How to get your business cited in AI search

Search no longer ends in one place. A share of users now ask an assistant directly — "a company that does drone filming in Kuşadası" — and then search for the name that appears in the answer.

The rules of this new surface differ from classic SEO but are not separate from it. Below are the areas that measurably make a difference.

1. Most citations are earned off your site

Analyses show that the large majority of citations in AI answers come from sources other than the brand's own site: news outlets, directories, forums and especially video platforms.

The practical consequence: perfecting your website is not enough on its own. Your business profile, YouTube channel, industry directory listings and what others write about you have to work together.

2. Consistent brand information is decisive

Language models recognise a business as an entity. If your name appears as "Bubi Medya" in one place and "Bubi Media Agency" in another, the model may treat them as two different entities.

• The business name must be written identically on every platform
• Address and phone (NAP) must match across site, Google Business Profile and directories
• Social profiles should be linked from the site (schema.org sameAs)
• Service names must stay consistent — not renamed on every page

3. Page structure: answer block and a single H1

Studies of cited pages show a clear pattern: pages using a single H1 with a logical heading hierarchy are cited noticeably more often.

On top of that, a direct 40-60 word answer near the top of the page — readable without context — works. Models quote independent passages like that rather than the whole page.

4. Structured data: three types or more

Measurements show pages carrying three or more schema types are markedly more likely to be cited. For a local business the minimum set is LocalBusiness (or ProfessionalService), BreadcrumbList, FAQPage and Service.

The point is not to trick a search engine but to make the information on the page machine-readable. The markup must match the visible content exactly.

5. llms.txt does not live up to the hype

The much-discussed llms.txt file is, according to measured traffic, almost never requested by the bots that actually drive citations, and Google has stated it does not support the file.

It costs nothing, so we still add it — but "I added llms.txt, so AI will find me" is a groundless expectation. That effort is far better spent on structured data and off-site visibility.

6. Freshness: a quarterly review

Pages that are not updated lose their citations noticeably faster. That does not mean publishing new content every month; reviewing existing pages quarterly and updating prices, timelines and scope is usually enough.