AI search optimization
Classical SEO optimizes to be clicked. This optimizes to be quoted — often with no click at all. That changes what a good page looks like.
What gets cited
- Self-contained passages. A retrieved chunk arrives without the surrounding page. Each section must make sense alone, with its subject named rather than pronominalized.
- Direct answers near the question. Bury the answer under three paragraphs of context and the passage retrieved will be the context.
- Specific, checkable facts — numbers, dates, named methods, stated conditions. Vague claims are neither retrievable nor quotable.
- Attributable expertise. Named authors, stated credentials, dated content, and cited sources. Anonymous undated content is weakly weighted.
- Structure that survives extraction — real headings, real lists, real tables. Layout implied by styling disappears.
Practical moves
- Answer the question in the first sentence under each heading, then elaborate.
- Write headings as the questions people actually ask.
- Define your own terms on your own pages, so the model's definition traces to you.
- Keep facts consistent across your site. Contradictions get resolved against you.
- Maintain the boring canonical pages — pricing, comparisons, specifications, FAQ. These are heavily retrieved and usually neglected.
Being represented accurately
Assistants assemble an answer about you from whatever is available, weighted toward third-party and structured sources. Where those are thin or stale, the answer will be wrong.
Audit periodically: ask several assistants what your company does, who it is for, what it costs, and how it compares. Note the errors and trace them to a source. The fix is almost always publishing or correcting the source, not the assistant.
Measuring
Click-through will fall on informational queries even as influence rises. Track citation and mention frequency, and downstream branded search and direct traffic, rather than judging this program on organic sessions — that metric will say you are losing while you are winning.
Sources
references/sources.md in this skill lists the outside authorities that settle the questions
here — what each one is authoritative for, and what you may do with it. Check them before
answering on anything they cover, and cite what you used. Most are free to read and not free
to reproduce; the use note on each is binding.
Never
- Optimize for one assistant's current behavior. Retrieval and citation rules change without notice and without a changelog.
- Assume being crawlable means being citable. Models cite sources that answer a question cleanly, not sources that merely exist.
- Leave an inaccurate representation uncorrected because it is not on your site. The claim propagates whether or not you own the page it came from.
