What Works in Large Language Models

The Key To Brand Citation In AI Chatbots: Deep Content

The last 12 months have seen significant progress in our understanding of AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Co. We know that:

• Adoption is growing rapidly.
• AI chatbots send more referrals to websites over time.
• Referral traffic from AI chatbots has a higher quality than that from Google.

However, there is a lack of content on examples and success factors of content that drives citations and mentions in AI chatbots.

To address this, I analyzed over 7,000 citations across 1,600 URLs to content-heavy sites, focusing on AI chatbots (ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews) in February 2024, with the help of Profound.

The Key To Brand Citation In AI Chatbots: Deep Content

My goal was to figure out:

• Why some pages are more cited than others, so we can optimize content for AI chatbots.
• Whether classic SEO factors matter for AI chatbot visibility, so we can prioritize.
• What traps to avoid, so we don’t have to learn the same lessons many times.
• If different factors influence mentions and citations, so we can be more targeted in our efforts.

The Research Findings

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The Key To Brand Citation In AI Chatbots: Deep Content

Image Credit: Kevin Indig

My correlation analysis shows that none of the classic SEO metrics have strong relationships with citations. LLMs have light preferences: Perplexity and AI Overviews weigh word and sentence count higher. ChatGPT weighs domain rating and Flesch Score.

Takeaway: Classic SEO metrics don’t matter nearly as much for AI chatbot mentions and citations. The best thing you can do for content optimization is to aim for depth, comprehensiveness, and readability (how easy the text is to understand).

The Most-Cited Content

The following examples demonstrate those attributes:

• https://www.byrdie.com/digital-prescription-services-dermatologist-5179537
• https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/best-weight-loss-programs
• https://www.verywellmind.com/we-tried-online-therapy-com-these-were-our-experiences-8780086

The Top 10% of Most-Cited Pages

The two factors that stand out are sentence and word count, followed by the Flesch Score. Metrics related to backlinks and traffic seem to have a negative effect, which doesn’t mean that AI chatbots weigh them negatively but simply that they don’t matter for mentions or citations.

The Top 10% of Most-Cited Pages Across All Three LLMs Have:

• Much less traffic, rank for fewer keywords, and get fewer total backlinks.
• How does that make sense? It almost looks like being strong in traditional SEO metrics is bad for AI chatbot visibility.

Splitting the Data up by AI Chatbot Shows You Their…

Context: Not all AI chatbots mentioned brands with the same frequency. Even though ChatGPT has the highest adoption and sends the most referral traffic to sources, Perplexity mentions the most brands per average in answers.

Prompt Structure Matters for Brand Visibility:

• The word “best” was a strong trigger for brand mentions in 69.71% of prompts.
• Words like “trusted” (5.77%), “source” (2.88%), “recommend” (0.96%), and “reliable” (0.96%) were also associated with an increased likelihood of brand mentions.
• Prompts including “recommend” often mention public organizations like the FDA, especially when the prompt includes words like “trusted” or “leading.”
• Google AIOs show the highest brand diversity, followed by Perplexity, then ChatGPT.

Takeaway: Prompt structure has a meaningful impact on the brands that come up in the answer.

Tech Traps to Avoid

Context: In my research, I encountered several ways brands unintentionally sabotage their AI chatbot visibility.

• I surface them here because the pre-requisite to being visible in LLMs is, of course, their ability to crawl your site, whether that’s directly or through training data.

The Most Cited Domain in Perplexity in My Dataset is Blocked.Goodrx.com

GoodRX blocks users from non-U.S. countries, and it seems it accidentally or intentionally blocks Perplexity.

Takeaway: Monitor your site, especially if all wanted URLs are indexed, in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Double-check whether you accidentally block an LLM crawler in your robots.txt or through your CDN.

Summary: 6 Key Learnings

1. Classic SEO metrics don’t strongly influence AI chatbot citations.
2. Content depth (higher word and sentence counts) and readability (good Flesch Score) matter more.
3. Different AI chatbots have distinct preferences – monitoring multiple platforms is important.
4. Brand popularity (measured by search volume) is the strongest predictor of brand mentions in AI chatbots, especially in ChatGPT.
5. Prompt structure influences brand visibility, and we don’t yet know how user phrase prompts.
6. Technical issues can sabotage AI visibility – ensure your site isn’t accidentally blocking LLM crawlers through robots.txt or CDN settings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the key to brand citation in AI chatbots?
A: Deep content with high word and sentence counts, and good readability (Flesch Score).

Q: Do classic SEO metrics matter for AI chatbot visibility?
A: No, they don’t.

Q: What are the top 10% of most-cited pages like?
A: They have less traffic, rank for fewer keywords, and get fewer total backlinks.

Q: Do different AI chatbots have distinct preferences?
A: Yes, they do.