A GEO plan built for the US won't work in Jakarta, Mumbai or Sydney. The engines may be the same, but the sources they cite are local, and so are the levers.
This comparison uses the GEO Compass benchmark, which pools AI answers from studies run in 24 markets. Here we compare five Asia-Pacific markets with the benchmark as a whole. One caution before the numbers: each market reflects the industries studied there, so part of every difference is sector mix. The market pages list the industries behind each one.
Five markets, five source mixes
| Australia | Singapore | Malaysia | Indonesia | India | All markets | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand & corporate | 32% | 25% | 31% | 29% | 35% | 31% |
| Earned media | 39% | 16% | 25% | 36% | 23% | 20% |
| Social & UGC | 11% | 9% | 10% | 11% | 14% | 8% |
| Reference (incl. Wikipedia) | 5% | 3% | 8% | 8% | 5% | 4% |
| Marketplaces & aggregators | 6% | 6% | 6% | 3% | 9% | 3% |
| Sources per answer | 6.8 | 8.4 | 8.4 | 7.4 | 6.9 | 8.1 |
Share of all cited sources by type. GEO Compass benchmark, Aug 2025 – Sep 2026.
Australia: earned media does the heavy lifting
Earned media supplies 39% of citations in Australian answers, about twice the benchmark average. YouTube (19.5% of answers with sources) and Reddit (16.4%) are both cited more often than average. The most-cited sites mix global review titles (TechRadar, Tom's Guide, PCMag, CNET) with local editorial such as The Urban List.
GEO priority: get into the reviews, round-ups and "best of" lists, and build a YouTube presence aimed at Australian buyers. More on Australia →
Singapore: a wide, local and institutional mix
Singapore is the largest Asia-Pacific market in the benchmark. Answers draw on an unusually long tail of sites, with the "other" category making up a quarter of citations. National news (The Straits Times, CNA, The Business Times), government sites and travel platforms (Tripadvisor, Trip.com, Klook) all feature. LinkedIn is cited in 10% of answers with sources, above the benchmark average.
Focus brands' own sites are cited in 17% of unbranded answers, higher than the 12% average. That partly reflects government agencies and destinations in the sample, but it also shows that clear, authoritative owned pages do get used.
GEO priority: authoritative owned content, local news coverage and executive presence on LinkedIn. More on Singapore →
Malaysia: Wikipedia matters more than anywhere in the region
Wikipedia is cited in 24.5% of Malaysian answers with sources, about four times the benchmark average and the highest of any Asia-Pacific market studied. Travel platforms (Tripadvisor, Hotels.com, Traveloka) and lifestyle titles (Tatler Asia, Time Out) are also prominent. Focus brands are named in 53% of unbranded answers, twice the benchmark rate, but their own sites are cited in only 16%.
GEO priority: accurate, well-referenced Wikipedia entries, and a presence on the travel and lifestyle platforms engines cite. More on Malaysia →
Indonesia: news and financial portals shape the answer
Earned media supplies 36% of Indonesian citations. National outlets (Kompas, Antara), financial-information portals (IDN Financials, Investor Trust) and press-release distribution all appear among the most-cited sites. Reference sources reach 43% of answers with sources, twice the average. Focus brands are named in 56% of unbranded answers, the highest rate of the five markets, but their own sites are cited in only 10%.
GEO priority: a steady flow of news coverage and well-distributed announcements, and Indonesian-language pages that answer local questions. More on Indonesia →
India: community and aggregators carry the weight
Social and user-generated content supplies 14% of Indian citations, nearly twice the average, and marketplaces and aggregators 9%, three times the average. YouTube, Reddit, Quora and enthusiast forums such as Team-BHP appear alongside aggregators like CarDekho, CarWale and Cars24 and national news sites.
GEO priority: complete, current listings on the aggregators engines cite, plus active reputation management on community platforms and YouTube. More on India →
Platforms differ by market too
GEO Compass benchmark. All markets: 5.9%.
GEO Compass benchmark. All markets: 15.9%.
Brands are known, but not quoted
Across the region, AI engines name focus brands in unbranded questions more often than the benchmark average. In Indonesia and Malaysia it is more than half the time. But own-site citation stays low everywhere except Singapore. The engines know the brands; local publishers, aggregators and reference sites supply the description. Read more in Named but not cited.
A regional GEO playbook
- Set regional foundations once. A crawlable site, consistent entity names and descriptions in every market, structured data, and an
llms.txtfile that points AI engines to your key pages. - Map the cited sources market by market. The publishers, platforms and aggregators that shape answers in Jakarta are not the ones that matter in Sydney. Use the explorer to filter by market and industry.
- Localise where questions are local. Questions asked in Bahasa Indonesia, Hindi or Malay pull in local-language sources. Local-language pages and coverage are part of AI visibility.
- Measure by market and engine. A regional average hides the gaps that matter.
Frequently asked questions
- Does AI search work differently in each country?
- Yes. In the GEO Compass benchmark, the sources AI engines cite vary sharply by market: earned media dominates in Australia, Wikipedia in Malaysia, marketplaces and user-generated content in India, national news and financial portals in Indonesia, and a wide mix of local and government sites in Singapore.
- Which AI engines matter most in Asia-Pacific?
- Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT are tracked in every market in the benchmark, followed by Gemini, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Claude. Singapore is the only Asia-Pacific market in the benchmark with all eleven tracked engines, including Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Grok and Meta AI.
- Should a GEO strategy be regional or local?
- Both. Some foundations are regional (a clear, crawlable website with consistent entity information), but the sources that shape AI answers are local: national publishers, local review and marketplace platforms, and local-language content.
Figures marked as GEO Compass data come from the anonymised GEO Compass benchmark of AI answers collected by We AI & Data Advisors. Related: AI search in Australia · AI search in Singapore · AI search in Malaysia · AI search in Indonesia · AI search in India