Featured · overlaps parent/sibling tag
Generative engine optimization is a trust problem: from 50,000 fake stats cited by ChatGPT to seller agents that inflate their own tools
Same exploration path · Agent core
GEO started with a 2023 paper by Aggarwal et al., and its most effective tactics were adding statistics, quotations, and citations: the surface signals of credibility. This piece puts three bodies of evidence side by side: the peec.ai experiment where 50,000 invented statistics earned ChatGPT citations and 330+ referring domains, published research on preference manipulation, ranking manipulation, and RAG poisoning, and the Toolflation paper, where seller agents told only to get picked more start doing GEO on their own and buyer success drops from 89% to about 30%. It ends with checklists for content publishers, teams building RAG and answer engines, and agent marketplaces and tool registries.
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