AI search services

AI Citation Optimization

Earn mentions and links in the pages AI engines already cite, and make your own pages worth citing.

Ideal client

Brands that are well regarded by customers but rarely appear in the sources answer engines lean on.

Answers are built on other people’s pages

When Perplexity, ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews or Microsoft Copilot answer a question about your category, they usually show where the information came from. Look at those citations across enough questions and a pattern appears. A relatively small set of pages, often review sites, comparison articles, industry publications, forums and directories, shapes a large share of what gets said. If your brand is absent from those pages, it is often absent from the answer, however good your own website is.

AI citation optimization works on both sides of that problem. Outward, we help you earn accurate mentions on the sources engines already trust. Inward, we make your own pages the kind of reference that gets cited directly.

Where citations come from

Every market is different, which is why the work starts with measurement rather than a standard outreach list. In the audits we run, cited sources usually fall into a few groups:

Comparison and “best of” articles on publishers and specialist blogs
Review and directory platforms relevant to the industry
Community discussion on forums and Q&A sites where practitioners talk openly
Reference pages such as documentation, standards bodies, government sites and encyclopaedic sources
Brand sites, usually for specific facts like pricing, features or locations

Our article on brand mentions for AEO goes deeper into why third-party mentions matter and how engines appear to use them.

What we do

Map the cited domains

We collect the citations shown for your prompt set across engines and rank the domains and pages by how often they appear. This becomes the target list, and it is usually shorter and more specific than a generic PR list.

Earn a place, honestly

For each target we choose the right route: correcting or completing a directory profile, pitching an update to a comparison article with genuinely useful information, offering expert commentary to a journalist, contributing data a publication can use, or encouraging real customers to leave reviews on the platforms that matter. We do not buy fake reviews, plant anonymous forum posts or pay for undisclosed placements. Those tactics break platform rules and the trust that makes a citation worth having.

Make your own pages citable

Engines cite brand pages when they hold a clear, specific answer that is hard to find elsewhere. We help you publish those pages: transparent pricing explanations, clear specifications, honest comparisons, original data and well-structured FAQs. The content optimization service covers the writing side, and our Perplexity guide shows what that engine tends to cite.

Typical deliverables

Map of domains and pages cited for your prompts, by engine
Prioritised outreach list with the right approach for each target
Digital PR and expert commentary plan
Review and listing profile set-up or clean-up
Briefs for reference pages on your own site
Monthly log of placements earned and citations observed

Questions about AI citations

Is a citation the same as a backlink?

Not quite. A backlink is a link from another site to yours. A citation in an AI answer is the engine showing a source it used. Many cited sources also link to the brands they mention, so the two often go together, but an unlinked mention on a trusted page can still influence what an answer says.

How long does it take to earn citations?

Profile and directory fixes can be done in days. Editorial mentions depend on publication schedules and relationships, so they build over months. We report progress monthly so you can see which placements land.

Can you remove a negative source?

We can help correct factual errors through the right channels and publish clear, accurate information that gives engines a better source. We cannot remove legitimate criticism, and we do not try to.

Next step

Discuss your visibility strategy.

Tell us about your website and what you want more of. We will reply with what we would look at first and how an audit would run for your business.

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