The AI Citation Mistake: Optimizing For Google, Not For Sources via @sejournal, @lorenbaker
All Paid Media PPC News Social MediaAdvertising Video Advertising Columns Ask A PPC ExpertNEW PPC Pulse Webinar A New Place To Look: Where Your Next AI Citations & Clicks Come From Learn how to turn real customer language into AEO insights, FAQ content, and measurable AI citations and clicks with CallTrackingMetrics. Digital Marketing All Digital Marketing Analytics & Data Ecommerce Lead Generation Content Marketing Social Platforms Google YouTube Reddit LinkedIn TikTokNEW WordPress Other CMS Platforms Rundown Why AI volume alone can't deliver personalization Your content architecture may be the real bottleneck. Get the Rundown on what needs to change in your content ops. SEJ Live Webinars Rundowns PodcastNEW Ebooks All Resources Webinar Google's AI Picks Between Your Locations And Rivals Customers compare and book inside AI answers; get a read on your locations, how rivals nearby stack up, and the 5 signal fixes. SEJ STAFF Loren Baker 26 seconds ago ⋅ 3 min read SEJ STAFF Loren Baker Founder at Foundation Digital Bio Follow You rank on page one for your target keyword, so you assume ChatGPT and Claude will mention you in their AI outputs. However, a quick conversation with an LLM outputs competitors instead of your brand, even though you are on page one. Position tracking will not explain that discrepancy, because the AI output is built from sources the LLM retrieved and validated on its own. A ranking is earned in the SERP. A citation is earned as an amalgamation of all the sources that an LLM trusts to validate its answer. Citation profiles are not the same from one industry to the next. Every category seems to have a small set of domains that LLMs tend to cite repeatedly, and that set rarely matches the top of the SERP for the same query. Which domains those are, and how the mix changes from ChatGPT to Perplexity to Gemini, is what the webinar teaches. Save your seat to get the per-industry citation source breakdowns. Getting published by those domains is a pitching problem more than a technical SEO problem. Some of them accept contributed articles. Some require a listing and verified reviews before your brand appears at all. Others are communities, where the account doing the posting counts as much as the post. The requirements differ by source type, and so does how long each one takes to show up in an AI output. The webinar covers what each source type asks for, and which ones to approach first in your industry. Gintare Rimolaityte of Trendos presents the citation data behind the session: which sources each LLM cites most, broken out by industry, plus what to do with those numbers. Attendees leave with per-industry source breakdowns rather than a one-size-fits-all list, and with time on the agenda to ask about their own category. The live webinar includes Q&A, so come with your industry and the LLMs you track. Add SEJ as a preferred source on Google Read Full Bio SEJ STAFF Loren Baker Founder at Foundation Digital Loren Baker is the Founder of SEJ, an Advisor at Alpha Brand Media and runs Foundation Digital, a digital marketing ... Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. Surviving The Impression Squeeze: How Agentic Commerce Is Changing Google Ads In 2026 YouTube’s AI Slop Problem And How Marketers Can Compete New Meridian Tool, Performance Max Learning Path – PPC Pulse Join 75,000+ Digital Leaders. Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. Add SEJ as a preferred source on Google AI Cites Your Brand. Now What? Turn AI Visibility Data Into Actions AI Visibility For Local Businesses: How To Get Recommended By ChatGPT & AI Overviews In 90 Days In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses -- and careers.
Source: Search Engine Journal
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