Why does ChatGPT quote your competitor — and not you?

Research from Princeton shows that AI cites pages outside Google’s top 10 more often than top-ranked ones. Discover 5 practical methods to make your SMV citable by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini — with a citation lift of up to +115%.

ChatGPT quotes your competitor instead of you because AI models select sources based on citability — clear answers, factual accuracy and structure — rather than their position in the Google rankings. Princeton research (KDD ’24) shows that AI is more likely to cite pages outside Google’s top 10 than top-ranked pages, and that the right GEO techniques can boost your citation rate by up to 115 per cent.

AI makes different choices to Google

Google ranks based on links and authority. AI models extract answers — they look for text that directly and accurately answers the user’s question. That’s why a smaller competitor with well-structured content might be cited ahead of you, even if you outrank them in Google.

5 reasons why your competitor wins the ranking

1. They answer first, explain afterwards — the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) structure makes their text easy to extract
2. They’re packed with facts — prices, figures, years and statistics that the AI can quote directly
3. They have technical GEO in place — llms.txt, schema markup and open access for AI crawlers
4. They are mentioned on external domains — directories, trade associations and media outlets bolster the AI’s trust
5. They update more frequently — AI prefers fresh content with visible dates

How to turn the tables

• Check whether AI crawlers can even read your site — many Danish sites block GPTBot without realising it
• Rewrite your most important pages to be ‘definition-first’ — the answer in the first paragraph, the details afterwards
• Add figures and sources — factual density is the single technique with the greatest measured impact in the Princeton study
• Create a comparison page — in our case data, up to 40 per cent of AI citations come from a single ‘compare’ page

Want to know exactly where you’re falling short of your competitors? Take a free GEO-test’ — you’ll get your score and a prioritised list of gaps in 60 seconds.