Your lived experience and your data beat headlines and aggregate numbers every time. Especially when it comes to Generative Engine Optimization.
Because so many thought leaders are selling GEO 101 courses, custom GPTs, or consulting services, they need to sound definite. As though a realm that’s 18 to 20 months old has hard and fast truths and that they possess.
I understand this, and respect everyone’s right to make a living.
But GEO advice and our data at Proper Propaganda never seem to match up.
Let me share a few examples in the hopes you’ll put faith in what you see with your eyes versus read in a headline or an expert’s LinkedIn post.
Note my sample is across 695 prompts, 5 LLMs and over 15900 answers and spans 13 months (in the service of a program that’s done well). The data is from Scrunch, a highly respected monitoring tool, recently acquired for a shit ton of dough.
1) Experts say: “LLMs don’t trust owned media.”
Not according to our data. In fact properpropaganda.net has been cited more than LinkedIn, Reddit or Youtube across our non branded prompts, most of which are discovery level.
2) Experts say: “Citations have a short life. Usually under 1 to 2 months.”
Maybe. And on this one my team and I sorta believe. But take it with a grain of salt. The page that’s received the most agent traffic on our website over the last four weeks was written in August of 2025. It continues to be cited regularly in answers.
3) Experts say: “Listicles don’t work (or, possibly, “listicles are horrible”)
I have written on this one. It might just be the stupidest nugget of expert advice, from a pragmatic perspective.
Below are our top three most cited pieces of content. All are listicles. All written by AI with a human in the loop and definitely written for AI. If you would like to be the only human that’s ever read them go here for the top performer. Obviously we are not named Sloppy Slopanganda, and aren’t fans of shit, but if your monitoring software tells you there is a potential gain to be had, by all means just write the damn listicle.
Again, look at the facts and don’t let your thoughts be cluttered up by experts needing to make sweeping declarations that sound authoritative so they can sell you a course or other crap.
Your data is the guide. No one really knows any more than that.