{"id":6,"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","status":"current","audiences":["claude-code","dev","candid-team"],"topics":["schema-org","ai-citation","geo"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Aggarwal et al. (Princeton + IIT Delhi + Georgia Tech + Allen AI) introduced \"Generative Engine Optimization\" as a discipline in arXiv:2311.09735 (v1: Nov 2023; v3: Jun 2024), accepted at **KDD '24** Barcelona (ACM DOI [10.1145/3637528.3671900](https://doi.org/10.1145/3637528.3671900)). They proposed GEO-bench (10,000 queries × 9 source datasets × 25 domains) and tested 9 optimization methods on GPT-3.5-turbo + a 200-query Perplexity.ai validation subset.\n\n**Source:** arXiv:2311.09735 v3 — <https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735>. KDD proceedings paper.\n\n**Confidence:** Verified (primary).\n\n**Why it matters for Candid:** This is the most rigorous publicly available study on what content patterns lift AI-response visibility. The headline finding (+30-40% lifts) is from this paper. Every \"GEO\" claim in industry blog posts traces back here.\n\n**Atomic findings filed separately:** [[geo-quotation-addition-41pct]], [[geo-statistics-addition-31pct]], [[geo-cite-sources-28pct]], [[geo-keyword-stuffing-negative]], [[geo-rank-5-pages-115pct-lift]].\n\n**Caveats:** Tested on 2024-era engines (GPT-3.5, Perplexity). Whether the lifts persist on Gemini 3.5 / GPT-5 / Claude 4 / Sonar Pro is unverified. The Subjective Impression metric has been critiqued (Sandbox SEO) for construction.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"geo-quotation-addition-41pct","title":"GEO finding: Quotation Addition is the top-performing tactic at +41% on Position-Adjusted Word Count","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"geo-statistics-addition-31pct","title":"GEO finding: Statistics Addition is the #2 tactic at +31%","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"geo-cite-sources-28pct","title":"GEO finding: Cite Sources lifts visibility +28%","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"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","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"geo-rank-5-pages-115pct-lift","title":"GEO finding: Lower-ranked pages (organic rank ~5) gain 115.1% AI visibility when given GEO treatments","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"extractability-paragraph-shape-40-60-words","title":"Extractability: a quotable paragraph leads with the answer, is 40-60 words, lives under semantic HTML, and names entities concretely","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"research-brief-structured-content-as-competitive-advantage","title":"Research brief: Structured content as a competitive advantage (piece 2 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"research-brief-marketing-sites-that-do-something","title":"Research brief: What makes a marketing site do something (piece on brochure vs platform)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"research-brief-kb-backed-website-methodology","title":"Research brief: The knowledge-base-backed website (piece 3 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.476Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.476Z"}