How do I get cited in AI Answers?
There is a lot of hype that getting cited by AI systems like chatgpt requires some mystical incarnation with special skills and extra cost. The truth is AI systems are answer engines. And, when they don’t have the answer, they go ask search engines.
chatgpt uses Microsoft’s Bing, and sometimes Google Search, to get real-time answers. You need to understand the Query Fan-Out technique to improve your chance of getting included in AI.
- Great SEO gets you ranked on Google and Bing
- Create clear, concise content blocks that AI can parse
- Add structured data for easy retrieval by AI (maybe)
It seems everyone is using AI systems to search these days. And while it’s use is growing, AI Search is just a drop in the bucket compared to the 16 billion searches done on Google every day.
But, as it grows, you want to be found in the AI citations. How AI search systems work takes pages to describe. But, for our purposes it is really simple.
If an AI system doesn’t already know an answer to the search query, it goes out and uses Google Search or Bing Search to find real-time results to create the answer!
It’s known as a Query Fan-out. Here’s how an AI Query Fan-out works:
- The AI engine will make multiple queries to the search engines
- It will get the list of ranked sites and scan each one of those pages to gather information
- It will process the information to create a summary of the answers
- Respond with an answer including links to the sources it used (that were retrieved using a search engine)
The true and correct answer of how to get included in an AI response is to do great SEO first.
Call Searchlight Design for Great SEO/AEO
