Study Reveals What Makes AI Search Engines Cite Your Content
University of Toronto researchers Mahe Chen and Nick Koudas analyzed two 90-day collections of answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to determine what drives citation of web pages. They found that citations depend on a mix of content quality, retrieval mechanisms, and the model's pre-existing knowledge. The study, titled 'What Drives AI Citations? Content, Retrieval and Model Knowledge in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)', provides the first systematic evidence for the emerging field of generative engine optimization. It shows that publishers cannot rely on traditional SEO tactics alone to appear as sources in AI-generated answers.
breakthroughs10/14/2026