Researchers examined 158,099 answers generated by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity over two 90‑day periods. They found that a page is cited mainly when the engine’s own search pulls it up, not because of its SEO tweaks. Retrieval accounted for 32% of citation variation, while matching titles and paragraphs explained only 2.8%. The model also injects brand names it “remembers,” sometimes citing pages that don’t exist.
Why it matters
Publishers must optimize for how generative AI searches retrieve their pages, not just traditional SEO, to appear as sources.
