More than half of the references in AI answers come from natural ranking, is it still worth making a separate plan for keyword positions?
AI responses引用 over half come from natural rankings, the keyword position plan is still worth doing separately. BrightEdge has been tracking the references of AI Overview for 16 months, and the overlap ratio between the reference pages and natural rankings has increased from 32.3% to 54.5%, with a relative increase of 69%. These numbers do not mean that the position plan can stop, but that it has changed roles: the position continues to bear the entrance construction, and the quality of the quoted paragraphs is responsible by the GEO side.
Overlap in references means that positions are still the foundation.
More than half of the references are themselves in the top natural rankings, in other words, the candidate pool of AI abstract references is mostly from the header pages you are already familiar with. There are two practical meanings to the increase in overlap.
The first is not to waste any investment. The content, structure, and external link work you do in the keyword position is also a qualification for AI reference candidates; giving up the position to bet on the generative entry alone is like tearing down the foundation to build the floors. The second is more concentrated competition. The head position has always been the object of position planning competition, and the reference adds another layer of exposure value, amplifying the marginal benefits of the same batch of pages, and for middle-level pages to enter the reference pool, they first need to solve the ranking problem.
What part of the budget should the position planning retain?
Based on overlapping data, it is recommended to retain three types of budgets: the position investment in core transactions and query words, which determines whether the page can enter the candidate pool; content update and maintenance, the sources in the reference pool will rotate, and stagnant pages are easy to fall out; basic technical work, including URL structure, site map and push, to ensure that the page is indexed and understood.
What can be compressed is the technical expenditure on position without relation to content quality, such as the production of pages filled with keywords. On the other side of the increasing overlap is the sensitivity of references to paragraph quality, even low-quality pages are not easy to become the one referenced at the top position.
How is the GEO face and SEO face分工
Both sides use the same set of content assets, with different division of labor. The SEO face solves the issue of whether it can rank and whether it can be indexed: static URL maintains stable structure, 301 redirect inherits the weight after the revision, Sitemap automatically generates and actively pushes to Baidu and Bing to solve the timeliness of inclusion, anchor text management arranges the keywords within the site clearly.
Can the GEO section be quoted in full? Each paragraph is self-contained, and the reader can take away the answer without reading the context; the first sentence directly answers the question. As for the automatically generated llms.txt on the site side, its purpose is to explain the site structure clearly, making it convenient for large language models to understand and index the content of the website. It does not change the reference mechanism itself and does not replace the position work. Using it as a traffic entry plan is a mismatch of expectations.
It is recommended to separate the statistics on the measurement: on the search side, look at clicks and rankings, and on the AI side, look at the list of pages cited and the number of mentions. Both sides point to the same batch of content, but reflect different issues.
Common questions
Ask: If the overlap rate is over half, can we just do one side?Answer: If we can only choose one, choose the position, because more than half of the reference candidate pool comes from the top of the natural ranking. But if the paragraph quality is not good enough, even if the position is high, it can only be exposed without any effect. Two sides solve two questions.
Ask: Should llms.txt be produced separately?Answer: The generation cost is very low, the site supports automatic generation, just turn it on. Don't treat it as an independent traffic plan. Its help to visibility lies in the fact that the model reads the site structure more efficiently, not changing the ranking.
Ask: When the budget is tight, which side should be cut first?Answer: Cut off parts that are not related to content quality first, such as pure word stacking production and mechanical external links. Both basic position investment and paragraph rewriting are retained, the former determines the entry, and the latter determines the probability of being quoted.