I Wasted December on Backlinks. Here's Why They Don't Work for GEO.
I spent December on LinkedIn and Medium. Both platforms use nofollow links. Here's what actually drives AI visibility.
I spent December building backlinks on LinkedIn and Medium.
LinkedIn has a Domain Authority of 98. Medium is 96. By traditional SEO logic, those links should have moved the needle.
They didn’t.
The first problem: nofollow
Both platforms mark external links as nofollow. This tells search engines to ignore them. No authority passes. I could have written 100 articles. The links would still count as zero.
I wasted hours on platforms I don’t enjoy. LinkedIn is a humblebrag factory. Medium’s UI is clunky. And neither one helped AI find my publication.
The second problem: wrong game entirely
Even if those links were dofollow, it wouldn’t matter for GEO.
AI systems don’t use backlinks the way Google does. The research shows brand search volume is the strongest predictor of AI citations (0.334 correlation). Backlink count isn’t in the top signals.
What AI systems actually cite:
ChatGPT: Wikipedia (47.9% of top-10), Bing organic results
Perplexity: Reddit (46.7% of top-10), real-time web search
Google AI Overviews: Reddit (21%), YouTube (18.8%), Quora (14.3%)
This is what The Visible Practitioner methodology focuses on: presence where AI looks, not links where Google looks.
Backlink profiles don’t appear.
SEO vs GEO
SEO: Does Google trust this site based on who links to it?
GEO: Does this brand exist where AI systems look for answers?
Different games. Different rules. I was playing the wrong one.
What moves GEO visibility
Presence on Reddit, YouTube, Q&A platforms
Brand mentions (not links) on sites AI trusts
Appearing on listicles alongside known brands
Wikipedia or Wikidata entity recognition
None require traditional backlinks.
Implementation
Stop building backlinks for GEO.
Find where your potential clients ask questions. For wellness practitioners: r/aromatherapy, r/esthetician, r/hairstylist. For B2B: r/smallbusiness, r/SEO, r/entrepreneur.
Answer questions there. Not for links. Reddit links are nofollow anyway. For presence. For being in the dataset when someone asks AI “Who can help me with this?”
That’s the game now.
Sources: 2025 AI Visibility Report (The Digital Bloom), AI Platform Citation Patterns (Profound), Yext AI Visibility Research 2025
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