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.

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.