How AI Engines Understand Content and Identity: A GEO & Personal Brand Authority Case Study?
Can AI Engines Understand Expertise the Same Way Humans Do?
The rise of AI-powered search has created a new challenge for content creators, SEO professionals, and personal brands.
For years, success was measured through:
- Rankings
- Traffic
- Clicks
- Leads
Today, another question is becoming increasingly important:
What do AI engines think you are known for?
This question may sound simple, but it sits at the center of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), and AI visibility.
When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity about a person, company, or website, the AI does not simply retrieve a webpage.
Instead, it attempts to build an understanding.
That understanding is often based on:
- Published content
- Topic consistency
- Entity signals
- Authority indicators
- Digital footprint
This raises an interesting question.
If different AI engines analyze the same content creator, will they reach the same conclusion?
To answer that question, I decided to run a practical experiment.
Why I Ran This Experiment
Many GEO discussions focus on optimization tactics.
Common advice includes:
- Create helpful content.
- Build topical authority.
- Use schema markup.
- Improve entity recognition.
- Strengthen E-E-A-T signals.
While these recommendations are valuable, I wanted to explore something different.
Instead of asking:
How can I improve AI visibility?
I asked:
How do AI engines currently perceive my expertise and identity?
This shift is important.
Most SEO professionals focus on influencing AI systems.
I wanted to observe how AI systems were already responding.
In other words, I wanted evidence before strategy.
The Two Questions That Powered This Experiment
To keep the experiment simple, I asked multiple AI systems only two questions.
Question 1
What has Soumyaditya Biswas written about?This question measures:
- Topic Recognition
- Content Understanding
- Topical Authority
- Subject Expertise
In simple terms:
What topics does AI associate with my content?Question 2
Who is Soumyaditya Biswas?This question measures something entirely different.
It tests:
- Entity Recognition
- Personal Brand Authority
- Professional Positioning
- Identity Understanding
In simple terms:
What does AI believe I am known for?Although both questions appear similar, they reveal different layers of AI understanding.
Topic Authority vs Entity Authority
This is one of the most important concepts in modern AI visibility.
Many professionals focus heavily on topic authority.
Topic Authority
Topic authority answers:
What subjects are associated with this website or person?Examples:
- Technical SEO
- GEO
- AEO
- AI Visibility
- Analytics
When AI repeatedly encounters content on these subjects, it starts connecting those topics together.
Entity Authority
Entity authority answers:
Who is this person or brand?Examples:
- SEO Professional
- Digital Marketing Strategist
- AI Visibility Specialist
- Search Marketing Expert
Entity authority is more difficult to build because it requires consistency across multiple signals.
Unlike topic authority, entity authority is not built through a single article.
It is built through repeated evidence.
Why This Matters for GEO
One of the biggest misconceptions in AI search is that publishing content automatically creates authority.
In reality, AI systems often perform two separate tasks.
Step 1: Understand the Content
Article
↓
Topic
↓
CategoryStep 2: Understand the Creator
Author
↓
Expertise
↓
EntityOnly when both systems work together does strong AI visibility begin to emerge.
This is where GEO becomes much more interesting than traditional SEO.
Traditional SEO often asks:
Can this page rank?
GEO increasingly asks:
Can this source be trusted?
The difference is significant.
The Hidden Shift Happening in Search
Search engines historically focused on documents.
AI engines increasingly focus on entities.
This means the future may depend less on:
One Articleand more on:
One Recognizable ExpertAs AI-generated answers become more common, systems need confidence in both the information and the source.
This creates a new challenge for marketers, creators, and businesses.
The challenge is no longer simply creating content.
The challenge is creating recognizable expertise.
The Framework Behind This Case Study
As part of this experiment in AI visibility and personal brand authority, Soumyaditya Biswas wanted to understand whether AI systems could identify both his content themes and his professional identity.
The experiment was based on a simple framework:
Content
↓
Topic Recognition
↓
Authority Signals
↓
Entity Recognition
↓
AI Understanding
↓
Citation PotentialIf this framework is correct, then the responses from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity should reveal not only what content has been published but also how those systems interpret expertise.
The results turned out to be far more revealing than expected.
What Happened When ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity Analyzed the Same Digital Footprint?
The next section examines how each AI engine responded to the exact same questions and what those responses reveal about modern AI visibility, topical authority, and entity recognition.
What Happened When ChatGPT Analyzed My Content and Identity?
The first AI platform I tested was ChatGPT.
I asked both questions:
Question 1
What has Soumyaditya Biswas written about?Question 2
Who is Soumyaditya Biswas?What happened next immediately caught my attention.
Instead of producing a random summary, ChatGPT identified several recurring themes.
The strongest associations included:
- SEO
- Technical SEO
- GEO
- AEO
- AI Visibility
- Search Intelligence
- Content Optimization
- Analytics
More importantly, ChatGPT did not simply list articles.
It attempted to build a professional profile.
This distinction matters.
What ChatGPT Understood About My Content?
Direct Answer
ChatGPT primarily associated my content with SEO, AI-powered search visibility, GEO, AEO, technical SEO, and modern search optimization strategies.
This observation revealed something important.
ChatGPT was not recognizing individual articles.
Instead, it appeared to recognize patterns.
The system seemed to understand:
Multiple GEO Articles
+
Multiple AEO Articles
+
Technical SEO Content
=
Topical Authority SignalThis is exactly what many SEO professionals hope to achieve through topic clusters.
What ChatGPT Understood About My Identity
The second question produced an even more interesting result.
When asked:
Who is Soumyaditya Biswas?ChatGPT did not answer:
A website owner.It did not answer:
A blogger.Instead, it described a professional profile.
The response associated me with:
- Digital Marketing
- Search Marketing
- SEO
- GEO
- AEO
- Analytics
- AI Search Visibility
Most importantly, ChatGPT positioned me as part of a newer generation of marketers focused on AI-driven search ecosystems.
That observation was fascinating.
Because I never explicitly told ChatGPT to create that positioning.
The conclusion emerged from publicly available content and signals.
The First Major Finding
The first major finding from this experiment was:
AI Systems Do Not Only Read Articles
They also build identity profiles.
Traditional SEO often focuses on:
PagesAI systems increasingly focus on:
People
Brands
EntitiesThis is one of the biggest shifts happening in modern search.
What Happened When Gemini Analyzed The Same Information?
Next, I repeated the experiment using Gemini.
The same two questions were used.
No additional instructions.
No extra context.
The goal was to determine whether Gemini would reach the same conclusions as ChatGPT.
Surprisingly, the answer was both yes and no.
What Gemini Understood About My Content
Direct Answer
Gemini associated my content with SEO, AI-powered search, website tracking, analytics infrastructure, business growth, and practical digital marketing.
Unlike ChatGPT, Gemini seemed less focused on GEO alone.
Instead, it viewed my content through a broader business lens.
The response connected topics such as:
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics 4
- Google Tag Manager
- Website Tracking
- Search Visibility
- Business Growth
This was extremely interesting.
Because it suggested Gemini was identifying relationships between technical implementation and business outcomes.
What Gemini Understood About My Identity
When Gemini evaluated identity rather than content, another pattern emerged.
Instead of describing only an SEO specialist, Gemini appeared to describe someone focused on:
- Search Visibility
- Data Infrastructure
- Digital Marketing Systems
- Emerging AI Technologies
In other words:
Content Creator
+
SEO Professional
+
Systems ThinkerThis interpretation was broader than ChatGPT’s response.
It suggested that Gemini may place greater emphasis on contextual relationships between topics.
The Second Major Finding
The second major finding was:
Different AI Systems Build Different Authority Profiles
The content was the same.
The website was the same.
The author was the same.
Yet the interpretation changed.
ChatGPT emphasized:
SEO
GEO
AEO
AI VisibilityGemini emphasized:
SEO
Tracking
Infrastructure
Business GrowthThis suggests that AI visibility is not a single metric.
Different systems may prioritize different signals.
The Hidden GEO Lesson
This experiment revealed a lesson that many marketers overlook.
Most people ask:
How can I rank?
Fewer people ask:
How am I being interpreted?
Those are fundamentally different questions.
Ranking measures visibility.
Interpretation measures understanding.
As AI-powered search continues to evolve, understanding may become just as important as visibility itself.
Enter Perplexity: The Third Perspective
After analyzing ChatGPT and Gemini, I wanted a third viewpoint.
Perplexity offered an opportunity to compare another AI system’s understanding of the exact same content and identity signals.
The results would reveal whether there were common patterns shared across all platforms—or whether every AI engine was building a completely different picture of expertise and authority.
What Happened When Perplexity Analyzed the Same Information?
To complete the experiment, I asked Perplexity the same two questions:
Question 1
What has Soumyaditya Biswas written about?Question 2
Who is Soumyaditya Biswas?Interestingly, Perplexity produced the most balanced response of all three platforms.
Direct Answer
Perplexity associated my content and identity with:
- SEO
- Digital Marketing
- GEO
- AEO
- Website Tracking
- Search Visibility
- Business Growth
In many ways, it acted as a middle ground.
Comparing All Three AI Systems
After reviewing all responses, a clear pattern emerged.
| AI System | Strongest Association |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | GEO, AEO, AI Visibility |
| Gemini | Tracking, Analytics, Business Growth |
| Perplexity | SEO, GEO, Tracking, Digital Marketing |
Although the wording differed, all three systems consistently connected my name with:
- SEO
- Search Visibility
- AI Search
- Digital Marketing
This consistency was the most important finding of the entire experiment.
The Biggest Lesson From This Case Study
Direct Answer
AI visibility is not just about publishing content.
It is about creating consistent topic signals that help AI systems understand both:
What you write about
+
Who you areFinal Thought
That understanding is ultimately the foundation of:
- GEO
- AEO
- AI Visibility
- Personal Brand Authority
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