{ "schema_version": "1.0.0", "package_id": "W01", "title": "What GEO Is—and Is Not", "language": "en", "research_cutoff": "2026-08-24", "status": "structurally_complete_authored_draft_human_review_and_timed_pilot_pending", "source_policy": { "principle": "A route identifies a bounded instructional use; inclusion does not validate every conclusion in the source.", "prose_reuse": "No external prose is copied into this package.", "figure_reuse": "No external figure is reproduced; all specified visuals are original instructional syntheses.", "closed_system_boundary": "Surface observations do not disclose hidden candidates, ranking logic, training data, or causal mechanisms.", "review_boundary": "Evidence cards were used as controlled routes; independent human scientific review remains pending." }, "paper_routes": [ { "id": "P16", "citation_key": "aggarwal2024geo", "title": "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735", "route": "core", "role": "Field-origin framing; fixed-context visibility intervention as a bounded example; supports separating generated-answer allocation from earlier retrieval stages.", "boundary": "The target source is already inside a fixed top-five context in the principal experiment. Do not infer crawl, index, open-web retrieval, current-platform citation, user behavior, traffic, or revenue effects; do not resolve unreconciled table values or treat file-upload results as ordinary web search.", "notes_sections": [ "Chapter 1: An interface change is not yet a mechanism", "Chapter 1: The units that are routinely conflated", "Chapter 2: Documents have identities; claims have ceilings" ], "review_state": "claim_level_review_human_verification_pending" }, { "id": "P19", "citation_key": "wen2025position", "title": "Position: On the Risks of Generative Engine Optimization in the Era of LLMs", "url": "https://www.techrxiv.org/doi/full/10.36227/techrxiv.176620816.64043115/v1", "route": "core", "role": "Risk framing and a conceptual distinction between retrieval-booster and downstream ranking-shifter intervention surfaces; supports discussion of research and governance questions.", "boundary": "This is preliminary position and systematization work, not an experiment demonstrating retrieval boosting, prevalence, provider effectiveness, causal harm, or regulatory violation. Provider-facing claims and the illustrative scenario are not verified outcomes.", "notes_sections": [ "Chapter 1: Three stakeholders and a misaligned objective", "Chapter 2: Reading an empirical GEO paper without flattening it", "Chapter 11: Manipulation, Detection, Defense, and Mechanism Design" ], "review_state": "claim_level_review_version_refresh_pending_human_verification_pending" }, { "id": "P06", "citation_key": "xiong2024when", "title": "When Search Engine Services Meet Large Language Models: Visions and Challenges", "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.00128", "route": "extend", "role": "Conceptual vocabulary for Search4LLM and LLM4Search and for locating GEO among retrieval, ranking, generation, annotation, and evaluation problems.", "boundary": "Narrative vision and taxonomy paper with no primary dataset, intervention, systematic-review corpus, or platform trace. Do not treat its categories as a closed-product architecture, measured prevalence, or evidence that retrieval necessarily improves truthfulness.", "notes_sections": [ "Chapter 1: GEO, SEO, AEO, and adjacent fields", "Chapter 1: An interface change is not yet a mechanism" ], "review_state": "claim_level_review_human_verification_pending" }, { "id": "P15", "citation_key": "chen2025generative", "title": "Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI Search", "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08919", "route": "extend", "role": "Bounded illustration of source-set and brand-mention heterogeneity across heterogeneous August 2025 API modules; useful for system-card and denominator critique.", "boundary": "Descriptive, author-generated prompt snapshots with incomplete denominators, no content intervention, no repeated stochastic baseline, and no public reproduction bundle. Do not infer current interface behavior, platform preference, geographic population effects, tactic effects, authority, user trust, or business outcomes from the title or reported cells.", "notes_sections": [ "Chapter 2: Reading an empirical GEO paper without flattening it", "Chapter 2: Documents have identities; claims have ceilings" ], "review_state": "claim_level_review_human_verification_pending" } ], "official_sources": [ { "id": "REF-003", "source_class": "official_university_course", "title": "Stanford CS336: Language Modeling from Scratch", "url": "https://cs336.stanford.edu/", "role": "Teaching architecture only: schedule-first structure, direct material routes, prerequisite signaling, and visible assignment cadence.", "boundary": "Provides no GEO subject-matter evidence, learning-effect estimate, or permission to copy Stanford course text or design assets." }, { "id": "STD-001", "source_class": "official_voluntary_framework", "title": "NIST AI Risk Management Framework 1.0", "url": "https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.AI.100-1", "role": "Risk-register and evidence-of-control vocabulary for the package safety boundary.", "boundary": "Not law, certification, legal safe harbor, proof of implementation, or evidence of any GEO performance effect." }, { "id": "STD-006", "source_class": "w3c_recommendation", "title": "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2", "url": "https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/", "role": "Accessibility acceptance criteria informing slide text equivalents, non-color encoding, keyboard-ready activities, and later course-site review.", "boundary": "Citing the Recommendation does not establish conformance; automated and human evaluation of the final artifacts remains necessary, and WCAG supplies no GEO visibility claim." }, { "id": "PROTO-001", "source_class": "ietf_standard", "title": "RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion Protocol", "url": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309", "role": "Protocol-scope example for distinguishing declared acquisition controls from later indexing, retrieval, context, citation, or outcome events.", "boundary": "Protocol semantics do not establish crawler compliance, indexing, retrieval, generation, attribution, rank, or traffic on a named system." } ], "notes_routes": [ { "id": "NOTES-CH01", "path": "notes-latex/chapters/01-problem.tex", "sections": [ "An interface change is not yet a mechanism", "The units that are routinely conflated", "A conditional visibility chain", "GEO, SEO, AEO, and adjacent fields", "Three stakeholders and a misaligned objective", "A minimal research question template" ], "role": "Primary conceptual and notation spine for W01.", "boundary": "The chapter is an evolving English-base scholarly synthesis; original formalisms remain method drafts until external review and should not be presented as universal platform facts." }, { "id": "NOTES-CH02", "path": "notes-latex/chapters/02-evidence.tex", "sections": [ "Documents have identities; claims have ceilings", "An evidence ladder for use, not prestige", "The Claim–Evidence–Source graph", "Reading an empirical GEO paper without flattening it" ], "role": "Evidence identity, claim atomization, evidence-ceiling, and source-role bridge required to interpret W01 claims.", "boundary": "Evidence levels are claim-relative teaching controls, not a universal prestige hierarchy or a substitute for source-specific appraisal." }, { "id": "NOTES-CONTROLS", "path": "notes-latex/CLAIM_REGISTER.md and notes-latex/NOTATION_REGISTER.md", "sections": [ "C01.001", "C01.002", "C02.003", "W_t, Y, A, L, Z_D, Z_R, Z_C, Z_G, Z_T, Z_A" ], "role": "Claim-status and notation consistency control.", "boundary": "A registry entry records editorial status and forbidden extrapolation; it is not proof of independent verification." } ], "controlled_project_inputs": [ { "id": "COURSE-ARCH-W01", "path": "planning/course-site-architecture.md#W01", "role": "Authoritative instructional outcomes, visual brief, before/during/after sequence, and reading route.", "boundary": "A design specification is not evidence that the lesson has been taught, timed, or shown effective." }, { "id": "COURSE-RECORD-W01", "path": "course-site/app/lib/course-data.ts#W01", "role": "Current public week record and wording alignment.", "boundary": "The site record is a curriculum artifact, not an external scientific source." }, { "id": "PAPER-MAP-42", "path": "planning/最新论文条目审计与映射.md", "role": "Stable P01–P42 identity and editorial routing map.", "boundary": "Routing and metadata coverage do not validate a paper conclusion or resolve version, method, license, and reproduction questions." }, { "id": "EVIDENCE-CARDS-W01", "path": "notes-latex/evidence-cards/P06-xiong2024when.json; P15-chen2025generative.json; P16-aggarwal2024geo.json; P19-wen2025position.json", "role": "Claim-level method, limitation, external-validity, artifact, and forbidden-generalization controls.", "boundary": "Cards were prepared by an automated evidence pass and await independent human scientific review; no paper result is claimed as independently reproduced." } ], "synthetic_assets": [ { "id": "HARBORCELL-H2", "path": "WORKED_CASE.md", "role": "Offline fixture for claim atomization, stage mapping, metric cards, and bounded conclusions.", "boundary": "All identities and events are fictional; the fixture estimates no real-platform or real-product behavior." } ] }