AI doesn't search the web the way you think it does.
Traditional SEO? That was about building links and tweaking your own site until Google noticed. But AI search engines are playing a completely different game. They're not crawling your carefully optimized landing pages first. They're diving into Reddit threads. Parsing YouTube transcripts. Scanning forum discussions where people actually talk like humans.
These platforms have become the sources AI engines trust most when answering questions. And the numbers are frankly wild.
Reddit accounts for 46.5% of all citations in Perplexity—making it the #1 cited domain. Google AI Overviews? Roughly 21% of its citations come straight from Reddit discussions. To put that in perspective: AI trusts Reddit more than it trusts your perfectly optimized website.
AI engines don't prioritize individual websites anymore. They seek consensus across diverse web sources. Your product page doesn't matter if the conversational web—Reddit, YouTube, forums—tells a different story about your brand. Or worse, says nothing at all.
Which means you can't just optimize your corner of the internet anymore. You need to be part of the conversation happening everywhere else.
Reddit: Where AI Goes to School on Your Brand
Reddit's conversational, aggressively non-corporate voice makes it AI's favorite research assistant. Makes sense when you think about it. AI engines are built to understand human intent, and Reddit delivers raw, unfiltered human perspectives at massive scale.
When someone asks "What's the best project management tool for remote teams?" on Reddit, they don't get marketing copy. They get real experiences. Frustrations. Honest recommendations from people who've actually used the tools. AI engines eat this up.
So how do you get in on this? Find the gaps. Use tools to identify "People Also Ask" (PAA) questions that trigger AI Overviews but lack clear, satisfying answers. These gaps are your entry points—opportunities to insert your brand's perspective into AI's knowledge base.
And when you answer? Be authentic. Don't parachute into subreddits with corporate talking points, you'll get eviscerated. Join discussions where your expertise genuinely helps. Answer thoroughly, conversationally, honestly.
Even when it means acknowledging your product's limitations. AI engines reward nuanced, human responses over sales pitches every time. When you consistently provide valuable answers on Reddit, you're not just helping individual users. You're teaching AI engines to associate your brand with expertise in your domain. Each thoughtful response is another data point telling AI who actually knows their stuff.
YouTube: The Video Platform AI Can't Ignore
Video stopped being just another content format a while ago. For AI, it's treasure trove of multimodal data, and YouTube completely owns this territory.
YouTube gets cited 200 times more than any other video platform in AI search results. Try it for yourself: any informational query you type into Google Search is highly likely to include at least 1 video as reference.
That dominance isn't luck. AI engines can both "hear" your transcript and "see" your visual content, extracting information traditional text-based search could never capture.
Here's what throws people: AI doesn't just index your video title and description. It's analyzing your entire transcript, identifying specific moments, understanding visual demonstrations. That tutorial showing how to configure software settings? AI can now search it at the step level, not just the video level.
Which means you need to optimize differently. High-quality transcripts matter because AI engines rely on accurate transcripts to understand your video content—auto-generated captions won't cut it. Well-defined chapters help AI identify and extract specific tutorial steps, so when someone asks "how to export data from [your tool]," AI can reference the exact timestamp where you demonstrate that step [Search Engine Land].
Take the above example; the AI directly puts the user onto 55 seconds in the video, where the creator is speaking about how to start driving a manual car.
One key takeaway is this: visual clarity isn't just good UX anymore. AI is learning to interpret on-screen text, UI elements, and demonstrations as searchable information.
Your Entity Footprint: How AI Connects the Dots
AI engines don't think in URLs. They think in entities: distinct, recognizable things that exist across multiple contexts. Your brand is an entity. And AI is constantly verifying that entity's identity across platforms.
Inconsistent branding confuses AI. If your company name appears differently on LinkedIn, YouTube, and industry forums, AI struggles to connect those signals. You're fragmenting your entity footprint when you should be consolidating it.
But the real power move? User-generated content (UGC) acts as powerful "consensus signals" that AI engines deeply trust. When your customers mention your brand in forum discussions, leave reviews on third-party sites, or discuss your products in Reddit threads, they're contributing to AI's understanding of your entity.
Google AI Mode specifically values these organic mentions because they represent unbiased perspectives. You can't fake consensus. You earn it by delivering value that people naturally discuss. So, how do you do it. Cultivate environments where valuable UGC naturally occurs. Support active user communities. Engage in forums where your customers already hang out. Make it easy for satisfied users to share their experiences.
URL-centric SEO is dying. AI engines research your brand the same way humans do—exploring the conversational web, seeking consensus, validating claims across sources.
Your strategy needs to evolve with this. Success in AEO and GEO means showing up in the spaces AI trusts most: Reddit discussions where real people solve real problems. YouTube videos with structured, parseable content. Forums where your industry's community naturally gathers.
This isn't about gaming algorithms. It's about showing up authentically where conversations happen. Contributing value without corporate posturing. Building a consistent entity footprint that AI can confidently recognize and cite.
Your secret weapon isn't a new SEO tactic. It's being genuinely useful in the places that matter most.
