𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗔𝗜 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗔𝗜 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini the same question. You get three different source lists. This shows how AI citations work.

AI uses two types of memory. One is baked into the model. It has no links. The second is real-time retrieval. This is called RAG. Citations only come from RAG.

Five steps happen fast:

• Query rewrite: Your question becomes search terms.
• Retrieval: The system finds pages.
• Re-ranking: It picks a few best ones.
• Extraction: It pulls small chunks of text.
• Synthesis: It writes the answer and adds links.

AI cites passages, not pages. A top Google page might not get a citation. The AI needs a clean answer in one spot.

How to get cited:

• Allow bots in your robots.txt.
• Write clear, direct answers.
• Use tables and bullet points.
• Share original data.
• Keep dates fresh.

New tools like llms.txt help AI read your site. The goal is to move from reading to acting.

Google rank and AI citations are different. Treat AI visibility as a new skill.

Source: https://dev.to/studiomeyer_io/how-ai-citations-actually-work-from-query-to-footnote-4pij