Risk/avoid / AI hacks

There are no AI optimization experts. AI SEO, GEO, LEO, AIO, whatever you wanna call it.

No one's an expert, not yet. This industry is brand new and it's changing rapidly.

That's not stopping people from pretending like they know the best way to rank in these large language models. I've spoken with three people just this week who have received some big pitch from some AI optimization company that's asking for a ton of money for some secret system.

Here's the thing. There are no secrets in 2025.

Yes, people are constantly finding new ways to rank in large language models, but anyone who's paying attention to this is gonna know about that method within a week. Now to be clear, I currently call my company an AI optimization agency is that is my primary focus.

I'm not against people using that term. I just think we need to be honest about what we actually know.

I think that everything people are calling AI optimization or Geo right now can be broken down into four categories. The first category is just SEO.

These are things like keyword optimization and backlinks building...

e adding copious amounts of information about your company to your website, often in FAQ's, and making sure your brand is mentioned in all the places that ChatGPT and other large language models are looking, even if there's no link. The third category I call AI hacks.

These are spamy tactics that happen to work right now, but probably won't work long term and could get you penalized. These are things like hiding in prompt injections in your website copy, listicle spam and low quality press release spam.

The fourth category is just pure speculation. These are things that might work, but there just hasn't been enough time or data to say for sure.

Of course, that's not stopping people from acting as if they know it's working. These are things like adding excessive structured data to your website, adding an lms.txt file, or adding marked down versions of your webpage copy.

Just for large language models. I've seen hundreds of ideas that fall into this speculation bucket.

I would say it makes up about 60% of the ideas I'm seeing hawked...

rent than the things we're doing right now. We need more data, we need more time, and it's going to continue evolving.

So if you're looking to hire someone to help you with this, you should not be looking for someone with all the answers. In fact, you should be running away from those people.

Look for someone who's learning everyday and changing their systems in real time. Things are changing faster than ever, and so we have to too.