AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews — name a handful of sources inside
the answer. Being one of them is the new front page. It’s a different game from ranking on
Google, and these are the moves that win it.
§01 · GEO ≠ SEO
The answer, not the link.
Traditional SEO competes to rank a page and earn a click. Generative engine optimization (GEO) competes to get your content quoted inside the AI’s answer. They reward different things — many pages that rank well on Google are never cited by an answer engine, because the engine is reading for self-contained, attributable answers, not page authority alone.
§02 · what gets cited
Five moves answer engines reward.
Lead with the answer. Put a direct, self-contained answer in the first one or two sentences of each section — engines extract the opening and skip vague setup.
Cite primary sources + data. Inline links and concrete numbers make content more attributable and more quotable.
Add structured data. FAQPage / Article / HowTo schema lets the machine parse your Q&A and steps unambiguously.
Stay fresh. Visible publish/updated dates favour you for time-sensitive answers.
Name entities. Specific products, standards, and terms make a page recognisably about something.
§03 · audit it
Score the page, fix the gaps.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. true402’s seo-audit runs a GEO scan of any URL and scores exactly those dimensions — extractability, citation signals, structured data, semantic clarity, topical coverage, freshness — and returns the specific issues to fix.
GEO audit over x402
# Score a page's AI-citability (GEO). ~$0.015 USDC over x402, no account, no API key.
curl -s -X POST https://true402.dev/api/v1/seo-audit \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"url":"https://yoursite.com/page","mode":"geo"}'
# { "combined_percentage": 72,
# "geo": { "categories": { "extractability": {...}, "citation_signals": {...},
# "citation_formats": {...}, "freshness": {...} },
# "issues": [ { "category": "extractability",
# "message": "Lead each H2 with a self-contained answer block" } ] } }
How do you get your website cited by ChatGPT and AI search?
Write content an answer engine can lift directly. The moves that matter: lead every section with a direct, self-contained answer in the first one or two sentences (AI engines extract those and skip vague intros); back claims with specific data and inline links to primary sources; add FAQPage and Article structured data so the machine can parse your answers; keep pages fresh with visible dates; and name concrete entities. Then audit the page against those criteria — true402’s seo-audit runs a GEO scan that scores extractability, citation signals, structured data, and freshness, and lists what to fix.
Is getting cited by AI the same as ranking on Google?
No. Traditional SEO ranks your page on a results list and competes for the click; generative engine optimization (GEO) gets your content quoted inside the AI-generated answer itself. They overlap less than people expect — plenty of pages that rank well on Google are never cited by ChatGPT, because ranking rewards different signals than extractability and citable structure. GEO is its own discipline, and it needs its own audit.
Does my content need schema markup to be cited by AI?
It helps a lot. FAQPage, Article, and HowTo structured data spell out your questions, answers, and steps in a form a machine parses unambiguously, which makes your content easier for an answer engine to extract and attribute. Schema is not strictly required, but pages that pair clear question-shaped headings with the matching schema are consistently easier to cite than prose that an engine has to infer structure from.
How do I check if my content is AI-citable?
Run a GEO audit on the page. true402’s seo-audit (POST a URL with mode "geo") scores the dimensions answer engines reward — extractability (are your answers self-contained and quotable), citation signals (do you link primary sources and include data), structured data, semantic clarity, topical coverage, and freshness — and returns specific issues to fix. It is pay-per-call over x402 (no account, no API key), so you can audit a page or a whole batch programmatically.