9 months of GEO work, finally broke through in month 10. What the step-function looked like.
Filed this post under 'wins' because it eventually was one, but months 1-9 felt like losses.
Background: devtool in a mid-competitive category. Not CRM-level saturated, but 4-5 incumbents with 3-7 year head starts on training data. I did everything right — schema, comparison pages, G2 reviews, Reddit answers, llms.txt. Moved from GEO Score 0 to GEO Score 18 in 9 months. Basically invisible.
Month 10: one post hit HN front page. Not my best writing, honestly — a debugging post-mortem that resonated with the right people at the right time. 340 upvotes over 6 hours.
What happened to citations over the following 6 weeks:
- ChatGPT (search-on): 4% → 34% mention rate
- Perplexity: 12% → 41%
- Google AI Mode: 2% → 19%
The 9 months of groundwork mattered. The HN post by itself wouldn't have stuck if there wasn't already a web of comparison pages, reviews, and schema for AI engines to triangulate. The spike found a lattice to anchor to.
But also — i'm not going to pretend the first 9 months weren't demoralizing. They were. At month 7 I genuinely considered killing the GEO program entirely. Glad I didn't, but I understand why people quit at that point.
If you're at month 6-8 with minimal movement: keep one eye on your category saturation. Some categories just require a viral trigger, no matter how good your execution is.
4 replies
- Jess Wright
The month 7 despair is so real. I'm at month 5 right now with modest movement and this is weirdly reassuring. Not that I should expect a miracle, but that the curve can be non-linear and patience has historical precedent.
- Inês Pereira
The 'viral trigger finds a lattice' model explains something I couldn't explain before. A competitor of ours had an HN post that went nowhere in terms of citation lift, while another competitor's smaller HN post caused a sustained lift. The difference: the second had 18 months of comparison pages and G2 reviews already in place. The post didn't create the position, it surfaced it.
- Petr VlčekFounder
Petr here — the step-function pattern shows up in our data regularly for categories with 3+ established incumbents. Gradual work + a trigger event is the typical shape. The trigger doesn't have to be HN — a well-timed comparison page getting picked up by a newsletter works too, we've seen that produce similar citation jumps.
The 'groundwork creates the lattice' framing is exactly what I needed to hear at month 7. Saving this post.