Your buyers are asking AI which vendor to choose. Here’s how to be the answer.
B2B buyers now build their shortlist inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews, often before they visit a single website. We read the research so you don’t have to. This report pulls together 23 studies and more than 20 million analyzed AI citations, and it names the 17 factors that decide whether AI cites your brand. Each one is rated by how far the evidence actually goes.
THE RESEARCH BEHIND THE REPORT
23
Primary Studies
KDD 2024 – Jul 2026
20M
AI Citations Analyzed
Across 7 AI Platforms
100K+
Brands Analyzed
Across 7 AI Platforms
17
Identified Factors
Confidence-rated, Fully Sourced
What you’ll get from the report
See which “best practices” are already dead
Schema markup, author bios, llms.txt, Markdown files: five widely-sold tactics that controlled tests, and Google’s own documentation, show do nothing for AI citations.
Know how much to trust each finding
Every one of the 17 factors carries a confidence rating and an evidence grade, so you can tell what to act on now from what’s still a guess.
Get the order to actually fix it
A prioritized playbook, from the technical audit through the earned-media program, including the one high-leverage move most B2B teams are missing.
The AI search playbook is being rewritten, and most of it is wrong
Ranking #1 on Google no longer guarantees you appear in the AI answer. The tactics agencies are selling (schema, author bios, special files “for AI”) have been tested, and most of them do nothing.
The signals that work are the ones B2B teams tend to skip. This report sorts what’s proven from what’s noise, with a source behind every claim.
Inside this report, you’ll find:
Which five “AI SEO” tactics controlled studies show waste budget, including one Google explicitly tells you to ignore
The 30-minute action that moves a brand from a 1% to a 53% AI citation rate
Why AI cites third-party sites over your own, and how to become the brand it recommends
You’ll also learn…
How query fan-out and model training cutoffs decide when you can be cited at all
The 17 ranked factors, each with a confidence rating and the evidence behind it
The order we’d work the problem, from the technical audit to the earned-media campaign
23 studies, 20 million citations, and 17 confidence-rated factors
Fill out the form below to get the report and a clear plan you can act on this quarter.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I need to share my details?
So we can send you the report, plus the occasional update as the research changes. In AI search, that’s about monthly. We keep your information private and never sell it.
Is this really free?
Yes. It’s the same research we use with our own clients. Read it, use it, and keep us in mind when you want help putting it to work.