Did 6 podcast appearances. Only 1 produced AI citations. What was different about that one.

Since pivoting to GEO as a discipline, i've been auditing every channel for citation value, not just traffic value. Podcast appearances were illuminating.

6 appearances over 8 months. One produced Perplexity citations for my brand. The other five: nothing.

Here's what was different about the one that worked:

• The host published a full transcript on the episode page (not just show notes — an actual paragraph-by-paragraph transcript)
• My name and brand appeared in the H1 title of the episode page
• The page was indexed by Google within 4 days
• The host had a DR 51 domain

The five that didn't work:

• 3 were audio-only, no transcript, no page indexing
• 1 had a transcript but my name only appeared in the meta description, not the body
• 1 was on a brand-new podcast with a DR 12 site

The fix going forward: before saying yes to any podcast, I ask two questions. Do they publish a text transcript on their site? Is my name in the episode title or H1? If no to both, it's brand awareness only, not GEO investment.

I now bring my own Otter.ai transcript as a value-add for the host. Costs $20 and dramatically increases the yes rate on 'can you publish text version'.

Audio-only podcast appearances are invisible to AI engines. Worth knowing before you allocate 3 hours to prep.