How to Get Cited in Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT Search

Google AI Overviews now appear above the regular organic results for an increasing share of queries. ChatGPT search cites sources directly in its answers. Perplexity is built around citations. The metric that matters for these surfaces isn't "rank in position 3" — it's "get quoted by name in the AI's answer."

This is a different game from traditional SEO. AI engines don't care about your meta description or your H1 in isolation — they care about whether your content contains a passage clean enough to extract and cite. This guide is how to make that happen.

Pull up a Google AI Overview, expand the sources, and read the cited passages. Pattern recognition emerges fast:

• Short. Almost always 1-3 sentences.
• Self-contained. Make sense without surrounding context.
• Specific. Named entity, concrete number, or definitive claim.
• Authoritative tone. No hedging, no marketing language.
• Recent. Pages dated in the last 12-24 months heavily favored.

What doesn't get cited: long flowing paragraphs that build context over 200 words before making a point, marketing copy with subjective adjectives, content without clear factual anchors, undated content.

Most local-business content gets written in a "build context, then conclude" pattern. AI engines don't reward this. The pattern that wins is "claim, then support":

Loses: "Carlton is a competitive Melbourne suburb where many first-home buyers struggle with the FHBG cap, requiring strategic lender selection by their broker — which is why working with someone experienced is important."

Wins: "Carlton's median two-bedroom terrace price is $1.2M as of 2026, exceeding the FHBG's cap. Buyers in this market typically need lenders willing to consider gifted deposits, with Macquarie, BankFirst, and Bendigo being the most likely to approve high-LVR Carlton purchases."

The second version is two passages. The first is a fact (median price, FHBG context). The second is specific (lender names, situation). An AI engine can quote either standalone.

Three schema additions move citation rates measurably:

Speakable: Marks specific passages as suitable for voice answers. AI engines reading content for ChatGPT voice mode or Google Assistant favor Speakable-marked passages.

ClaimReview: For fact-bearing claims (statistics, percentages, prices), ClaimReview tells AI engines this is an explicit factual claim with a verifiable source.

Person + credentials: Author Person schema with jobTitle, hasCredential, and memberOf properties tells AI engines who wrote the content and why they're qualified. Critical for YMYL content. See our YMYL compliance guide for the broker-specific application.

Together with Article + dateModified, these create a content unit AI engines can confidently cite. For the schema fundamentals, see local schema markup done right.

AI engines prefer recent content for the same reason humans do — older content is more likely to be stale. dateModified is the explicit signal. Update it whenever you genuinely refresh content. Don't game it (bumping dateModified without changing content is detectable and counterproductive).

For content that ages quickly (rates, prices, scheme amounts, statistics), set up a quarterly review process. Confirm or update, then bump dateModified. Pages older than 12 months without dateModified updates are increasingly filtered out of AI citations.

• FAQ pages: Q&A structure maps cleanly to how AI engines retrieve answers. FAQPage schema reinforces it.
• Lists with named entities: "The top three lenders for [specific scenario] are X, Y, Z" is highly citable.
• Definitions: "X is Y because Z" patterns get quoted as direct-answer responses.
• Numbered processes: Step-by-step instructions match HowTo schema and get cited for procedural queries.
• Comparison tables: Structured comparisons get extracted as side-by-side answers.

The unifying theme: clear structure, named entities, concrete facts. Vague prose loses every time.

Manual check: pull up your three most important pages. Read each as if you were an AI engine extracting a 2-3 sentence quote. Is there an obvious passage to quote? Does it stand alone? Does it name specific entities? Is dateModified set?

If you fail on any of these for any of the three pages, you're leaving AI citations on the table. Our GEO audit scores citability passage-by-passage across your whole site and flags low-scoring passages with suggested rewrites. For the broader picture, see what is GEO.