I built a tool that scores websites 0 to 100 on how visible they are to AI answer engines. Then I ran a study to check whether the score predicts anything real. It does not.

The result: an odds ratio of 0.9625 with a p-value of 0.7172. No significant relationship between the GEO score and whether Perplexity cites a page. I pre-registered the analysis plan before running it, and I am publishing the data anyway.

What I tested

I took 341 pages from sites that publish a sitemap, ran a GEO audit on each one (rubric v2, GEO Optimizer 4.19.3), and then asked Perplexity Sonar two questions built from each page's own headline:

Template A: "What are the most reliable sources on: [headline]"

Template B: "Explain this topic and cite your sources: [headline]"

I recorded whether the page's domain appeared among the sources Perplexity returned.…