Someone with “AI Visibility Expert” in their LinkedIn bio posted a case study recently. A client with nearly 20 years in business. Hundreds of five-star reviews. Industry awards. The full trophy case. But somehow invisible to AI search.
His diagnosis? A WordPress speed optimization plugin.
His argument: those plugins only render above-the-fold content for load speed, and “Since AI has no mouse to move,” the bots couldn’t see 95% of the site.
I try my best to just scroll past these types of posts, but I took the bait. And here’s what I called him out on.
The Technical Problems
Page caching plugins cache entire pages as static HTML. Not just above the fold. That’s literally the point of them. He even called out WP Rocket, and WP Rocket even responded to his thread to let him know he was dead wrong on how their caching plugin works.
What he was actually describing is lazy loading. That’s a native WordPress feature, not something a caching plugin introduces. Different thing entirely. And it’s f’n scary to think there are businesses out there who trusts him to make optimizations to their site when he doesn’t understand the simple concept of lazy loading.
And the “bots can’t scroll because they don’t have a mouse” argument? That would apply equally to Googlebot. If that were true, the site would tank in Google rankings too. He never addressed that.
The Logical Problems
He also never clarified whether the content was blocked from LLM training or just real-time retrieval (RAG). Those are not the same problem, and the fix is completely different depending on which one you’re dealing with.
He claimed a 20-year-old business with hundreds of five-star reviews, industry recognition, and award winning went completely unmentioned on LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc. And for that to be true, it would mean they would have had to be invisible across the entire internet – not f’n possible. How do I know that’s not possible…
First, just think logically. 20 years of history, hundreds of 5 star reviews, industry recognition and award winning, but no one mentioned them anywhere on the internet?
Also, Ahrefs ran a study showing LLMs learn from everywhere, and that model-cited data directly contradicted what appeared on a manufacturer’s own website. What does this mean? LLMs do not learn from a single source of truth. So the idea that a well-established, award-winning business left zero trace across the entire web is not just unlikely. It’s damn near impossible, and I told him if he could prove it by providing me the client’s name I would Venmo him $10k if it were true. But you know crickets in response.
He didn’t even talk about the result after removing the plugin. No update. No outcome. No data. No receipts.
What Actually Scared Me Most
It wasn’t the post that scared me most. It was people’s response to it. A post that went viral with hundreds of people nodding along in the comments. No pushback. No questions. Just engagement validating a claim that had no proof, no result, and several technical holes in it.
This is how bad information spreads in this industry. Someone sounds confident, uses the right vocabulary, and frames it as a case study. That’s enough for most people to accept it as fact.
When I asked for clarification, I got ignored. When I woudn’t go away, I got blocked.
The Bottom Line
GEO is a real consideration. The search landscape is genuinely shifting, and how AI systems surface and cite content matters. That conversation is worth having.
But if someone is selling you on an “AI Visibility” fix and can’t tell you which AI systems were affected, what specifically was blocked, or what actually changed after their intervention, you’re not buying expertise. You’re buying a piece of 💩 with a guarantee on the box (sorry for the Tommy Boy quote).
Don’t let the new acronyms and vocabulary fool you. Snake oil has always had a label that sounds like medicine. And remember, it might work, until it doesn’t.
