How to Get Cited by AI Answers (and What That Even Means)

In my previous post, I talked about the growing overlap between SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), or what I call AI search optimization.

And since AI tools are now searching the internet for us and summarizing text in seconds, it’s worth asking: where does AI actually get its answers from?

And more importantly, how can your content get cited in those AI answers?

Now, I know AI generative tech is evolving at the speed of light. For example, just a month ago, we could upload our photos to ChatGPT and ask it to turn us into Barbie dolls or astronauts.

Today, that’s no longer possible because OpenAI changed its policies to stop generating realistic images of real people.

So yes, it’s not going to be easy to pin down how AI gets its answers, as it changes often.

But let’s try.

What Is an AI Citation?

An AI citation is when an AI tool links to your content (eg: blog post, web page) as the source of information it used to answer a user question. It’s similar to how Google shows featured snippets or summaries except now, it’s AI systems like ChatGPT quoting your content directly inside their generated answers.

So when someone asks ChatGPT, a question in the chat, the AI will summarize key points from content available online and link back to the original site as the source.

Here’s an example:

I asked ChatGPT: “What is decaf coffee? (reply with sources)”.

The AI generated answers listed the sources at end of each sentence. If I want to read more, I can click on the citations to visit the original source article. In this example, the citation is from “Nescafe Australia – What is Decaf Coffee?”.

In short, AI citations are the new backlinks.

But instead of other websites linking to you, AI chatbots and generative tools are referencing your words.

AI Citations vs Traditional SEO

Neil Patel explained it best:

“AI visibility isn’t about content that shows up in search – it’s about AI citations and summaries.”

In other words, your goal isn’t just to rank on Google anymore. You also want AI systems (like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, or Perplexity) to pull quotes, citations and summaries directly from your content.

So, how do we get there?

We need to understand how AI thinks and generates answers.

Where Does AI Get Its Answers?

Where AI gets its citations depends on its training data and the content library it was built with. That controls the type of searches and answers it can offer.

But most generative AIs scan a wide range of public content, including:

News articles
Journals
Websites and blogs
Reddit discussions
Social media posts
Wikipedia
Public databases

When chatting with AI, you can sometimes even specify which sources you’d like it to cite.

How Different AI Models (ChatGPT, Google AI, and Perplexity) Pull Their Data From:

Let’s look at how different AI models actually use data:

Closed models like ChatGPT pull from a mix of licensed data, public sources, and sometimes live web browsing.
Retrieval-based AIs like Google AI Overviews or Perplexity cite content from across the web: blogs, news sites, forums, Wikipedia, academic papers, and Reddit discussions.
Private models (like AskDocs AI, which only analyzes uploaded files) draw exclusively from user-provided documents making it suitable for internal organisations, HRs and education platforms.

So if you want your content to show up in AI citations, it needs to be public, crawlable, and contextually relevant to what people are asking.

How Does AI Search for Content?

Here’s a simplified breakdown of what happens when you ask an AI a question:

Understanding the query: The AI uses natural language processing (NLP) to find out your real intent. Are you asking for a fact or an in-depth analysis? Are you asking something time-bound (like “best coffee makers in 2025”) or timeless (like “how espresso machines work”)?
Searching for sources: Then, it looks through its own training data and often queries live search engines like Google or Bing.
Scanning and reading pages: AI tools skim top-ranking and contextually relevant pages, looking for structured, informative, and clearly written text.
Evaluating quality: It looks for trustworthy, factual, and well-structured content — not just what ranks first.
Generating an answer: It combines content from multiple sources into a summarized answer, often citing those sources.

💡 Did you know?
Google’s AI Overviews often pick up citations from well-researched content with external links.They can link up to 5 sources in short answers (<600 characters) and up to 28 sources in longer ones (>6,000 characters).

It’s also worth noting that mid-range keywords (not overly competitive but still searched) perform well here , and structured content that’s easy to skim gives AI a better chance to “pull” your answers.

Research from BrightEdge (2024) found that AI-generated summaries tend to favor content that:

Uses clear subheadings (H2/H3) and bullet points
Provides data-backed insights
Links to credible external sources

Now that we’ve seen where AI pulls its data from, let’s look at how different AI models actually find and generate their answers

How To Get Your Content Cited in AI Answer

Here’s what AI looks for and how you can optimize your writing to match it.

1. Build Your Authority

Your website authority matters for search engines and AI tools alike. It’s important to write content that is in line with your niche. How to build authority? Here are a few ways:

Publish well-researched content, about topics you are an expert in
Share your own professional opinion about topics in your industry
If you can include an author bio, supported by credentials
Cite external references and reputable sources in your writing

All these factors will help AI tools recognize you as an authority in your industry and be more likely to cite your content.

2. Write Content That’s Relevant To People’s Searches

AI looks for relevant answers, so write naturally in question-based sentence structure, the same way people ask AI tools:

“How to make better coffee at home”
“Best free AI writing tools in 2025”
Use FAQs, definitions, and summaries to make your text easy to extract and cite.

Tip: You can find what people are searching by googling your industry keyword and scrolling down to the “People also search section”.

If you search for terms like “iced coffee recipe at home”, and scroll down to the bottom of the first page, you’ll see top search queries like:

“How to make iced coffee with Nescafe instant coffee”

This is how people actually search and you can use these queries as title or headlines in your articles.

3. High Quality Content

AI loves data, examples, and high-quality content. So how to make your content appear high-quality? By researching your topics beforehand. Add stats, charts, real-world cases and examples to your articles, and include verified sources.

Example:

“According to Statista, AI content generation tools are expected to surpass 250 million users by 2025.” This is a stat that’s recent, relevant and from a trusted source like Statista.

4. SEO Still Matters For Visibility

According to Lilly Ray, an SEO professional, saying that SEO is dead because GEO is the new thing is “some of the most inaccurate and irresponsible framing I’ve seen in my 15+ years in this industry”.

Even though AI pulls beyond just top-ranking pages, SEO visibility helps.

Pages with strong organic rankings, backlinks, and engagement (comments, shares) are more likely to get noticed by AI systems.

So just because GEO is the new hot thing now, it doesn’t mean that we should forget about SEO.

Google still gets 93.57% of all platform searches. And by introducing the AI companion, Google AI Overviews it will continue to be the main search engine even with the emergence of ChatGPT. (source: SparkToro)

5. Titles that Answer Real-Life Questions

Example:
❌ Bad: 10 Coffee Recipes
✅ Good: How to Make Iced Coffee with Nespresso in 2025

The second version is written more closely to how real people search for answers online.

6. Use AI Citation Hooks

Cite studies that show relevant findings, opinions, and facts that AI can pull as quotes.

Use phrases like:

“According to the 2025 Global IT Study, …”
“Our analysis indicates that …”
“Based on research published by …”

Example in Action

Here’s a quick test: I searched “how to get cited by AI answers” using Google AI Overviews.

Then I looked at the top sources cited, like this article:”How to Get Citations that Everyone Wants”:

Simple and direct title: “How to Get the AI Citation Everyone Wants”
Explains what an AI citation is
Includes actionable tips and examples
Uses short paragraphs (maximum two sentences) and bullet points
Uses jargon and conversational language (eg: “Keep it simple. Seriously”, or “link like your life depends on it”

Those structure cues tell the AI: this content is relevant and scannable, so let’s include it in our answers.

Final Thoughts – The Future of AI Citations

Right now, AI citations are still new.

But as AI becomes the new search engine, being cited inside those answers will matter just as much as ranking on Google.

So instead of only optimizing for search engines, you could start optimizing for AI visibility too.

That’s the next big step for content creators, bloggers, and brands who want to stay seen in an AI-first space.

Studio Scribis