The problem
Wellows ranked in Google but was effectively invisible inside AI answers — near-zero LLM referral traffic and no citation footprint in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or AI Overviews. The gap was not authority in the traditional sense. It was that nothing on the site was structured the way retrieval systems select and quote content.
What I did
- AEO framework. Koray Tuğberk's semantic logic combined with Google's query fan-out patent, used to model how a question actually expands before an answer is assembled.
- Citation experiments. Grounded versus non-grounded tests, tracking explicit citations and implicit brand mentions separately — they move independently and mean different things.
- Tool- and community-led distribution. Three free tools built as LLM entry points, plus AEO across Reddit, Quora and G2, with n8n and GA4 wired together for reporting.
The outcome
LLM sessions rose from 176 a month to roughly nine times that over the period. Average position improved from 28.9 to 17.3 and session duration went from 45 seconds to over six minutes — the second number matters more than it looks, because it separates traffic that arrives and leaves from traffic that arrives and reads.
Before and after
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| LLM sessions | 176 / month | ≈9× the baseline |
| Avg. position | 28.9 | 17.3 |
| Session duration | 45 sec | 6+ min |
| Paid spend | — | $0 |
Wellows, July 2025 – February 2026. Sources: GA4 for sessions and duration, Search Console for position.
