optimize: GEO-rank README for AI search engine discoverability

[mverab]

🎯 Objective

Make E-GEO appear in Perplexity/ChatGPT answers when users search for open-source generative engine optimization tools.

Right now, querying Perplexity for "best open-source GEO tools on GitHub" returns 8 competing projects — E-GEO does not appear, despite having more stars (122) than some that do (izak-fisher: 93). The problem is semantic discoverability, not popularity.

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📊 What the competitors do better

Based on a competitive analysis against the top-ranking repos:

Signal	geo-optimizer-skill (537⭐)	E-GEO (122⭐)
GitHub Topics	20 (seo, ai-seo, llm-seo, aeo, perplexity, chatgpt...)	11 (agent-skills, claude-code, cursor...)
Description keywords	8 search terms (AEO, GEO, AI SEO, LLM SEO)	3
Market stats in README	✅ (900M users, 28.3% stat)	❌
Named competitor table	✅	❌
Academic citations inline	✅ (KDD 2024, ICLR 2026)	⚠️ (badge only)
Long-tail keyword glossary	❌	❌

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✅ Changes in this PR

README.md (+65 lines, -16 lines)

1. Subtitle — Expanded from "Generative Engine Optimization" to include AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
2. Intro paragraph — Rewritten with 8 AI engine names as keywords (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini) and explicit mention of AI SEO / LLM SEO terminology
3. New section: "Why AI Visibility Matters in 2026" — Market stats that Perplexity indexes as authoritative context (900M users, 28.3% stat, schema lift data)
4. Research section — Expanded with inline citations to foundational GEO paper (Aggarwal et al., Princeton KDD 2024, arXiv:2311.09735) and numbered list of the 10 GEO features
5. Comparison table — Replaced generic 3-column table with 5-column table that names competitors by name (GEO Optimizer, GEO-optim/GEO, Awesome GEO) — this captures comparative queries like "geo-optimizer vs egeoagents"
6. New section: SEO & AI Search Glossary — Defines GEO, AEO, AI SEO, LLM SEO, AI Visibility, Citation Tracking, llms.txt — captures long-tail discovery queries
7. Footer — Keyword-rich closing line

Already applied to repo directly (not in this PR)

These are repo-level settings that cannot go through a PR:

• ✅ GitHub Topics: Expanded from 11 to 20 (GitHub max). Added: aeo, answer-engine-optimization, ai-seo, llm-seo, ai-search-optimization, ai-visibility, seo, chatgpt, perplexity, gemini, claude, citation-tracking, llms-txt, python, cli, mcp
• ✅ Description: Rewritten to include all major search terms

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🧪 Verification

After merging, re-query Perplexity in 3-7 days (indexing lag):

"What are the best open-source generative engine optimization tools on GitHub?"

E-GEO should start appearing in the response.

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📋 Remaining actions (post-merge)

• Submit PR to awesome-generative-engine-optimization to get E-GEO listed in the curated list that Perplexity cites as authority
• Consider PyPI package publication (pip install egeoagents)
• Consider dedicated domain (e.g. egeo.dev)