Manan Mehta
Researcher
University of Southern California
Manan Mehta is a University of Southern California-affiliated researcher and co-author of Beyond the Blue Link, the 2026 ACM Hypertext paper that formalizes answer engine optimization and introduces Generative Share of Voice as a probabilistic visibility metric for stochastic retrieval systems.
Co-authoring Beyond the Blue Link
Mehta's public footprint in generative search centers on Beyond the Blue Link: Empirical Evaluation of Generative Engine Optimization in Stochastic Retrieval Systems, co-authored with Raghav Sharma, Adit Kotwal, and Vineeth Kalluru. The paper treats answer engines as stochastic retrieval systems, which is why a single deterministic rank is a poor fit for visibility measurement.
Generative Share of Voice
Generative Share of Voice (gSoV) is the paper's named metric for expected citation probability across semantically related queries in systems whose answers vary from run to run.
By treating visibility as probabilistic, the authors give agencies and brands a vocabulary for Monte Carlo-style sampling across prompt sets.
Hypertext Structure and Citations
Beyond the Blue Link argues that authored hypertext structure relates to machine-mediated attribution. Controlled experiments and a field study in the paper support the claim that structure and source placement affect citation outcomes under generative retrieval, including advantages for structured HTML with explicit anchor structures over unstructured content.
The Dexter Reference Model appears in the authors' framing of answer units as self-describing components that reduce synthesis rejection.