Forge 5 Handbook.
For builders of nmg.labs Forge Sprint 05 · International Hackathon · AEO · GEO · SEO · date to be announced · Live on Discord across India, UAE & Belgium.
India
UAE
Belgium
The theme · AEO · GEO · SEO
Forge 5 is about being found, named and recommended in AI search. People increasingly ask an AI assistant instead of typing keywords and the AI returns one synthesised answer from a handful of sources it trusts. The new game is share-of-voice inside AI answers.
| Layer | Definition | Your job |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Ranking in Google/Bing organic | Technical health, content, links, structured data |
| AEO | Owning the answer (snippets, voice, PAA) | Question-led content, liftable facts, schema, entity clarity |
| GEO | Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews | Brand salience, truth alignment, citable sources |
You get a real brand and a real visibility problem on Sprint morning, plus a starter data pack (site, target queries, competitor set, current AI-answer landscape). No pre-building.
Teams & Discord
Three country teams build against one identical problem in the same window: Team India (from the NMG Labs Gurgaon office), Team UAE (Dubai, remote) and Team Belgium (remote), up to ~30 builders each. The Forge 5 Discord server is the global stadium:
#main-stage, opening, problem drop and closing, all three countries together.#announcements, the single source of truth: clock, checkpoints, brief updates.- Per-country build rooms ·
#help-desk·#submissions·#scoreboard.
What "ship" can mean
- An AI-visibility audit + action plan (where the brand wins/loses across Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini).
- A query-fanout map + answer-led content set engineered to be lifted/cited by AI.
- Schema / structured-data + entity-clarity that makes the brand machine-readable.
- A GEO share-of-voice tracker / dashboard.
- A comparison / "best X" content asset designed to become the source AI cites.
- A technical SEO fix pack (crawlability, Core Web Vitals/INP, internal linking) with before/after evidence.
- Your own bold idea, if it provably moves AEO/GEO/SEO, it counts.
Sprint day · date to be announced · one Forge Clock
| Block | 🇮🇳 IST | 🇦🇪 GST | 🇧🇪 CEST |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opening ceremony | 12:30 | 11:00 | 09:00 |
| Problem drops · build begins | 13:00 | 11:30 | 09:30 |
| Build window (7h) | 13:00-20:00 | 11:30-18:30 | 09:30-16:30 |
| Submissions lock | 20:00 | 18:30 | 16:30 |
| Global Champion announced | ~21:50 | ~20:20 | ~18:20 |
Judging (120 points)
- Visibility Impact, 30 (measurable before/after across SEO, AEO, GEO)
- AEO/GEO Depth, 25
- Execution & Craft, 20
- Diagnosis Quality, 15
- Strategy & Business Sense, 15
- Presentation, 15
All submissions across all three countries are scored on the same rubric; the single highest score wins globally. Tie-break: Visibility Impact, then AEO/GEO Depth, then a surprise query set at lock.
The stack (all free / sponsor-provided)
- AI engines to test: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews / AI Mode, Gemini, Claude.
- Search & SERP: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, free SERP checks.
- Technical SEO: Lighthouse / PageSpeed, crawl tools, schema validators.
- Schema: Schema.org, JSON-LD, Google Rich Results Test.
- Build & GEO tracking: any code stack, static site or dashboard; share-of-voice logging or a tool you build.
Rules & integrity
- Work the assigned brand and problem released on Sprint morning, no pre-building.
- Build inside the shared window; submit before the global lock with a public repo/doc/dashboard + evidence (before/after, AI-answer screenshots).
- Record a short demo video and a one-page case ("how we'd pitch this to the brand").
- Honest evidence only. Fabricated metrics, plagiarised content or AI output misrepresented as original analysis = disqualification.
- Your work, your IP. NMG retains a non-exclusive case-study/marketing licence with credit. Respect across all three countries, zero tolerance for harassment.
Captain: Ayush Gupta · International coordination: Gilles · labs@nmgdigital.com.