01 · Capability

Citability engineering.

Citability engineering is the practice of structuring your pages so AI engines lift your sentences verbatim into their answers. The engines don't read your site top to bottom. They retrieve answer-shaped passages, and the passages that win are the ones engineered to win.

TL;DR

AI engines quote clean, self-contained passages, not whole pages. We shape your content into passage-shaped units so ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, and Grok pull from you instead of a competitor. Your brand name appears in citation chips on the queries that matter to your business.

The Problem

Why AI doesn't cite you.

AI engines lift clean, self-contained passages. They don't read your page top to bottom. They retrieve sentences that answer the question in front of them. If your sentences don't structure into answer-shaped units, the model paraphrases someone else's. You vanish from the answer your customers see.

~80%
zero-click rate on AI-answered queries. Users get their answer without visiting a single site.
Semrush · 2025
1%
share of users who click through AI-cited sources to the underlying website.
Semrush · 2025
Top 3
cited sources capture nearly all referral traffic from AI answers. The long tail gets nothing.
Industry analysis · 2025
The Outcome

Be the source the model reaches for.

What Moves

The signals we move.

Before and after, across a typical 90-day engagement. Directional, representative. Your numbers will differ.

Citability score (per page)
42
91
+49
Verbatim quote appearance rate
8%
64%
+56%
Citation share (7 engines)
4%
41%
+37%
Query coverage in your category
18%
82%
+64%
Source rank within AI answers
11
2
-9
The Methodology

We don't publish the playbook. The advantage is in the execution, not the explanation. If we taught it, it would stop working. Not just for you, for everyone we work with. What we'll show you is the result.

A category-leading skincare brand grew its citation share across seven engines from 3% to 41% in 90 days. Without publishing more content.
Anonymized client outcome · CiteSurge panel
Frequently Asked

Questions buyers ask us.

Citability engineering is the structured practice of shaping web content into passages AI engines lift verbatim. It covers passage length, entity clarity, schema markup, and source hygiene. When it works, your brand becomes the default source the model quotes for queries in your category.

SEO earns a ranked link. GEO earns a quoted sentence. SEO optimizes for click-through from a ranked result. GEO optimizes for a verbatim lift into an AI answer that may never produce a click. You stop measuring rank and start measuring citation share.

Most engagements show measurable citation appearance inside 30 days and durable lift across seven engines within 90 days. Pace depends on domain authority, publishing cadence, and how much structural work your existing content needs.

The seven that drive commercial discovery: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, and Grok. Each engine retrieves differently, so we track and move share on each independently.

Yes. Most of the highest-value work is restructuring existing pages into passage-shaped units, not adding volume. Publishing more rarely wins citations. Publishing better-structured passages always does.

We sample category-level prompts daily across all seven engines, record which brands appear in the answer body and in citation chips, and compute each brand's share of voice. Your dashboard shows the number, who moved it, and why.

Find out where you stand.

A free citation audit shows exactly which queries surface you, which surface a competitor, and what's costing you share.

90-minute turnaround. No pitch.