Tag
citation
2 posts
Blue Sky Thinking for LLMs: Why AI Citations Will Be Gamed
Everyone now wants the same thing: to be the page ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google’s AI results decide to quote when they answer a question. So the obvious search is, how do I get an LLM to cite my content? The honest answer is less comforting than the usual schema-and-optimisation chatter. LLMs want to cite clear, reliable, primary evidence. But the moment that preference becomes commercially valuable, it becomes a target. What begins as a noble little dream of machines rewarding the best source quickly becomes something older, rougher and more familiar: another algorithm people will learn to game.
Why ChatGPT Cites Your Content (And Why Your Schema Doesn't Matter)
If there is ever a moment where the fog clears, where the broken programming of the SEO industry reveals itself for what it truly is, it is when you look at the data. Real data. Not the culture soup of marketing buzzwords, not the unenlightened 'GEO experts' claiming schema is the answer to everything, but actual evidence from 1.4 million ChatGPT prompts. Ahrefs released a study in April 2026 that should have sent shockwaves through the SEO community. Instead, most people missed it entirely. The study examined which pages ChatGPT actually cites, and the findings are damning for anyone who has been chasing the schema markup myth.