The State of GEO w/ Profound's Josh Blyskal
Josh Blyskal, Special Projects at Profound, returns to the show for a data-rich, in-person conversation with Ross Hudgens about what's actually true in AI search right now, and what's just noise.
Josh makes the case that the industry's obsession with tracking frequency is mostly a distraction (running a prompt 10x a day vs. once barely moves your visibility score) and that the real hard problem is still attribution. He walks through a new model some advanced teams are using, treating agent attention as a proxy for human attention and heavily discounting citations into "clicks,” and shares why ChatGPT referral traffic is up 60% since mid-March, especially for CPG.
From there they get into why GEO is fundamentally a relationship business (the Reddit–Google negotiations, why Claude cites Reddit almost never, and the walled-garden problem), what actually separates slop from signal, and why listicles still do the "caloric work" of teaching a model an industry.
Show Notes
0:00 How often should you track Prompts?
08:14 The new attribution model
14:05 GEO as a relationship business
20:05 What separates slop from signal
26:43 Product pages, versus queries and battle cards
30:21 ChatGPT vs. Claude
34:12 Future-proofing your stack
40:55 Video, social and the language arbitrage
49:18 Imitation vs. creation & where GEO is headed
Show Links
Josh’s website
Josh on LinkedIn
Preorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross Hudgens
Subscribe for weekly episodes
Listen on Apple
Listen on Spotify
Follow Ross on X
Follow Siege Media on X
Email Ross
Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: ross@siegemedia.com #seo | #contentmarketing
Josh makes the case that the industry's obsession with tracking frequency is mostly a distraction (running a prompt 10x a day vs. once barely moves your visibility score) and that the real hard problem is still attribution. He walks through a new model some advanced teams are using, treating agent attention as a proxy for human attention and heavily discounting citations into "clicks,” and shares why ChatGPT referral traffic is up 60% since mid-March, especially for CPG.
From there they get into why GEO is fundamentally a relationship business (the Reddit–Google negotiations, why Claude cites Reddit almost never, and the walled-garden problem), what actually separates slop from signal, and why listicles still do the "caloric work" of teaching a model an industry.
Show Notes
0:00 How often should you track Prompts?
08:14 The new attribution model
14:05 GEO as a relationship business
20:05 What separates slop from signal
26:43 Product pages, versus queries and battle cards
30:21 ChatGPT vs. Claude
34:12 Future-proofing your stack
40:55 Video, social and the language arbitrage
49:18 Imitation vs. creation & where GEO is headed
Show Links
Josh’s website
Josh on LinkedIn
Preorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross Hudgens
Subscribe for weekly episodes
Listen on Apple
Listen on Spotify
Follow Ross on X
Follow Siege Media on X
Email Ross
Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: ross@siegemedia.com #seo | #contentmarketing
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