brand. Um, and they will - they do not create their own content. Um, they rely on public relations primarily for brand awareness, you know, such as Vogue, uh, Grazia magazine, um, you know, the, the top places that you could pos-possibly put yourself in. Now, we found that when it comes to AEO, there was a bit of a interesting, um, problem that they had.

They had no control over where they came within AI answers. They were completely at the mercy of editors, um, for their own where they'd actually kind of come. There was no obviously quer - when it came to query fan-outs, they couldn't even, um, target them. Um, so they had incredible visibility, but when it actually came to where they were being ranked, what's being said from a conversion perspective, they had no real control over their AEO strategy.

So what we've done is we've implemented an external citation strategy for them that predominantly focuses on where they come in their ranking. Um, uh, you know, so for example, if, if you were to type in a prompt on ChatGPT, you still have like first, second, third, fourth, fifth, um, rankings, and you wanna be number one, right? You don't wanna be number five on that list. Yeah.

So giving them that control over that via their citations, um, and actually being able to influence what's being said in compared to their rivals completely virus- Edward Sturm: exactly are, what exactly are you doing? David: Again Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah, absolutely. Um, when it comes to creating that content, what we're doing is we're placing them first within these listicles. So we're essentially kind of training these LLMs to mention their brand over that of their competitors Edward Sturm: are you, are you just like cold emailing and being like, "Hey, we'd like to be in your list.

What would it take to get into the list?" Do you… Uh, uh, we've, I've, we've had many discussions about this on the show with lots of other guests, and they, they say their specific strategies, the emails they use. Sometimes people literally say like, "How much would it cost?" Other times they, they don't do that.

What have you found, like, works best to get into these lists? Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So we actually operate on a paid, um, so we, we, we buy these lists. So we will pay brands to, to put this content, the, the content live essentially. Um, and it's important that we pay them to do that rather than do it organically, 'cause that's just digital PR otherwise, right?

Edward Sturm: you s- you said you buy the whole list? buy the Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah. Yeah, essentially. Yeah.

So within the pricing costs of our, um, our services, and it's the same with our link-building on the SEO side as well, um, we'll use paid means, um, for the outreach, and we'll pay for those placements because that gives us an advantage. We have control over what's being said, the structure, um, obviously where that backlink will go to. Um, it gives us full control over that article for how we're able to then influence, um, the AU strategy, right? If it, if it was completely organic, then we'd be at the mercy of the editors changing things, uh, where the link goes to.

We, we, we'd have less control. So it's all about, it's all about doing things the right way. We want to be AU optimized. We can't do that if it's usually organic David: So that's really interesting cause um Gaetano Di Nardi actually wrote a fantastic piece in um in in Search Engine Journal how citation uh link building is now the new black hat link building And it's something that you know Google will have to start to review and analyze as well but in terms of sort of like thinking about what people can do and the difference between sort of like the new SEO where you now have to manage being in multiple locations And the reason I say this isn't new is because I've been doing this for years right I think I've just my SEO strategy and if you go back to like my first podcast with Edward has been For the For Because of brand marketing in the and mainly in the US way too many companies have branddedicated domains And I totally get why right I totally get it But if you look at the brands that get bought out and get you know consumed by these uh f you know Fortune 500 companies If you look at like really successful SEOs people like Jackie Chow Charles Floate uh people that build um five million dollar a month revenues from SEO and and and many more lots more right There there are lots of SEOs who've done this and they build EMD sites And I think exact match domain sites as part of your SEO strategy would automatically correct this imbalance of lack of citations and get you more representation And so I I was wondering if like looking at the last podcast that we did around this AEO versus geo topic and and thanks so much to the audience who sat through for like the last four hours of us discussing this and and and again today I thought that uh like we'd change it up and sort of like offer some value to the community And so I was thinking that a great part of an SEO strategy for us what we do and what I do personally is um I create Reddit uh resource pages on my client's site So basically uh what I do is I create a resources page called like let's just say let's just say it's for SEO right Cause I I do SEO and and I I can use myself as the client right Cause I don't have an NDA So I will create like an SEO Reddit resources page on my site and then I will link to the Reddit pages that I like and then I will also put in there an overview of who I am and who my company is And almost like what LLMstxt could have been but never was because people weren't smart enough to sort of like build the the in the contents of what LLMstxt could have been But what I do is I build it into that page because a lot of people just search for something with the word Reddit They don't put siteredditcom which would restrict and narrow the results They just put in like best SEO consultant Reddit And so for example if you look for like top SEOs to follow on X the first two results are Reddit but actually the next results are my own site because I put the word Reddit and I've got a page called Reddit SEO Resources and that page ranks And like anyone can do that for free And so if you're like challenged with like I don't really want to set up a Reddit profile and if I start recommending my brand on Reddit I'm gonna get you know banned by the moderators cause we see this happening on X all the time You can actually build a Reddit page on your website and list and sort of like augment how that content links together from your own domain for free and it takes ten minutes to write Edward Sturm: Wait, can we, David, can we take it a step further and do a, a Reddit EMD?

Have Reddit, have Reddit in the domain name David: Well so I actually worked for a company called um Insights which was an Israeli cybersecurity startup that got acquired a year and a half later by Rapid7 uh for three hundred and twentyfive million And they had a product that actually watched all of their clients brand names So if somebody bought aanything with CITI or CIUT in it they automatically emailed but they automatically had a deal with like thirtyeight percent of registrars that would block that that domain final registration part Edward Sturm: Yeah.

David: I'm sure I'm sure Reddit have that Edward Sturm: Yeah, definitely David: But you can do this on your own site right You could you could build like um forward slash Reddit SEO resources or if you're um Edward Sturm: That's so funny. That's so funny, Dave. David: I think it's a great trick that people should do right Edward Sturm: Alan, uh, what, how much, how much of, uh, what you guys are doing at ClickSlice is using Reddit or using, or like do you use other social, other UGC platforms?

Are you using LinkedIn? Are you using YouTube? Are you using Instagram, Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: We use LinkedIn and Reddit primarily. Um, not yet YouTube, but it's something we're looking to expand into.

Um, essentially it's looking at whatever is working currently on Profound, uh, for the competitors of the client that we're working with and back engineering that content, how it's structured, where it's placed, and essentially reverse engineering it for them and just better. Um, and yeah, had amazing so far. It - I think the most ex- exciting thing about AEO in particular over, let's say traditional SEO, would be how quickly things can move. You know, it's like we've increased some of our clients' visibilities, um, you know, from let's say five, four, five point… I think one of them, um, National Private Investigators, uh, they went from a around a 5% visibility to over a 40% visibility in 6.

5 months. David: What's Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: or David: visibility score based on Because um one of the things that I think a lot of our audience struggles in terms of geo is knowing how many prompts actually happen Is is that like the profound visibility score or Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah, so the visibility score is essentially how many times as a percentage that brand is mentioned within its target prompts David: Cause it's it's not a known number right Like Google have just released their AI report which is like now the biggest in the world We have um Bing's AI report which is at the smaller end but we only know the share of voice We don't actually know the total right Like I if you're not cited like for example I my blog has 500 pages have another website that has absolutely no clicks in Bing but it has like 70000 citations uh which result in zero Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: When, when it comes to AI research David: hang on a second What I what I was trying to say is that it's only citing those 19 pages all the time It's not citing the rest of the site So I don't know how many I'm not visible on right Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Mm.

Yeah, absolutely. Within Profound, we can only really track the prompts that we're targeting, okay? So there's a lot of thought and a lot of effort that goes into ensuring that we're targeting those r- the right prompts. David: Is that a fancy word for guesswork Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: To a certain degree, a lot of it is guesswork.

David: That's it Yeah Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: So at the moment, when it comes to LLMs, you know, the conversations are private. You know, it's not like… Yeah. And, and that's just how, that's just the way it is. So David: go people Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: it's the way the cookie crumbles.

Yeah. Um, so when it comes to those prompts, it's all about intent. Um, it's all about getting, you know, finding what questions that they will be asking, um, and then creating content around those specific prompts. Now, LLMs, they are very intuitive, so I think this is another difference between, let's say, SEO and AI search, where, um, you might have a target prompt, um, but if it's worded in a different way, um, you will still very, very likely rank for that same prompt because the intent is exactly the same.

When it comes to SEO, even a slight difference in keyword variance can have completely different results, and it varies between different LLMs, you know? So I think, for example, when it comes to, um, Copilot in particular, um, you know, it will have a lot more kind of, um, variance on how, how a prompt is written compared to, let's say, ChatGPT or Claude, in which case, you know, it will be a lot more intent-focused. So there is a lot of, you know, it's not completely guesswork when it comes to creating prompts.

Um, but at the end of the day, we, uh, you know, I'm glad that my ChatGPT conversations are private and that my Claude conversations are private at the moment. Um, I'm sure you're, you know, you're, you're very happy, and I'm sure the audience is happy that they're all private too. Um, so yeah, it's about finding that intent, running it privately within, obviously, Profound, and then tracking it based off of that data. Does that all make sense?

David: It does cause one one of the things that I f I I find really interesting cause I also do a lot of work in paid search is that it's always You know cause SEO's been dying since like the year after I got into it I always thought that was like a personal attack Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: SEO is not dying David: I'm just kidding I'm I'm I no I remember I I was at the funeral I was at the Irish funeral We had little we had a little pot of a relic of SEO and we buried it um in Lough Gur which is like this three thousandyearold Stonehenge settlement And um the funny thing about SEO dying is that paid search never dies which I always think is unfair because like uh Google Ads which is built on their three billion searches a day their revenue continues to grow because their search base is the same and so they keep encroaching on SEO space and they keep encroaching on other spaces right I think there's actually a couple of challenges for AEO in there One is Google is essentially supplying its results to ChatGPT for free which is why they're suing SerpAPI right Because they're not getting paid for it cause their ads are getting stripped out right Which is a lloss leader for Google And what I don't think people understand you know for example with the you know when when Google lost its monopoly case against the DOJ everyone's like Oh great Google's gonna be opened up But their their search product is free It's their ad market you pay for and it's and the ad market is what they were gonna open up And so if Google turns off its uh accessibility these LLMs are now a trillion dollars in technical debt to catch up with Google right So they're actually in a lot of trouble Um because like you said like you you can't see that component being replaced and the other search engines don't have the infrastructure So I think that's really interesting But I find it really interesting when everyone says like everyone's moved to LLM how ad revenue is still so healthy right So I Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah David: that like a small percent have Cause we we got Like last year I started buying all of the AI reports and I turned them all off because we don't know what the total scale is and the amount of traffic coming from ChatGPT has been nosediving because AIOs from Google have been taking off And what we see is that a lot of people search and actually come in on Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Give a bit of a tip as well David: search I Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah.

David: that um one of my clients in fintech were being compared to Amazon FinSpace which is a database product for like data storage and data warehousing And because of their like mismatch in G2 they started getting recommended and the next minute we started getting uh 80 leads a month from Bing Ads because uh ChatGPT was recommending their product and they weren't even in the same space And Ed and I often joke about how vulnerable LLMs are to like if you just write an article and put it in front of an LLM it just takes it verbatim We did We made up a couple of Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: But they're doing lots of changes.

I think there, there was like a test a few months ago where ChatGPT, um, where OpenAI, they basically like forced ChatGPT to always include links t- within answers, because it doesn't always provide links within answers, right? And they saw conversion rates went up from like 14% to something ridiculous like 40, 50%. So, and then it went back to normal afterwards. So they're… It's constantly changing.

They're always testing new things David: I mean is um the way LLMs work is because they're they're not research tools they're consensus engines is if you put a document in front of them will pivot 180 degrees from one conversation to another cause that's how they're designed They're pattern recognition systems There's no way to to go about it And you can argue with one You can start with one and say like Hey what's important to SEO And it'll go Page speed's very important and um stack is very important and schema is very important And then you can drop in a link and say Well uh Google says this or Mark WilliamsCook in the UK has proved that schema doesn't pro it doesn't survive tokenization David McSweeney uh proved it as well It's a very simple test you can do You can create a document create schema and it's unable to read it right And when you put that When when when that query fanout changes the LLM's answer pivots completely It's like it forgot the last conversation because that's the nature of the system You can't You know if you change that you fundamentally like change the system and how it operates So it it's it's kinda really weird And I I thought that study that said that um on average when you look at the volume of prompts that go in is that the the average prompt is only 30 longer than a Google search that most users aren't actually going much deeper Um I I I wonder if like if needs like that that jump right That that special use case where everyone Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: It depends on, it depends on the purpose.

It, it depends David: been so Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: on the purpose of the prompt, David: it Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I think. David: Mmhmm Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: 'cause, I think when it comes to, um, you know, my area of expertise, which is essentially conversion rates, ROI for clients, um, if they're researching a specific service or a specific product and they're getting lower down that marketing funnel, as mentioned before, in that context, the prompts aren't going to be 30% longer.

They're going to probably be around 24 words, David: Wait Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: or long- David: what I'm saying is if you, if you look at it from an empirical point of view and not just like a Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: That's a gen- that's a general point of view. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm with you David: shows. Yeah, yeah.

Um, whi-which I found really interesting. So like, I wonder, is it, is it a case of, is it a generational shift where like, you know, the baby boomers and the whatever I'm in, is it Gen X? Am I in Gen X? I don't know what I'm in.

Um, Gen old. Um, that, that, that generation still like uses Google so much. And then if Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: You have a very face, David. David: Thanks very much.

Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: You look as - You don't look old David: I have a Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: at all David: barber who puts a lot of time, uh, in-into my hair, you know, and keeps it looking slick. Um, but I think one of the interesting things is that, um, if you look at the use, like you said, the, the power users on ChatGPT are using it as, as like a chat buddy. They're, they're… Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah David: 70% of it is like a psychological Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: It's a ther- it's like a David: me be a Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: therapist, yeah.

And don't u- don't use ChatGPT for relationship advice, kids. Just don't do it. Uh, it will… David: use it for SEO advice either because, um… No, Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: No. David: the, Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah David: amount of content SEO that's, that's ruining it, it like, you know, Google will tell you that - Gemini will tell you that like the number one factor in SEO is like word count.

It's like the, these are very dangerous, uh, because of popularity and populism, right? Those pages have a lot of backlinks because they're written by writers, and writers like to link to them. And, and, and that's one of the ways, you know, that's one of PageRank's fundamental failings, right? Is it's very difficult to, uh, determine popular from populist.

And, and that's also an LLM failure, right? Like if, if a lot of people don't like the Amex Platinum card, it won't ever get recommended to you. And, uh, there are use cases, even though it's a very expensive credit card, I absolutely love mine. Um, so, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's that context and, and, and subjectivity nature that, that I think that we don't understand sometimes.

Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: That product placement is podcast, I think That was a joke, by the way. Yeah. Edward Sturm: Go ahead and catch it David: and I should start doing - We should start doing top 10 listicles, you know, top Edward Sturm: Oh my gosh. Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah.

Edward Sturm: Oh my Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah. Edward Sturm: Callum, you were, Callum, you were awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This was, uh, this was… So, uh, so I, I guess you, you researched this before and you saw that, like, we do these, like, debates, these SEO versus geo debates.

Did you see the Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I did, yeah. I did. Um, and, um, yeah, I, I think I saw your last one on SEO versus GEO. Um, and it got a little bit heated, didn't it?

Um, I don't think this, I don't think this episode got too heated Edward Sturm: You came, you, you came prepared. This was, this was constructive. You shared some cool things. David, the Reddit hack, I'm gonna make a, a video a- after this, like a short-form video.

I think it'll go viral. That is amazing. The Reddit subfolder David: I think it's important that we learn that you can't do AEO without SEO, and that S - the difference between SEO and AEO is just how you - or GEO is just how you describe it, right? Because I think I've been doing GEO this time.

I just sort of think outside the box and think like, I also need to rank a second domain, and I need to also be visible on Reddit. 'Cause like I can get into - Like let's say I, I meet a client, they're like, "Wow, we are failing behind one of our competitors," right? "And it's taken us three months to get from position fifteen to thirteen." I'd be like, "I can get a video there in two hours.

I can get into - I can get a Reddit placement in 60 minutes." Um, and me, that's just how SEO should work. I know, I know a lot of SEO - Like there are people who do SEO on Reddit who, uh, will debate me all day long, and I'll go and look at their website, and they don't rank for anything. There are geo tool providers who tell me how geo and SEO are different, and I look at their, link in, in Semrush, and they're like, "Wow, you have like 200 pages of content and you rank for two keywords."

so yeah, a-a-anyone can say whatever they want, but at the end of the day, you cannot get into an LLM unless you're a Fortune 500 company or you can break the query fan out. Once you can break the query fan out and understand the drift, you can consistently stay in the LLMs. Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I'd, I'd, I'd say yeah, when it comes to AO as well, it's, it's not as difficult as people think to rank. Uh, it's re- it's really, really not David: easier in some cases.

I often say it's actually easier. Like it's easier to rank for like top SEO expert and consultant in Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: And David: 2026 because you can, you can write a Reddit Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Well, it's - there's a, there's a real opportunity to be, like, a first mover within AEO, and it's that first mover opportunity is running out as more and more people do kind of get into it. But, you know, I think one, um, really awesome example is one of our clients, Fael.

Um, they're a UK brand that essentially focus on, um, luxury, uh, furniture. And they're very boutique and very well-known, very good at what they do, but they were by far not, like, a main industry player. Uh, for the work that we've done, we're now - they're now outranking Argos and Dreams, and they're about to overtake IKEA when it comes to their, their online, their AE- Edward Sturm: What did - Wait, what did you do? Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: The exact same strategies that I've been mentioning.

It's about finding where these brands and their competitors are already being cited, what kind of content's coming up there, targeting those semantic prompts, and then AI optimizing and creating. Essentially all it is, we're creating those data points that are training those AI models to reference them within set prompts Edward Sturm: so buying entire lists from… Are, uh, niche publishers or I don't, I assume you're not trying to buy articles from like Forbes and major publishers or you, are you trying as well?

Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: That would cost a lot of money. Edward Sturm: I mean, you could, I don't know, maybe m- message the author Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: would be thousands, tens of, tens of thousands. Um, but no, um Edward Sturm: Are you creating subreddits as well? Do you have your own subreddits Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Um, yeah, we are for, for some of our clients actually.

Yeah. Um, not for ourselves yet though David: I just wanna, I just wanna pick up on a word because you said you're training LLMs, and like that isn't realistically possible, right? Um, you can't train an LLM. And, and just because you come up in a query fan out, right, you're not Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Depends on how, how you'd argue it.

So for example, if you're training the LLM without search to do it, then no, you're not doing that. But if you are, David: do Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: if you're… No, definitely not. Um, but if you are training it to reference your brand through search, then yes, that's what we're doing David: Well, you can only do that for the user that's logged in. You can't do it for all other users, right?

Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: You - I'd say you can, but not for all users. So I'd flip to that script. So for example, ChatGPT, Claude, they will give you different answers based off of the profile that they've created for you within that account, right? Okay.

So to that degree, you can't account for all of those different things, but for general users you can David: You can't… So just because you bring in a brand in one set of pre-fan arts, unless another user req- requests something that's very similar and it res- and it, and it goes to that cache, it's not going to start copying a brand that was mentioned in another chat over Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Sure. I think, um, I mean, we've done it for ourselves. We've done it for ClickSlice.

We're the number - In the UK, we're the number one ranked visibility, uh, the AO agent- SEO David: it's, Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: agency, London David: going to be for a specific phrase. You, you, you cannot enter the memory of an LLM, right? You - Uh, uh, otherwise the LLMs would just, as, as Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: No, I ju- I ju- I just mentioned that you can't tr- you can't train it based off of its memory, but you can train it based off of search David: So yeah, Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: to David: to Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: a small extent David: appear in those searches, right?

But that's open, right? Any SEO could come along and say, "Well, I need to appear in that query fan out, and I can put myself there." I do it all the time. I, I, I made - I've put Edward in for, like, the best SEO podcasts.

I put us in for the best EEAT experts, and I hate EEAT. I think it's the most silliest thing that people Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah. David: on. Um, and, Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: There's, there's cer- there's certain, certain prompts that are essentially very basic prompts that anyone would type in and we're getting our clients ca- ranking 80, 90% of the time for ourselves and our clien- David: I think one of the best things that people can do is actually go to Perplexity and Claude, and I, I, I say these two because it's actually easier to see the query fan-out, and type in your prompt.

And then under that, it'll show what it searched for. If you click on that, it'll actually show you the query fan-out. You can then take that, copy and paste that into Google, do the search, and see where you rank. And sometimes, for example, like a lot of, uh, like geo people on LinkedIn, a lot of marketing propaganda will say, "Oh, you need to, um, know, it loves fresh content," and all this bullshit.

Uh, often the drift features, uh, years like adding twenty twenty-four, twenty twenty-five to it. And so all you have to do is add those years to your content, and then suddenly you go from page fifteen to page ten, and then you start being cited by the LLMs. I, I love the fact that anyone can do that, right? It's that easy.

Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: I love that. I love David: you said, a Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: that insight, super providing Digg. David: if you, if you put - If you import all those prompts, Profound will actually go and break out the query fan-outs for all of those tools, right? Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Yeah, it will.

Um, we've got eyes on all of the different query fan-outs within the Compound dashboard. It's just some of the data that it provides us. It's an awesome tool, Compound. It's brilliant.

Edward Sturm: Calum, I hope you'll, I hope you'll return to the podcast, share some more stories. Um, yeah, this was, this was great. Where should everybody find you? Callum Kennard - ClickSlice: Oh, so you can find me on LinkedIn, um, Callum Kennard, uh, head of sales at KlikSlice.

Um, and yeah, type in KlikSlice. Um, if you want to book a call, you'd come straight to me, um, and we'd hop on a chat and, um, see how we can help essentially Edward Sturm: Thank you again for doing this. David is a returning guest, and all of David's links are in the description as well. Um, thank you again, both of you.

This is episode 1,091 of the show, 1,091 days in a row doing this podcast. If you watch this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.