SEO in the age of ChatGPT: lessons from Reddit

Reddit's view of SEO in 2026 is that it isn't dead, and that most of what gets sold as GEO or AEO is ordinary SEO with a new label. The one real change people agree on is that AI answers pull from a handful of third-party pages (comparison posts, "best X" lists, directories and Reddit threads). Being named on those pages now matters as much as ranking your own.

That's the short version of the r/SEO, r/TechSEO, r/DigitalMarketing, r/SaaS and r/Entrepreneur threads we re-read for this page on 31 October 2026. Each question below gives Reddit's answer, the main disagreement, and what we would do. Our own numbers come from the 1,289-directory database behind BacklinkBot. Last checked: 31 October 2026. (How we pick and credit threads is on how we research Reddit.)

Is SEO dead?

No, and r/SEO treats the question as a running joke. The October 2026 thread asking why so many GEO and AEO people post in r/SEO "if SEO is dead" drew 140 comments, nearly all saying SEO still works and AI search sits on top of it. Most of the skeptics are people whose traffic fell, not people who say nothing works.

The r/SEO thread is a fair sample. Commenters sorted the "SEO is dead" posters into two camps: people who think SEO means page titles and keyword targeting, and people selling a replacement service. One commenter compared it to saying the forward pass killed American football. The pass made the game more complex, and it was still the same game.

The more worried version of the question comes from marketers watching their clicks drop. In a 160-comment r/DigitalMarketing thread asking whether ChatGPT and Gemini are killing SEO, the top answers say search is splitting, not dying. Some queries end in an AI answer, and buying-stage queries still end in a click.

In practice, what changed is which tactics still pay. We sorted that list in SEO tactics that still work vs. dead in AI search.

Is GEO or AEO just SEO?

Mostly, according to r/SEO and to Google itself. Google's own guide to generative AI search, published in May 2026, says you don't need llms.txt files, content "chunking", AI-specific writing or special schema to appear in its AI features. Most practitioners on Reddit read that as confirmation. The holdouts are founders who've watched AI referrals behave differently from Google traffic.

The consensus line in r/SEO is short:

"GEO is simply SEO 2.0. 95% of GEO is having great SEO anyway" (u/JamieHBrown in r/SEO)

Treat the 95% as one person's opinion rather than a measurement.

What Google's guide says

When Google published Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, it was posted to r/TechSEO on 15 May 2026 and became one of the sub's top threads of the year (thread). The page we read was last updated on 10 July 2026. Its "myth busting" section lists what you can skip for Google Search:

• New machine-readable files such as llms.txt, or special AI markup.
• Breaking content into tiny "chunks" for AI.
• Rewriting content in a special style for AI.
• Chasing inauthentic "mentions" across the web.
• Special schema.org markup (structured data still helps with rich results).

What it tells you to do instead is plain SEO: original content, clear structure, pages that are indexed and eligible for a snippet, and no mass-produced pages for query variations.

Reddit split on it. Most commenters were glad to see the myths retired. The pushback was fair, though. Google can only speak for Google Search and Gemini, not for ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity, and a few people said they no longer trust anything Google says publicly about ranking.

Does llms.txt do anything?

Not for citations, going by the evidence Reddit points to. SE Ranking analysed close to 300,000 domains and found no link between having an llms.txt file and how often AI models cite a site. When the study was posted to r/SEO, most replies mocked its own advice to add the file "just in case" (thread).

Should you pay extra for AEO?

Be careful. The most useful thread on this is a coffee-shop owner asking r/DigitalMarketing whether to add the AEO service their SEO agency was pitching. The replies agreed: ask what they will do differently, because FAQ pages, schema and a complete Google Business Profile are SEO work they should already be doing. One commenter called charging a full extra fee for it predatory.

You can see the wider mood in r/SEO's most-discussed GEO thread of the summer: 174 comments cheering a podcast debate where a GEO agency founder couldn't back up his claims. There's also a well-upvoted r/DigitalMarketing rant about meetings full of new jargon for the same old work.

Where Reddit disagrees

The counterweight is r/SaaS, where the year's biggest AI-referral thread argues the opposite. The founder says Google rewards keywords and links while ChatGPT rewards clear answers to specific questions, and that writing for ChatGPT changed his signups. Both sides can be right. The pages that win in AI answers tend to be good pages that also answer a narrow question directly. We cover that story in how to get ChatGPT to recommend your product.

How AI answers pick sources (listicles, comparison pages, directories)

The working answer on Reddit is that ChatGPT and similar tools search the web, then summarize a small set of pages. For buying questions, those pages tend to be comparison posts, "best X for Y" lists, directories and forum threads. The vendor's homepage rarely makes the cut. So you need clear comparison pages of your own, plus a place on the third-party pages that get cited.

Three kinds of page keep coming up:

• Comparison and "alternative to X" pages. The r/SaaS founder traced his first ChatGPT signup to one honest comparison post with a table. Commenters called "free alternative to X" one of the strongest buying queries you can write for.
• Listicles. Several replies in the same thread, and in an r/SEO thread on getting recommended by ChatGPT and Claude, say ranked "best of" lists show up as sources over and over. Some of those commenters sell AI-visibility tracking, so read this as a pattern people report, not a measured fact.
• Directories and review sites. In an r/Entrepreneur thread from 28 October 2026, one commenter's practical tip was to run a customer-style prompt and then ask ChatGPT which sources it used. In most niches, they said, the answer is a directory, a roundup post and a forum thread.

As for schema, most of the same r/SEO thread says it hasn't moved AI answers in practice, which matches Google's guide.

What our directory data adds

Directories are one source type you can act on directly, so here is what the ones in our database look like. Of 1,289 directories, 681 give a dofollow link. AI directories are the largest group at 308 listings, and a little over half of those are dofollow. Communities go the other way: there are 210 of them, and only 16% give a dofollow link. Last checked: 31 October 2026, from how many directories give dofollow links.

We haven't measured whether a directory listing makes ChatGPT name a product, and nobody in these threads has either. Treat directories as a likely source of mentions, and choose the ones in your category instead of chasing the biggest count.

Which AI SEO tools pay off?

Reddit's advice is to start without one. The common answer for a small business is that ChatGPT, Google Search Console and a fixed list of prompts you re-check by hand cover most of what paid "AI SEO" tools do. Buy a tool once you know which job you need done, not because the label is new.

The best answers come from a 120-comment r/DigitalMarketing thread started by a small business whose search traffic was falling. The top reply:

"Small biz doesn't need fancy AI tools. You can do 80% of AI SEO just using ChatGPT, Google Search Console data and APIs smartly." (u/JOSactual in r/DigitalMarketing)

The 80% is a rule of thumb, not a statistic. Other replies got more specific:

• Diagnose before you buy. Pull your biggest losing pages from Search Console and check whether an AI Overview now answers those queries.
• Track by hand first. Write 15 to 20 questions your customers would ask, run each several times in ChatGPT and Gemini, and count who gets named. Answers vary from chat to chat, so only the trend means anything. This came up in both the r/Entrepreneur and r/SEO threads.
• One commenter noted that Semrush, Ahrefs and Google have started adding AI visibility reports to their suites, which weakens the case for a separate tool.

Two warnings show up across the threads. Many replies recommending a specific AI-visibility tool come from people who build one, so check the commenter's history. And tools that write the content for you get the least praise, while tools that handle research, technical checks and repetitive outreach get the most.

We compared the tools by job, with prices from each vendor's site, in best AI SEO tools.

What we'd do

Treat AI search as SEO plus one extra job: getting named on the pages AI answers cite. Fix the basics first. Then write honest comparison pages for the questions your buyers ask, earn a place on the listicles and directories in your category, and check a fixed prompt list monthly to see whether any of it moved.

In order:

1. Check that AI crawlers can reach you. One r/Entrepreneur reply flagged that some Cloudflare setups block AI crawlers by default, and checking your bot settings and robots.txt takes two minutes.
2. Skip the llms.txt and "chunking" work. Google's guide says you don't need it, and SE Ranking's data found no effect on citations.
3. Write one comparison page for each real alternative question, such as "Free alternative to [competitor]" or "[you] vs [competitor]". Give each a table, honest trade-offs and a clear answer at the top.
4. Find the pages that get cited for your category. Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity your buyers' questions, then ask which sources they used, and list the directories, roundups and threads that come up.
5. Get onto those pages by submitting to the directories in your category and pitching the authors of the roundups. Our directory database shows the link type and DR for each listing, so you can skip the ones that don't fit.
6. Track a fixed prompt list monthly. Use the same 15 to 20 prompts and the same tools each time, and log who gets named and which URLs get cited.
7. Automate only the repetitive parts. If outreach and follow-ups are what you never get to, our SEO agent does that work (we sell it; plans start at $49 a month). Strategy and the comparison pages are still yours to write.

The next page in this set covers the tactic Reddit talks about most: how to get ChatGPT to recommend your product.