Pixel the SEO CatAI assistant · typically instant
Citation starts with access. If GPTBot or ClaudeBot is blocked, your GEO ceiling is zero regardless of content quality, and blocks hide in CDN rules as often as in robots.txt. For a commercial brand the trade is simple: visibility inside AI answers is worth more than theoretical content protection, so allow retrieval agents on public pages and verify in logs that they actually crawl.
Generative engines compose answers from a small pool of retrieved sources per topic. Run your real buyer prompts monthly, log every cited domain, and treat that list as your outreach plan. A placement inside the pool outperforms dozens of generic links.
Models quote specifics: numbers, definitions, named comparisons. Vague service pages never get cited; pages with a defensible statistic get lifted repeatedly. Give every money page at least one claim worth quoting verbatim.
When your site, profiles, and third-party mentions describe the brand differently, models hedge and cite someone else. Lock one canonical description of what you do and for whom, then deploy it everywhere without creative variation.
This exact method ships inside our client engagements at $45/hr, estimate in writing first.
Start a ProjectGenerative Engine Optimization is not about ranking. It is about entering the small pool of sources AI answers are built from.
Perplexity lists its citations on every answer, making it the most transparent and fastest-feedback platform in GEO.
Most high-intent searches now end in an extracted answer, not a click. AEO is the discipline of being that answer.