seo
How ChatGPT and Perplexity Decide Which Sources to Cite
AI Visibility Engineering
System track
SEO optimizes for rank. Answer engines optimize for citation-worthiness.
This track is the engineering playbook for the second game: entity coherence, schema specificity, originality signals, and the measurement loops that show whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews are actually citing you.
Guided track Machine-readable 16 foundational, tactical, and case-study notes
Why this cluster exists
SEO optimizes for rank. Answer engines optimize for citation-worthiness. This cluster is the engineering playbook for the second game, sized for operators, not enterprise SEO teams.
System object
retrieval lattice
Best for
content engineers and sub-DR-20 operators engineering for AI citations
Start here
The best first read in this track.
Core journey
Read these in order if you want the strongest mental model.
Foundation
Originality Signals and Citation Patterns
AI engines deprioritize pages that look like everything else. The originality signals that move a post from the summary layer into the quote layer, and why recap content is the new thin content.
Search Console's Generative AI Report: 3 Things It Hides
Google's Generative AI report went live for every property on August 11, 2026. No queries, no clicks, no API access. Here is my own 19.7K-impression report.
Deep dive
How to Optimize Your Website for ChatGPT and Perplexity
Five steps to optimize a website for ChatGPT and Perplexity: allow GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, add llms.txt and schema, write answer-first.
AI Citation Audit: What Predicted Citations Across 7 Sites
An AI citation audit of 7 websites, Ahrefs included: the 10 infrastructure checks, the 3 factors that predicted citations, and how to run yours free.
Applied / adjacent
Why Domain Authority Is Irrelevant for AI Search (And What to Build Instead)
You're building backlinks for a metric that doesn't matter to ChatGPT or Perplexity. Data from 7 site audits answers the real question, does site authority matter in AI citation rankings, and shows what to build instead: a DA-92 site got cited 5% of the time, a DA-under-10 site got cited 15%.
llms.txt for AI Crawlers: Why robots.txt Is Not Enough
robots.txt was built for search engines, not AI crawlers. llms.txt gives LLMs structured context about your site that robots.txt can never provide.
Dev.to Cross-Posting Without SEO Damage: Canonical URLs and the 72-Hour Rule
Automate Dev.to cross-posting without SEO penalties. Configure Zapier delays plus canonical URLs in 10 minutes to protect your search rankings.
Content Intent Signaling: The robots.txt Directive That Controls How AI Uses Your Content
robots.txt controls access. Content Intent Signaling controls usage. Three new directives separate training from citation permission.
Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance: 1,200 Copilot Citations Were Hiding There
A freeCodeCamp guest post and one overlooked Bing dashboard surfaced ~1,200 Microsoft Copilot citations to my DR-25 site. Here is how to read your own.
Entity-Level SEO vs Page-Level SEO: 8 AI Citations a Day After Switching
Bing AI cited my site 8 times a day after I stopped tuning individual pages. The principle: entity-level SEO is the floor; page-level work is the ceiling.
Cloudflare Will Block AI Crawlers by Default on September 15: What Site Owners Need to Do Now
Cloudflare blocks AI crawlers by default on September 15, 2026. Should you block, allow, or charge via Pay Per Crawl? Decision matrix + verification steps.
Chrome Prompt API: AI Visibility Scans at $0 Cost
Chrome 148 put the Prompt API and Gemini Nano in the browser. Here's what our citability.dev scan really costs, and which parts move client-side for $0.
Why ChatGPT Is Not Citing Your Website: I Measured 47 AI Answers
I asked ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity the 16 questions my buyers actually ask. My own site came up 3 times out of 47. Here is the method, the raw counts, and the gap I found.
Who Are the Experts on AI Search Visibility? Four Topics, Named Sources
Named practitioner sources for four AI search visibility topics, built from an 80-run citation panel across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini.
Why Isn't ChatGPT Citing Your Website? I Tested 5 Axes on a DR 25 Site and Got 1,500 Citations
1,500 AI citations on a DR 25 site in 90 days. The 5 checks (schema, llms.txt, OpenGraph, semantic HTML, robots.txt) that decide whether ChatGPT cites you.
I Ran My Own Analysis Past a Second Model Five Times. I Retracted Twice.
A working method for adversarial review between two AI models on your own data, what it cost in retractions, and the cheap instrument that settled it.
I Asked 3 AI Engines the Same 16 Buying Questions. They Agreed Under a Third of the Time.
A 47-answer study of who ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity recommend in one B2B category: six brands hold 89% of mentions, the engines overlap by about 30%.
How to Get Cited by ChatGPT: My 0/5 GEO Audit
I ran my own site through 5 buyer-intent queries on Perplexity and got cited zero times. Here is what GEO actually is and the pattern the winners share.
Perplexity Named Zero Brands, 40 Answers in a Row. Your Category Is Not the Reason.
480 answers across ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, in a two-year-old category and a twenty-year-old one. Which engine goes quiet is a property of the engine.
Supporting angle
Not every important idea belongs in the main reading path.
Use the supporting pieces to deepen the model, test tradeoffs, and connect adjacent ideas without losing the main narrative.
Recommended next
Originality Signals and Citation Patterns
AI engines deprioritize pages that look like everything else. The originality signals that move a post from the summary layer into the quote layer, and why recap content is the new thin content.
Related tools and products
Audit your citability
Run the citability.dev scorer on any page to see what AI engines actually extract, cite, and miss.