Your GEO Strategy Works in English. It's Broken Everywhere Else. Here's the Data.

Profound published research on April 21, 2026 analyzing 3.25 billion AI citations from March 2026. The dataset spans seven AI platforms, fourteen countries, and five content classification types. Davis McCain, the lead author, described the core finding directly: "The language of a query can rewire the entire citation graph: which domains appear, how often they're cited, and even whether 'the social web' shows up at all."

That rewiring is not minor. In some markets and on some platforms, the top-cited social channel in English drops to near zero in another language. Channels with minimal English presence dominate instead.

Most GEO programs are built on English-market data. The platforms, tactics, and content decisions that work in English-language AI search get applied to Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic markets without modification. The Profound data shows why that approach produces unreliable results.

Why the English GEO baseline breaks down in other markets

The current standard GEO playbook for social and community citations runs roughly: publish on Reddit for Perplexity and ChatGPT; build LinkedIn content for professional and B2B queries; use YouTube for Google AI Overviews. This advice holds well in English-language markets.

The problem is that most of this guidance comes from English-language research. Peec AI's 30-million-source study of platform divergence across AI models was measured in English. The Reddit citation strategy for B2B brands describes English-query behavior. YouTube's AI citation dominance in Google AI Overviews was documented in English-language prompts.

When your target buyers ask AI questions in Spanish, Portuguese, or Arabic, they are not on the same citation graph. The platforms the AI model pulls from, and in what proportion, change by language. Sometimes the change is additive. Sometimes it is a complete flip.

Profound's English baseline for social citation rates across models shows how often each platform draws from social content at all:

Those figures describe what happens in English queries. In Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic, the distribution inside each row changes substantially.

What happens to citations in Spanish-language markets

Spanish-language queries on Google AI Overviews produce social citation rates of roughly 22% in Mexico and 20% in Spain. That is 1.4 times the English baseline of 15.3%. Google's citation surface is more socially oriented in Spanish than in English.

The platform composition inside those social citations also shifts. TikTok reaches 16% of social citations in Spanish-language Google AI Overviews. In English, TikTok is a minor citation source. Five times the share, driven by language alone.

ChatGPT moves in the opposite direction. Spanish-language ChatGPT queries in Mexico produce social citation rates of 4.7%. In Spain, 4.2%. Both are roughly half the English baseline of 9.1%. A brand that has invested in social content specifically to win ChatGPT social citations in the US will see minimal transfer to Spanish-language ChatGPT.

This creates an unusual situation for B2B brands with both US and Latin American buyers. The same content strategy produces better ChatGPT social citation results in English, and better Google AI Overviews social citation results in Spanish. Optimizing for one surface in one language while ignoring the other language's primary surface leaves one market underserved.

What happens to citations in Portuguese-language markets

The Portuguese finding is the most extreme in the Profound dataset.

YouTube accounts for 65% of social citations in Portuguese-language AI responses. In English, YouTube's social citation share is in the 31-32% range. The increase is roughly double. Reddit, which drives substantial social citation share in English, collapses to 7% in Portuguese-language queries.

A brand that built its third-party citation presence primarily through English Reddit threads has almost no transfer to the Portuguese-language citation graph. A brand with YouTube content published in Portuguese, with native-language titles and transcripts, sits at a structural citation advantage.

Brazil is the world's fifth-largest internet market. Portugal serves a significant EU digital audience. Any B2B SaaS brand with meaningful Portuguese-speaking customers is running a citation strategy with a structural gap if it has not accounted for YouTube's dominance in that language's AI citation graph.

What happens to citations in Arabic-language markets

Arabic-language queries on AI platforms shift the entire social platform hierarchy.

Instagram reaches 29% of social citations in Arabic-language AI responses. YouTube sits at 26%. Reddit, which dominates English-language Perplexity and ChatGPT social citations, does not hold its position in Arabic markets.

The implication for brands in MENA markets is that the US-optimized GEO playbook inverts. A brand building Reddit presence for Arabic-language AI citations is investing in the wrong channel. Instagram content with Arabic-language text and topic alignment produces citation results.

This matters for B2B SaaS brands expanding into the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Arabic-language markets, particularly in sectors like fintech, logistics, and enterprise software where Arabic-language procurement queries are common.

The ChatGPT exception: Reddit holds across all 14 languages

There is one consistent finding across Profound's entire 14-country dataset that runs counter to the pattern above: ChatGPT maintains Reddit as the dominant social citation source in every market studied. Reddit's share of social citations in ChatGPT ranges from 51% to 76% across languages. No other platform comes close to that consistency across markets.

This matters for B2B brands with ChatGPT as a primary target platform. The English-market Reddit strategy for ChatGPT citations does transfer to non-English markets in a way that no other platform-language combination does. A brand that has built Reddit presence for English-language ChatGPT visibility will find that presence carries across Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and other language markets when those queries run on ChatGPT.

The strategic implication is specific: if you have resources for one cross-market citation investment, Reddit for ChatGPT is the only channel the data supports as universally applicable. For every other platform and language combination, the citation graph requires a localized approach.

What this means for your current GEO program

Most GEO monitoring programs track English-language queries. Tools like Peec AI, Profound, and Otterly run queries in whatever language you configure, but the default configuration is English for most teams.

If your buyers include Spanish-speaking markets in Latin America or Spain, your current monitoring data describes the English citation pool, not the citation pool your Spanish-language prospects actually access. The AI visibility measurement gap that affects most programs is not just about anonymous versus personalized queries. It includes the language dimension too.

Specifically:

• •Your Perplexity citation rate in English does not predict your Perplexity citation rate for Spanish-language queries
• •Your Reddit citation share in English does not transfer to Portuguese-language queries on any platform except ChatGPT
• •Your Google AI Overviews citation presence in English understates your potential in Spanish markets, where Google surfaces more social content overall

The standard advice for brand authority building across AI citation platforms still applies: G2 reviews, LinkedIn publishing, structured comparison content. But those are primarily English-language channels. LinkedIn, for example, became the most cited domain for professional queries across all major AI platforms based on English-query analysis. The localized version of that strategy looks different by language.

A practical framework for language-specific GEO

The Profound data points toward platform priorities by language market:

This is a starting point, not a complete map. The Profound dataset covers 14 countries, and the full findings include additional language-market combinations. The pattern is clear: English strategy transfers to ChatGPT in most markets. For every other platform, it requires a localized content approach.

For B2B SaaS brands with buyers in these regions, the practical first step is language-specific prompt testing. Run your tracked prompts in Spanish, Portuguese, or Arabic through each AI platform. Compare which content types appear in citations. The Profound research describes the aggregate pattern; your specific category and topic will have its own distribution within that pattern.

This connects to a broader shift in how AI visibility should be measured. The share of voice measurement framework that most GEO programs use was designed for English-language query sets. Extending it to non-English markets requires separate prompt sets in each language, separate platform baselines, and separate content plans for each combination where the citation graph diverges from the English baseline.

FAQ

Does Reddit still work for non-English AI citation markets?

Reddit is the one channel that transfers across languages for ChatGPT specifically. Profound's 14-country study found that ChatGPT maintains Reddit as the dominant social citation source in every market analyzed, with Reddit's share ranging from 51% to 76% of social citations regardless of query language. For Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and other platforms, Reddit's position in non-English queries is substantially lower. Portuguese-language queries see Reddit fall to 7% of social citations across platforms.

What should B2B brands do differently for Spanish-language AI search?

Spanish-language Google AI Overviews surfaces social content at 1.4 times the English baseline rate, with TikTok reaching 16% of social citations, five times its English share. For ChatGPT in Spanish markets, Reddit remains the dominant social source, but the overall social citation rate drops to roughly half the English rate. The practical implication: brands targeting Spanish-speaking buyers need TikTok-format content for Google AI Overviews visibility, while their Reddit investment transfers for ChatGPT specifically.

How do GEO monitoring tools handle multilingual citation tracking?

Most GEO monitoring tools support language-specific query configuration, but teams configure them in English as a default. To measure multilingual AI citation presence accurately, you need separate prompt sets in each target language, run through each platform separately. The anonymous-mode measurement gap documented after Google Personal Intelligence's global rollout compounds the challenge: tools already measure generic citation behavior without personalization. Add language mismatch on top of that, and the gap between what monitoring shows and what international buyers actually see is substantial.

Is YouTube's 65% dominance in Portuguese markets supported by other research?

The Profound April 2026 finding on Portuguese-language YouTube dominance is the first large-scale quantitative analysis of this specific market-language combination in the GEO research corpus. Earlier research on YouTube as an AI citation source focused on English-language queries. The Otterly YouTube citation analysis, which documented YouTube's rise as a citation source and showed that exact-match prompt targeting in video titles and transcripts matters more than subscriber count, was conducted in English. Profound's 3.25 billion citation dataset across 14 countries provides the first cross-language comparison at this scale, published in the April 21, 2026 research report.

The gap compounds with every language your buyers use

The standard GEO measurement stack was built in English, validated in English, and optimized in English. That works well for English-language buyer research. For every other language, the citation graph changes.

The Profound research covers one month of data from March 2026. Conductor's AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report found that AI referral traffic grows approximately 1% month-over-month across industries — a gradual but compounding curve. As AI usage grows in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and other language markets, the divergence between English-optimized and language-specific GEO programs will produce larger gaps in actual buyer reach. Running English-only citation monitoring for a multilingual ICP is not an approximation. It is a measurement of a different audience entirely.