There are two ways to appear in an AI answer: be the brand it names, or be the source it cites. Getting cited by AI, having your pages quoted and linked as the answer’s evidence, is the more durable position, because sources shape every answer built on them.
When Perplexity or Gemini cites your page, you gain three things at once: the click, the credibility of being the referenced authority, and influence over how the answer describes your whole category, including you. Brands fight over being named; sources decide the terms of the naming.
Retrieval favors pages that resolve the question completely and extractably: a direct answer in the first sentences, question-shaped headings, concrete numbers and named tradeoffs, recent updates, clean structure. Authority helps, but among crawlable pages the most quotable one frequently beats the most authoritative one.
The pages that earn citations are unglamorous and specific: real pricing breakdowns, honest comparisons including where you lose, original data, definitive how-tos. Original research is the strongest magnet of all: our 1,200-moment study gets cited because nobody else counted. Publish what does not exist yet, and citations follow.
Assistants cite what they can parse: fast pages, semantic HTML, FAQ and Article schema, stable URLs, no content trapped in scripts or behind interactions. An llms.txt file points AI crawlers at your best answers. None of this earns a citation alone; all of it removes the reasons you lose one.
In Perplexity and Gemini, citations are visible: sample your category’s questions and record whose pages appear. That citation share is a leading indicator, answers built on your pages name you more. Aethon tracks citation share alongside mention rates and ships the content that grows both.
Publish pages that answer buyer questions directly and extractably, keep them technically clean and structured, and build the authority signals retrieval favors. Original data accelerates everything.
Perplexity cites sources on every answer and Gemini frequently does. ChatGPT and Claude cite when browsing, less consistently.
Direct answers, honest comparisons, pricing transparency, and original research. Quotability and completeness beat brand size.
It helps assistants parse and trust your structure, which raises citation odds. FAQ and Article markup matter most.
Sample your category’s questions in Perplexity and Gemini and log the cited sources. Aethon automates this and reports your citation share over time.