Understanding how AI is killing your SEO is no longer optional for any business that wants to be found by its ideal clients. In Episode 152 of The Profit Minds Podcast, Dr. Steven Kirch sits down with Rocky Pedden – CEO of RevenueZen, the B2B growth marketing agency acquired by publicly traded Onfolio Holdings in 2023.
Rocky has 7 years of live data on what actually works in search and his message in 2026 is urgent. Fewer than 10% of sources cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot rank in the Google top 10. 28.3% of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages have zero Google organic visibility. Your SEO rankings and your AI visibility are two completely different things. And most businesses have only optimized for one of them.
In this episode, Dr. Kirch and Rocky Pedden break down exactly how AI is killing your SEO and what every business must do to stay visible:
Rocky Pedden is the CEO of RevenueZen – one of the most respected B2B growth marketing agencies in the United States. He joined the company 7 years ago in a sales and customer success role, built out the company’s operations and systems, and gradually took on more responsibility until he moved into the president and CEO role in late 2022.
In 2023, RevenueZen was acquired by publicly traded Onfolio Holdings – a portfolio of digital agencies. Rocky now leads RevenueZen as part of that larger group, bringing live multi-client data on what is working in AI search, GEO and content marketing right now.
Most businesses in 2026 are still measuring their marketing by Google rankings, monthly sessions and organic traffic. Those metrics are becoming dangerously misleading as AI search changes how people find information.
Here is the data that matters. According to live research, fewer than 10% of sources cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot rank in the Google organic top 10 for the same query – meaning SEO performance does not predict AI citation performance. And 28.3% of ChatGPT’s most-cited pages have zero organic visibility in Google. The signals that got you ranked in Google have never mattered less for getting you cited by AI.
As Rocky confirms from his own client data – traffic went down for almost all clients when AI overviews launched. But conversions stayed the same or went up. The people still landing on their pages were deeper into their buying cycle and more qualified. This is how AI is killing your SEO. And the businesses that understand this shift are already pulling ahead.
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization – the practice of structuring your content so that AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite, recommend or mention your brand when users ask questions. Unlike traditional SEO which targets keyword rankings in lists of links, GEO targets citation frequency in AI-generated responses. The success metric shifts from ranking position to how often your brand appears across relevant prompts.
HEO – Hybrid Engine Optimization – is the newest framework Rocky introduced in this episode. It combines traditional SEO, GEO and human engagement into one unified strategy that asks one core question – how do we get the human involved, engaging with the content, regardless of where that content lives?
One of the most technically valuable insights in this episode is Rocky’s explanation of query fan-out. When someone asks ChatGPT a question, here is what actually happens behind the scenes. ChatGPT does a Google search on that question. From those results it takes 10 to 15 initial links and builds a small universe of keywords. It then does 10 more Google searches based on those keywords. It pulls in 100 to 150 pieces of content and that is what it draws its answer from.
This means that every piece of content on your website is an opportunity to be part of that mini-universe. If you have FAQ sections answering the specific questions your ideal clients are asking – and those FAQ sections are contextually tied to each piece of content – you multiply your chances of being cited dramatically.
Get a FREE GEO audit of your website from RevenueZen. Find out exactly where you stand in AI search and what to fix first. Takes about a day to complete.
Dr. Steven Kirch is the creator of the Profit Minds™ Growth System, which helps entrepreneurs and professionals accelerate profits through productivity, scalable systems, and AI-powered business strategies.
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