LLM citation.In plain English.

Assistants with web access, such as Perplexity and ChatGPT search, often list sources. Being one of them puts your name in front of the person asking and can send them to your site.

Perplexity says each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources. OpenAI says ChatGPT search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated or incorrect, that placement is not guaranteed, and that a site must allow OAI-SearchBot to be eligible.

Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode show supporting links to pages in its index. Bing says duplicate URLs reduce its confidence in which URL to use for citations, so consolidate them with canonical URLs.

In the GEO research, adding cited sources, quotations and statistics made pages more visible in AI answers. Pages that are specific, current and easy to quote give an assistant more to cite than general marketing copy does.

Example: a Perplexity answer about the cost of replacing a water heater lists four numbered sources, and one is a plumber's price guide page.