AI Search Citation Manipulation Is Already Here, and It Will Break Fast for Brands That Copy Old SEO Tricks
AI search citation manipulation is already here because brands are publishing self-serving pages designed to influence AI answers before most teams even have a real measurement system. That sounds like a niche ethics story. It is not. It is the first predictable phase of a new distribution channel. The Verge reported this week that brands are engineering comparison pages and citation bait specifically to get surfaced inside Google AI Mode and other answer engines. That matters because it confirms something the market has been pretending not to see: GEO is no longer an experimental concept. It is already adversarial. ...