One article, cited 34 times as a source in AI responses: what we did, and what you can do too

The Swedish version of our content guide, which AI uses as a source, was cited 34 times in Copilot and Bing’s AI responses over an eight-week period. That represents 65 per cent of all citations geoa.app received during that period. Here are the seven things the article does, our best guess as to why the Swedish version came out on top, and a step-by-step guide to doing the same on your own site and measuring the results in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Does writing in accordance with the content guidelines that AI uses as a source actually work? Short answer: yes, and faster than we’d expected. One article on geoa.app – the Swedish version of our guide to this type of content – was used as a source 34 times in Copilot and Bing’s AI responses over an eight-week period. That’s 65 per cent of all the times the entire geoa.app site was used as a source during that period. Here’s what the article does, and how you can do the same on your own site.

The figure comes from Bing Webmaster Tools’ ‘AI Performance’ report, which shows how many times a website has been used as a source in Microsoft Copilot, in Bing’s own AI summaries and in selected partner services. From 14 July to 9 September 2026, geoa.app was used as a source 52 times across eight pages. Thirty-four of these were for a single page: the Swedish version of ‘How do you write content that AI cites?’. This is not a research study. It is a single example from our own site, measured by Microsoft, not by us. All figures, the full list of pages and the caveats can be found on the data page.

What was measured, and what does the figure mean?

Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft’s free tool for website owners, and the AI Performance report was introduced in 2026. It counts every time an AI service based on Bing fetches your page and uses it as a source in a response. It also shows the queries the AI searched for when it found your page. Microsoft calls these ‘grounding queries’.

For geoa.app, the list looked like this:

Page	Times used as a source
/sv/blog/how-to-write-content-that-AI-cites (Swedish)	34
/about	5
/blog	3
/features	2
/en/blog/how-does-chatgpt-find-local-businesses (English)	2
/en/prices (English)	2
/en/method (English)	2
/blog/geo-the-complete-guide-2026	2

The query that most frequently led to the article was in Swedish: ‘types of content that increase the likelihood of appearing in AI-generated responses’. For that single query, geoa.app accounted for 12.4 per cent of all the sources used by the AI. The rest of the site – over a hundred pages in four languages – shared the remaining 18%.

Note what the figure does not reveal. It does not indicate how many people clicked through. It does not say whether the article was the main source or merely mentioned in passing. And it covers Copilot and Bing, not ChatGPT or Google. It’s a sample, and Microsoft itself calls it that. But it’s measured externally, by a third party, and it’s precisely the sort of figure you’d otherwise be missing if you wanted to know whether a writing technique works.

What does this one article do that the other forty do not?

The article is written using the seven techniques it describes. It sounds circular, but that’s the whole point: these are the techniques highlighted by the research behind content for AI responses (Aggarwal et al., KDD ’24), and the article was the first place we applied them consistently. Here’s how they work in practice:

1. The answer is in the first 60 words. The article opens with ‘How do I get cited by AI? Short answer: …’ and gives the answer before explaining anything. An AI can extract that paragraph and use it as it stands.
2. Each technique has its own heading, phrased as what the reader will do. ‘Technique 1: Start with a definition’, ‘Technique 3: Use BLUF’. The headings match the questions people ask.
3. Use numbers, not adjectives. ‘+115 per cent visibility for a page ranked No. 5’ (Aggarwal et al., KDD ’24), with a link to the study right next to the figure. Where no figure is available, the article states this openly rather than inventing one.
4. A ‘how-to’ section under each technique. Not just what, but how, with a good and a bad example.
5. Lists and a table, so that an answer can be found without reading the whole text.
6. A prominent FAQ at the bottom, where the questions are written exactly as they are asked.
7. A complete Swedish version. Not a Danish text with a Swedish menu, but a fully translated article with a Swedish title, a Swedish summary and a Swedish FAQ. The query the AI searched for was in Swedish, and a Swedish user receives an answer based on Swedish sources.

None of these seven things require a tool. They require you to write the answer first and back it up afterwards, and to do so in the language your customers are asking in.

Why the Swedish version and not the Danish one?

We do not know for certain, and we will not pretend to. The Danish, Norwegian and English versions of the same article are not included in Bing’s sample for the period. Our best explanation is supply: there are far fewer Swedish texts on how to write for AI than there are in Danish and English, and a Swedish question is preferably answered using Swedish sources. The article therefore stood out more in Sweden than it does in Denmark.

This is an assumption, not a measurement. But it points to something you can put into practice straight away: if your customers speak Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish, a full translation of your best page is no mere luxury. It may be the area where you face the least competition when it comes to being used as a source.

Check whether AI can read your page, free of charge in 60 seconds →

How to replicate this on your own website

Take the page you’d most like to be used as a source. Not the homepage, but the page that answers a specific question your customers ask. Then do the following, in this order:

1. Write the answer in the first two sentences. Pose the question in your own headline, and answer it before you explain. If a visitor only reads the first 60 words, the answer must be there.
2. Make your headings questions. ‘How much does it cost?’, ‘How long does it take?’, ‘What do I need to do myself?’. One question per heading, one answer below.
3. Include figures and cite the source for each figure. Your own figures are best: delivery times, prices, number of years, number of customers you’re allowed to mention. A figure without a source is merely an assertion. A made-up figure is worse than nothing.
4. Use lists and a single table for things that can be compared: prices, packages, time taken.
5. Write an FAQ at the bottom with four to six genuine questions – the ones you get on the phone – in order.
6. Translate the entire page into every language you sell in. Title, summary, FAQs and body text. Not a machine-translated body text beneath a Danish title.
7. Register your site with Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console. It’s free, and that’s where, in eight weeks’ time, you’ll be able to see if it worked. The report is called AI Performance.

Expect it to take an afternoon for a single page. It took us longer because we were writing the rules at the same time. You already have them.

What the figure doesn’t prove

• One article is just one example. It is not a study with a control group. Our survey of 1,912 Nordic companies, where the technology behind the page is linked to its use as a source, stands on its own. This article shows what it looks like for a single page in practice.
• Copilot is not ChatGPT. Bing’s report covers Microsoft’s own AI services and selected partners. We do not know whether ChatGPT or Google uses the article in the same way.
• A source is not a customer. The report shows no clicks. Being used as a source is the new form of visibility, not a promise of traffic. Read more in ‘Cited or recommended?’.
• The sample is Microsoft’s. We cannot see what has not been included.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find the figure for my own site?

Create a free account in Bing Webmaster Tools, verify your domain and open the AI Performance report. It shows how many times your pages have been used as a source, which pages they are, and which queries the AI searched for. The figures are delayed by a few days.

Do I need a tool to do the same thing?

No. The seven techniques are writing techniques and can be implemented in any CMS. A tool such as Geoa saves you from having to check the technical aspects of the page – in other words, whether the AI can read it at all – and from having to monitor the results every week. You can write the text yourself.

How long does it take before you see any results?

For geoa.app, the first registrations came after a couple of weeks, and the majority came in weeks four to eight of the period. Allow two months before you make a judgement.

Does it work in Danish as well?

The writing technique is the same in all languages, and our analysis of 1,912 Nordic companies was carried out on Danish, Norwegian and Swedish websites. The difference lies in the competition: in Danish, there are more texts on the subject, so it’s harder to be the source the AI chooses. That makes the technique all the more important, not less so.

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