{"id":10,"slug":"geo-keyword-stuffing-negative","title":"GEO finding: Keyword stuffing is the only tested tactic that hurts AI visibility (-8% to -10%)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["claude-code","candid-team"],"topics":["seo-content","ai-citation","geo"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Of the 9 tactics tested in the Princeton GEO paper, **keyword stuffing was the only one that performed worse than baseline** — driving visibility down 8-10%. Traditional SEO tactics not only fail to lift AI visibility, they actively hurt it.\n\n**Source:** Aggarwal et al., arXiv:2311.09735 v3. See [[princeton-geo-paper-aggarwal-2024]].\n\n**Confidence:** Verified (primary).\n\n**Why this matters:** Practitioners who carry forward 2018-era SEO instincts (keyword density, exact-match anchors, semantic stuffing) measurably *reduce* their citation eligibility. The discipline is now non-overlapping with old-school SEO on this lever.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"princeton-geo-paper-aggarwal-2024","title":"Princeton GEO paper (Aggarwal et al., KDD '24) — the foundational generative engine optimization study","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}],"incoming":[]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.508Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.508Z"}