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cornerstone · Search & AI VisibilityHow AI Answer Engines Choose What to CiteAI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity cite sources by retrieving candidates and ranking them on the same quality systems as search, plus retrieval. There is no separate 'AEO trick' that beats being the best answer. The operator's view of what actually earns citations.spoke · Search & AI VisibilityDoes llms.txt Help You Get Cited by AI? An Honest Answerllms.txt is a proposed file that points AI tools at your key content. There is no controlled evidence it lifts AI citations. What it is, why it's still worth shipping as low-cost hygiene, and why you shouldn't treat it as a growth lever.spoke · Search & AI VisibilityWhat Structured Data Is Actually For (and What It Isn't)Structured data (schema.org / JSON-LD) makes pages eligible for rich results and helps machines parse entities. It is not a proven AI-citation lever, and misused review schema gets pages demoted. Use it accurately for what it does.spoke · Search & AI VisibilityAnswer-First Content: Lead With the Answer, Not the Throat-ClearingAnswer-first content states the answer in the first sentence, then supports it. It's how you win featured snippets and get pulled into AI answers — and it is not the same as fragmenting a page into thin 'LLM chunks'.spoke · Search & AI VisibilityThe 2026 Self-Promotion Penalty: Why Ranking Yourself #1 BackfiresGoogle's 2026 reviews system demotes sites that publish a "best [category]" list and rank their own product #1. Why it reads as a misleading-evaluation signal, and what to do instead.
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