aeo-cannibalization-detector

AEO Cannibalization Detector

Source: github.com/psyduckler/aeo-skills Part of: AEO Skills Suite

Detect when your own pages compete against each other for the same slots in Gemini's candidate set.

Background

Influence over AI answers happens at retrieval, not inside the model. When Gemini searches the web to answer a prompt, it builds a candidate set of pages to cite. If two of your own pages both enter that candidate set for the same prompt, you're competing against yourself — Gemini alternates between citing page A and page B, diluting the citation strength of both.

This matters because influence compounds through repeated inclusion in the recurring retrieval set. A page that gets cited 90% of the time is building authority. Two pages that each get cited 40% are neither building authority. In a search-first system like Gemini, where every response triggers web retrieval, having a single strong page in the candidate set beats splitting your authority across competing pages.

Defaults

• Model: gemini-3-flash-preview — the same model powering Google AI Overviews
• Samples: 20 runs per prompt — enough to detect citation splits

Requirements

• Gemini API key (free from aistudio.google.com) — set as GEMINI_API_KEY env var
• Python 3.9+
• No pip dependencies (stdlib only)

Usage

# Check two prompts for cannibalization
GEMINI_API_KEY="$GEMINI_API_KEY" python3 scripts/detect.py --domain acme.com \
    "best content optimization tools" \
    "SEO content software"

# Load prompts from a file
GEMINI_API_KEY="$GEMINI_API_KEY" python3 scripts/detect.py --domain acme.com --prompts-file prompts.txt

# Both positional prompts and file, JSON output
GEMINI_API_KEY="$GEMINI_API_KEY" python3 scripts/detect.py --domain acme.com \
    "content optimization" \
    --prompts-file more-prompts.txt \
    --output json

# Higher confidence with more runs
GEMINI_API_KEY="$GEMINI_API_KEY" python3 scripts/detect.py --domain acme.com \
    "best SEO tools" --runs 30