Ai Search Optimization

---
name: ai-search-optimization
description: Optimizes for AI assistants and AI-generated answers — being retrievable, being cited, and being represented accurately when a model answers on your behalf. Use this when traffic is shifting from links to AI answers, when a brand is misrepresented or absent in AI responses, when planning content for retrieval rather than ranking, or when deciding how AI search changes an existing SEO program.
---

# AI search optimization

Classical SEO optimizes to be *clicked*. This optimizes to be *quoted* — often with no click at all.
That changes what a good page looks like.

## What gets cited

- **Self-contained passages.** A retrieved chunk arrives without the surrounding page. Each section
  must make sense alone, with its subject named rather than pronominalized.
- **Direct answers near the question.** Bury the answer under three paragraphs of context and the
  passage retrieved will be the context.
- **Specific, checkable facts** — numbers, dates, named methods, stated conditions. Vague claims are
  neither retrievable nor quotable.
- **Attributable expertise.** Named authors, stated credentials, dated content, and cited sources.
  Anonymous undated content is weakly weighted.
- **Structure that survives extraction** — real headings, real lists, real tables. Layout implied by
  styling disappears.

## Practical moves

- Answer the question in the first sentence under each heading, then elaborate.
- Write headings as the questions people actually ask.
- Define your own terms on your own pages, so the model's definition traces to you.
- Keep facts consistent across your site. Contradictions get resolved against you.
- Maintain the boring canonical pages — pricing, comparisons, specifications, FAQ. These are heavily
  retrieved and usually neglected.

## Being represented accurately

Assistants assemble an answer about you from whatever is available, weighted toward third-party and
structured sources. Where those are thin or stale, the answer will be wrong.

Audit periodically: ask several assistants what your company does, who it is for, what it costs, and
how it compares. Note the errors and trace them to a source. The fix is almost always publishing or
correcting the source, not the assistant.

## Measuring

Click-through will fall on informational queries even as influence rises. Track citation and mention
frequency, and downstream branded search and direct traffic, rather than judging this program on
organic sessions — that metric will say you are losing while you are winning.

## Never

- Optimize for one assistant's current behavior. Retrieval and citation rules change without notice and without a changelog.
- Assume being crawlable means being citable. Models cite sources that answer a question cleanly, not sources that merely exist.
- Leave an inaccurate representation uncorrected because it is not on your site. The claim propagates whether or not you own the page it came from.