Getting your brand cited by AI assistants

A growing share of buyers now start with an assistant rather than a search box. They don't see ten blue links — they see one answer, with two or three brands named in it. Being one of those named brands is a distinct discipline, and most sites are accidentally bad at it.

Assistants retrieve, they don't browse

A model composing an answer pulls passages, not pages. That means the unit of optimisation shrinks: a clearly stated, self-contained paragraph that answers a question without needing the three paragraphs above it is far more likely to be lifted and attributed than a beautifully argued essay.

Be an entity, not just a website

• Consistent naming, description and category everywhere you appear
• Presence in the sources assistants trust — industry directories, comparison sites, reputable press
• Structured data that states plainly what you are and who you serve
• A stable About page that reads like reference material, not a brochure

Write the comparison you're afraid of

Buyers ask assistants to compare. If the only comparisons of your category are written by competitors, you're being described in someone else's words. An honest comparison page — including where you're the wrong choice — tends to get cited precisely because it reads as balanced.

Measure it, roughly

There's no Search Console for this yet. Run a fixed set of buying-intent prompts across the major assistants monthly, log which brands are named and in what order, and track the trend. It's crude, it's manual, and it's still more signal than guessing.