Assistants quote whoever answered the question plainly. Most business websites never answer anything.
Answer your buyers' questions plainly, on your own site, with the facts an assistant needs to recommend you: who you are, where you are, what you do, and what it costs. Then make sure the rest of the internet agrees with your site.
Why do assistants cite some businesses and not others?
An assistant builds its answer from pages it can find and trust. It favors pages that answer the exact question in the first sentence or two, with specifics: a price, a place, a step, a name. A homepage that says "we deliver excellence" gives it nothing to quote.
What should I put on my website?
- One page per real question. "How much does X cost?", "How long does X take?", "Do I need X or Y?" Answer in the first two sentences, then explain.
- Prices, or at least ranges. Assistants get asked about cost constantly. A page with a number gets quoted.
- Who, where, and how to reach you, in plain text, the same on every page.
- Structured data. The schema markup that tells search engines this is a business, a service, a FAQ, or an article.
What about the rest of the internet?
Assistants check you against other sources. Keep your name, address, phone, and services identical on Google Business Profile, Bing Places, LinkedIn, and the directories in your industry. Mentions on local news sites, associations, and trade directories help more than another blog post on your own site.
How do I know if it is working?
Measure it. Bing Webmaster Tools reports AI citations, and Google Search Console reports impressions from its AI features. You can also ask the assistants your buyers' questions on a schedule and record who gets named. For my own firm I built a script that saves both reports every week.
How long does it take?
Weeks to see the first citations, months to build steady ones. On my own appraisal firm, Bing Copilot citations over the trailing 90 days went from 835 in mid-September to about 2,000 in mid-October, on a domain that started from nothing in May.
Answered by Jared Lukes, Minneapolis. Twenty-five years in brand, UX, and technology, currently holding fractional AI and technology seats at three companies. About Jared.