The search landscape is shifting under our feet, with 92% of UK students already using AI and 38% explicitly using it to research colleges, universities and degrees.
Our GEO Education Index identifies the educational institutions that are winning the race to be featured in the output of AI platforms.
What We Looked At – The Methodology
The traditional click-through model is being challenged, with students now consuming AI-generated summaries before they ever reach your website. We didn’t just look at rankings; we conducted a thorough analysis of the sites and performance of 10 leading universities in Yorkshire.
Our research model analysed more than 5,000 education-specific AI prompts alongside Google visibility metrics to help better understand the relationship between traditional SEO and AI visibility.
These SEO & GEO audits examined visibility, AI sentiment (how LLMs perceive your reputation), on-site ranking signals (the strength of your content), off-site (reputation and backlinks), and page experience (on-site user experience).
Our data reveals that while prestige still matters, technical execution is critical for visibility.
Even top performers have gaps. For instance, some institutions struggle with “Death by PDF”, housing crucial information within documents that LLMs find difficult to scrape and cite.
The largest takeaway is that sentiment matters – potentially even more than visibility. Appearing in the results is only half of the battle. If an AI platform cites your brand but includes negative 3rd-party reviews or hallucinates incorrect data because the information it needs isn’t available to it, you risk losing the prospect before the first click.
The Yorkshire Education Index (December 2025 Data)
Below is a snapshot of how the region’s leaders performed across our key GEO metrics:
Where Do You Sit in the Index?
The goal of GEO isn’t just ranking; it’s becoming the most citable, authoritative source for AI to reference. There are clear, actionable steps to ensure you aren’t invisible to LLMs (Large Language Models) in 2026.
Interested in seeing your school, college or university’s specific score? Get in touch with Iff Digital to find out where you sit and how to optimise your website for the next generation of students.