HOW ACCESS SURFACE SHAPES LLM SEARCH AND CITATION BEHAVIOR

Summary from the TLDR Marketing newsletter

Petra Labs shows GEO research can mislead because outputs vary by access point, so many studies optimize for the wrong reality. Free ChatGPT over-indexes on Reddit while paid ChatGPT leans toward editorial publishers, meaning logged-out findings do not reflect real user experience. Brand visibility also shifts across ChatGPT and API environments, with some brands appearing in conversations but not in API outputs. Logged-in experiences favor earned media, while the API skews toward retail and product pages.