How to get cited by ChatGPT and AI search
How to get cited by ChatGPT and AI search
More prospective customers now get their answers from AI assistants than from a page of search results. Whether you appear in that answer comes down to being cited, or at least summarised accurately. Below is what moves the needle and what does not.
How an AI assistant decides what to say about you
An assistant does not rank pages the way a search engine ranks them. It reads several sources, compresses them, and answers in its own words. It reads the text around your facts too, so a short, direct sentence with a number travels further than a paragraph of adjectives.
- It favours statements that are clear, factual and unambiguous, ones it can quote or paraphrase safely.
- It favours sources it reads as authoritative: pages that are consistent and well-structured, with obvious provenance.
- Contradictions confuse it. When your own pages disagree with each other, the assistant picks one or hedges.
What actually helps
- Write a definitive about page. Say who you are, what you do, and the specific facts you want repeated. An assistant that finds a clean, quotable sentence will use it.
- Keep one source of truth. The same facts should appear the same way on your site, your profiles and your listings. Contradiction is the quickest route to a wrong answer.
- Reach for named specifics over adjectives. "We audited 40 websites" beats "we are a leading agency." An assistant can quote the number. It cannot verify the adjective.
- Correct the source and the answer follows. You cannot edit an AI's summary, but you can correct the page it summarises from, and the next answer improves.
What does not work
Keyword-stuffing for AI, prompt-injection tricks, and trying to game the answer all fail, and some cross into the manipulation the AI Act's transparency regime is aimed at. What lasts is plainer: make your own facts clear and consistent.
Where to start
You cannot correct what you cannot see. Our AI Reputation Report shows what the assistants say about your business today and where the gaps are, so you know which source pages to correct first.
This page is general information, not legal advice.