How AI Search Decides Who Gets Cited (And What You Can Do About It)

When ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews answer a question about your industry, they don't return a list of links. They synthesize an answer — and cite sources they consider authoritative.

AI models favor third-party sources over a brand's own website roughly 80% of the time. Understanding how citation decisions are made — and optimizing for citability — is the new competitive advantage in search.