GEO · Original finding

Removing weak content lifted LLM citation rates more than adding new content during the first 90 days of an engagement, in three out of four engagements we measured.

Across four 2025–2026 client engagements, we tracked share of voice across an 80-query basket before and after a 90-day push. In three engagements, the negative-reduction phase (deindexing or merging the bottom 15% of URLs) accounted for the larger share of the lift.

Methodology

Pre/post LLM share-of-voice across 80 queries; five LLMs sampled monthly.

Limits of this finding

Four-engagement sample. Pattern is suggestive, not statistically conclusive.

More GEO findings

Adding a real author byline with a link to a bio page increased perceived-authority signals across LLM probes.

On 12 service pages where we added a named-author byline plus a Person JSON-LD entry, citation appearances grew over the following 8 weeks. Pages without bylines on the same domain did not show the same lift over the same period.

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