How do I get my website 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 Google or Bing.
chatgpt uses Microsoft’s Bing, and sometimes Google Search, to get real-time answers. You need to understand how a Query Fan-Out works so you can to improve the chances of your website being 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’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 engine
- It will get the list of ranked sites and scan each one of them to gather information
- It will process the information to create a summary of the answers
- Respond with an answer comprised of what it already knows about the subject AND what it learned from scanning and summarizing the websites that it found in the Google or Bing Search Results.
This is where the magic happens for you. The answer will include links to the sites it found in the search. This is where you want to be included.
The true and correct answer of how to have your website included in an AI response is to do great SEO first.
How to Get AI Citations for Local Searches
Getting your site ranked in Google Search and Bing Search is the most important factor to getting your site included in real-time AI Citations especially for local service searches.
For example, this is what happens when someone asks chatgpt for a local recommendation of “who is the best lawn care company in Port Orange for St Augustine grass”.
The Queries that chatgpt actually uses to search is “best lawn care service Port Orange Florida St. Augustine grass lawn care company reviews”. It also knows of an existing site, known as a Footnote, to use for foundational information as part of the search query. The four top ranked websites provided in the search results which AI then sets as the Entities to help it answer the user question.
The goal to having our site included in an AI Search Answer starts with your site being highly ranked in the Search Engines themselves.
As expected, our client, Liberty Lawn and Pest, is one of the top ranked sites for the search queries used by the AI Engine.
Now that AI has gathered the most current, local information about the queries, it will summarize the results of each website. From this it will produce an answer to the user’s question.
As is usually the case in AI queries, AI will give you multiple answers to the question. In this case, a search for a local lawn care company, AI gives an overall best company, along with other options that could be related to the user query.
If you want to get your website included in AI responses, the only true and correct answer is to start with great SEO first.
who is the best lawn care company in Port Orange for St Augustine grass
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