Welcome to episode 36 of The GEO Show, the briefing on generative engine optimization, LLM citations, and AI search visibility. Brought to you by GEOforge. In this episode, Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge, covers ten GEO stories: RAMP vendor concentration with Profound at 52% of GEO software spend while only 1.2% of SaaS buyers purchased any GEO tool, AppsFlyer click-only AI attribution across eight engines, PeakMetrics reputation GEO for communications teams, Bluefish x Bazaarvoice UGC for e-comm citations, Rankability's cross-engine citation study (24.1% max overlap; 55.2% of top AI citations miss Google's top 10), Stacker low-DR earned media, FogLift tool-recommendation concentration, Ahrefs Brand Radar scaling to 30M prompts, QueryLift's Japan seed, and RadIntel Radar. In this episode: 📊 RAMP: Profound owns half of GEO spend; market still tinyAmong RAMP businesses buying GEO software: Profound 52%, Peak 18%, AirOps 17%. Peak is fastest-growing; AirOps has the highest switch rate. Profound surged from near zero toward ~50% share, then recent growth flattened after a $180M raise at a $1.8B valuation. Perspective check: only 1.2% of RAMP SaaS buyers bought any GEO tool in September 2026. Wide-open category. Weak stickiness.🔗 AppsFlyer: AI attribution that is still click-onlyAttributes organic discovery across eight AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Groq, Manus, DeepSeek) plus paid ChatGPT ads through app re-engagement, installs, and web/mobile conversions. Still click-based only. Not impression or brand-mention attribution. Positive step, not attribution solved.👁️ PeakMetrics: reputation GEO for comms teamsAI Perceptions (launched Sep 17) tracks how ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Groq, and Perplexity characterize brands, then connects those perceptions to news, social, and community narratives. Reputation and narrative intelligence, not pure visibility. GEO diverging into PR/comms.🛍️ Bluefish x Bazaarvoice: UGC as e-comm citation fuelBluefish spots AI visibility gaps and routes into Bazaarvoice review, sampling, and structured content workflows. Vendor-sponsored research: 90% of surveyed consumers want AI recs sourced from real reviews/photos; 59% of AI-cited product pages had 100+ reviews; 92% rated 4 stars or higher; 65% showed a review summary near the top (1,700+ survey + 237,804 citation instances). Structured UGC is a top e-comm GEO lever.📐 Rankability: 24% overlap, 55% miss Google top 101,645 AI query-page observations across 10 platforms. No platform pair shared more than 24.1% of cited pages. 55.2% of top-10 AI citations did not rank in Google's traditional top 10. Observed relationships, not causal factors. No single AI ranking. SEO is not GEO. Index matters; page-one ranking does not.📰 Stacker: low-DR earned media still wins citations895 distributed stories / ~212k pickups across six AI services. Sites with DR under 40 generated one-fifth of Stacker network citations. Claude and Google AI Overviews cited sub-DR40 domains in 1.8% of responses vs ChatGPT at 0.05%. Citation gains plateau around ~90 pickups for lower-authority domains. DR is a weak predictor. Another SEO/GEO divergence signal.🛠️ FogLift: tool recs concentrate; sources stay off-vendorUnbranded buyer-intent: Otterly 58%, Profound 54%, Semrush 49%, Peak and Ahrefs 36% each. 33.3% of the leading citation layer came from off-vendor sources (YouTube, Reddit, SitePoint, G2). B2B SaaS playbook on tape: YouTube + Reddit + G2 (+ listicles).📡 Ahrefs Brand Radar: 14M to 30M promptsSep 17: People Also Ask prompt set expanded from ~14M to 30M; entity extraction + top-entities widget; optional traffic model including AI Overviews. SEO giant flexing data scale. Brand Radar still not prompt-selectable. Skeptical Ahrefs wins GEO vs Profound on current product shape.🇯🇵 QueryLift: Japan-focused GEO seedTokyo QueryLift raises 100M yen seed (JAFCO + Z Venture Capital). Monitors ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews, then feeds observations into content workflows. First major Japan-focused GEO platform covered on the show.🧠 RadIntel Radar: predictive audience intelligence into authority contentLaunched Sep 17: predictive audience intelligence into original reporting, executive perspectives, research, and multimedia. Framed across GEO and owned channels; may open to select brands/agencies. Content strategy from audience intelligence, not prompt-gap tracking.If this briefing is useful, subscribe to The GEO Show so we can keep walking through the platform changes and citation mechanics that actually move AI visibility. 💬 Question: If Profound owns half of GEO spend and only 1.2% of SaaS buyers are in the category, are you measuring concentration or measuring opportunity?
