The Zene blog

Field notes on Generative Engine Optimization.

Playbooks, research and teardowns on getting AI engines to recommend your brand - written by the team building the category.

Playbooks · Featured

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)? The 2026 guide

GEO - generative engine optimization, aka AI GEO - is the practice of getting your brand named and cited inside AI answers. What it is, how it differs from SEO, and a step-by-step framework to get ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity recommending your brand.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 18 min read May 28, 2026
Research

AI Visibility Index, October 2026: 617 answers, 10 industries, 5 countries

What ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity recommended - and cited - across law firms, clinics, ecommerce, hotels and six more industries in the US, UK, Canada, Spain and Turkey. 79% of cited domains appeared exactly once, ChatGPT and Gemini named the same #1 brand in 8.5% of questions, and Wikipedia made up 9.5% of ChatGPT's citations but none of Perplexity's.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 7 min
Playbooks

How to get your app recommended by ChatGPT (and every other AI assistant)

"Best meditation apps", "app to plan a trip" - questions that used to be store searches are now asked in ChatGPT, and the answer is a shortlist of three to five names. Here's how assistants actually pick those names - listing signals, reputation bars, citable sources - and the six-step playbook for getting your app into the shortlist, with a free checker that grades where you stand today.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 12 min
Playbooks

Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my app? The 20-signal diagnosis

Your app is live, rated well by the people who found it - and invisible when someone asks an AI assistant for the best app in your category. The cause is almost always mechanical: a handful of listing, reputation and web-presence signals that assistants read and your listing fails. Here are all 20, grouped into the five categories that decide AI recommendability, and the order to fix them in.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 9 min
Research

ASO in the AI era: what App Store Optimization means when ChatGPT picks the apps

App Store Optimization was built for one reader: the store ranking algorithm. Now your listing has a second reader - the AI assistants people ask for app recommendations - and it grades on different criteria. What ASO is, what GEO changes about it, where the two disciplines pull in opposite directions, and the listing playbook that satisfies both readers at once.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 11 min
Playbooks

ChatGPT is wrong about your business? The correction playbook

An AI assistant is telling your buyers something false about your company - a wrong owner, a dead product, a price from 2023 - and there's no edit button. Here's the playbook that actually works: trace the sources the engines read, fix them in the right order, file with each engine's official channel, and verify the correction sticks. Plus the honest part nobody says: how long each layer takes.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 12 min
Teardowns

Tools for Google AI Mode (2026): what tracks it, what wins it

"Tools for AI Mode" hides two different questions: how do I use Google's AI Mode well, and how do I know whether it mentions my brand? A quick answer to the first, and an honest map of the second - what Search Console shows (and hides), what SEO suites actually capture, what AI visibility trackers measure instead, and which of it is free. (We make a tool in the last category, and we say so.)

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 11 min
Research

What is turn0product7? ChatGPT's leaked citation tokens, explained

People keep googling strings like turn0product7 and turn0search0 - and finding storefront junk instead of an answer. Here's the real one: they're ChatGPT's internal citation tokens, the invisible markers that place product cards and source badges inside an answer. Where they come from (we've captured them in the raw response stream), why they leak into copied text, and what their existence tells brands about how AI shopping answers are assembled.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 7 min
Playbooks

What is AEO? Answer engine optimization, explained without the hype

AEO - answer engine optimization - is one of the fastest-rising terms in search marketing, and most explanations make it sound more novel than it is. Here's the plain version: what AEO actually means, where the term came from, how it relates to SEO and GEO, and the handful of practices that genuinely improve your odds of being the answer instead of a result.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 11 min
Teardowns

The best AI SEO tools in 2026 - sorted by the job you're hiring them for

"AI SEO tools" is one label hiding three different jobs: AI that helps you write and optimize content, AI features inside classic SEO suites, and tools that track your visibility inside AI answers. An honest map of all three - what each category actually does, who it's for, and how to avoid buying the wrong one. (We make a tool in the third category, and we say so.)

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 11 min
Playbooks

How to add your business to ChatGPT (there's no form - here's what works)

Thousands of owners search for the ChatGPT equivalent of a Google Business Profile. It doesn't exist - there's no submission form, no listing to claim, no fee to pay. But ChatGPT does decide which businesses to recommend, and you can influence that. Here's where its answers actually come from, the five things that function as your 'listing,' and how to check whether it worked.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 9 min
Playbooks

LLM SEO: what it is, what transfers from SEO, and what actually works

LLM SEO (or LLMO, or GEO - the names haven't settled) is the work of getting your brand found, trusted and cited by large language models instead of just ranked by Google. This is the plain-English version for people who already know SEO: how LLMs actually choose what to say, which of your existing skills transfer directly, the handful of genuinely new moves, and the tactics you can safely ignore.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 12 min
Playbooks

AI brand sentiment: mentioned isn't the same as recommended

Getting named by ChatGPT is only half the battle - 'a budget option with limited features' is a mention that loses the deal. Tone is now a first-class metric: whether the engines frame you as the leader, the alternative, or the one to be careful with. Here's where AI sentiment actually comes from, how to measure it without fooling yourself, and the work that turns a lukewarm description into an endorsement.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 10 min
Playbooks

Google AI Mode: how it picks brands, and the tools to track your visibility

AI Mode is Google's conversational search - a full AI answer instead of a results page, now sitting one tab away from every Google search. This is how it actually assembles an answer (and why it's not the same placement as an AI Overview), what that means for whether your brand gets named, and an honest look at the tools that can track your visibility in it today.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 11 min
Playbooks

AI search optimization: how to get recommended when buyers ask AI

SEO gets you ranked; AI search optimization - some call it AI search SEO - gets you recommended. When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for the best option in your category, either you're in the shortlist or a competitor is. This is the practical playbook: how AI search actually assembles an answer, the handful of moves that measurably improve your odds of being named, and how to tell whether any of it is working.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 12 min
Playbooks

Google AI Overviews: how to get your brand into the answer above the results

The AI Overview is the paragraph Google now writes above the blue links - and for a growing share of searches it's the only thing people read. Ranking #1 no longer guarantees you're in it. Here's what an AI Overview actually is, how it picks the sources it summarizes, why being on page one isn't enough, and the concrete work that gets your brand named in the answer instead of buried under it.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 11 min
Teardowns

The ChatGPT your buyers use isn't the one the API shows you

Ask the same question through the ChatGPT API and through the app your customers actually open, and you can get two different answers - one from the model's frozen memory, one from a live web search with real citations. Most GEO tools only ever measure the first. Here's exactly why the two disagree, why the gap decides where AI sends customers, and what it really costs to capture the answer people see.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 13 min
Teardowns

How ChatGPT picks products: we decoded a real shopping answer

Ask ChatGPT for a product and sometimes you get plain text, sometimes a rich carousel with prices and ratings. We captured and decoded a real streamed shopping answer to show the machinery underneath: how it classifies the question, where the products actually come from, what the model 'sees' about each one, and what it takes to get your product on that shelf.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 20 min
Teardowns

Best AI visibility tools and trackers (Oct 2026), with prices

Every serious AI visibility tracker, honestly compared - Profound, Peec, Otterly, Scrunch, AthenaHQ, Ahrefs, Semrush, SE Visible, HubSpot, BrightEdge and more. Entry prices checked in October 2026, the engines each covers, who it's for, pros and cons, and where it stops short. (We make one of them, and we say so.)

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 31 min
Playbooks

Reviews and G2: the AI citation engine nobody optimises

AI engines lean on review and comparison sites to decide which brands to name - yet most companies treat reviews as a support metric. How to turn G2, Capterra and reviews into AI recommendations.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 8 min
Research

Why YouTube gets cited by AI (and how to use that)

Video keeps showing up as a source in AI answers. Why engines cite YouTube so often, what they actually read from it, and how to make your video content quotable to a model that can't watch it.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 7 min
Research

AI visibility metrics: the KPIs actually worth tracking in 2026

Raw mentions is a vanity metric. The numbers that tell you whether AI engines recommend your brand - visibility rate, share of voice, answer position, citation share, sentiment and engine coverage - and how to read each one.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 9 min
Research

20 AI search statistics that explain 2026 (with sources)

The numbers behind the shift from Google to AI answers - engine reach, click-through, how buyers research, and how ChatGPT picks and cites the brands it names, including the August 2026 changes. Every figure links to its source, and vendor research is labeled.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 9 min
Research

Can you pay ChatGPT to recommend your brand?

Short answer: not the recommendation. ChatGPT now tests labeled ads and Google sells ads in AI Mode, but neither buys you a place in the answer. What's actually for sale in October 2026 - and what the brands that get recommended did instead.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 6 min
Playbooks

How long does GEO take to show results?

Weeks for some answers, months for others - here's why. Which AI answers you can move this month, which take a quarter, and how to tell which kind you're facing.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 5 min
Research

How often do ChatGPT's answers change?

The answer that names you today can drop you next week. The three things that make AI answers drift - and a sane monitoring cadence that catches it without obsessing.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 5 min
Playbooks

How to get ChatGPT to recommend your brand

No tricks, no "prompt hacks" - the five things that actually move a brand into ChatGPT's answers, in plain language, in the order we'd do them.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 6 min
Research

llms.txt: what it is, who actually reads it, and whether to ship one

Where llms.txt stands in October 2026: Google says its search ignores the file, and Ahrefs found 97% of ~38,000 llms.txt files got no requests in a month. What the file does, what it can't do, and the 20-minute version if you ship one anyway.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 7 min
Research

GEO, AEO, LLMO, AI SEO - what these terms actually mean

The acronym soup, sorted: what GEO (generative engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization) and their synonyms each cover, where they overlap, and why the distinctions matter less than the two real disciplines underneath them.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 8 min
Playbooks

The comparison page that wins AI citations

Why "X vs Y" content is the single highest-leverage asset for AI visibility - and how to structure one that models actually cite instead of skim past.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 7 min
Research

Why Reddit keeps showing up in AI answers about your category

Community threads punch far above their weight in both training data and retrieval. Why that happened, what the August 2026 ChatGPT citation data does (and doesn't) show, and how to participate without astroturfing.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 9 min
Teardowns

The 90-day GEO plan: from invisible to recommended by AI

A worked example, week by week: the exact sequence we'd run to take an unknown SaaS from zero AI mentions to consistent ChatGPT and Perplexity recommendations - baseline, citable core, third-party presence, re-measure.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 11 min
Playbooks

Make your pricing page citable - most aren't

AI engines quote pricing pages constantly, but only when they can parse them. The patterns that make yours quotable, and the ones that make models guess.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 6 min
Research

Why doesn't ChatGPT know my brand?

You're on page one of Google, customers love you - and ChatGPT draws a blank. The three reasons this happens, and which one is yours.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 4 min
Playbooks

5 schema types that help AI engines cite you

Structured data is back - for a new reason. It's how models find, parse and trust your facts. The five types worth shipping first, with markup examples.

Muhammet İLBAŞ Muhammet İLBAŞ 8 min

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