What Increases Your Chance of an AI Citation: A Review of GEO Research

Plenty of impressions circulate around optimizing for AI. Fortunately there is also hard research: the study “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” (Aggarwal et al., published at the KDD 2024 conference), with contributions from Princeton, IIT Delhi, Georgia Tech and the Allen Institute for AI. It tested 9 optimization tactics on 10,000 queries in an environment simulating a generative search engine. Its results remain the most-cited guide to what actually works in GEO.

What came out as most effective

• Adding statistics: concrete numbers in the text lifted visibility in answers by tens of percent.
• Expert quotations: direct quotes with attribution were among the strongest signals.
• Cited sources: text that itself references trustworthy sources gets picked up more willingly.

These three tactics each brought roughly a 30–40% increase in visibility (measured by the share of content in the answer). Fluency of the text and an authoritative, matter-of-fact tone had a smaller but measurable effect. By contrast, classic keyword stuffing did not help at all – keyword density does not interest the model.

The equalizer effect: a chance for smaller sites

The most interesting finding: the biggest gains went to sites in lower positions. Content that would rank fifth in classic search improved by up to +115% after GEO edits. A generative engine does not select by rank but by usability of the content – which levels the playing field between large and small players. For smaller companies it is a rare opportunity to leapfrog the established competition.

Limits worth knowing about

The study ran in a simulated environment with 2023/2024 models and a limited number of competing sources – real-world gains will be lower than the laboratory ones. But the direction is confirmed by newer correlation analyses too: factual density and trustworthiness of content decide, cosmetics do not.

Turning the research into practice

1. Take your 10 most important pages and add concrete numbers, an expert quote and references to sources to each.
2. Write factually and fluently – one idea per sentence, definitions at the start of a section.
3. Build trustworthiness from the outside as well: the model verifies claims against what others write about you. Mentions in respected media – for example via the Linketica marketplace – give your numbers weight.