What this step answers
Why would a system rely on your own website about you?
Citation Presence and Citation Authority
Two of the six measures. Both describe the sources an answer rests on, rather than the answer itself.
- Citation PresenceWhether the answer cites a supporting source at all, or simply asserts.
- Citation AuthorityHow strong and how relevant those sources are. A trade register and a supplier’s own brochure are not equal evidence.
E-E-A-T
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. It comes from the guidelines Google gives the human raters who assess page quality, not a score any system calculates. It remains the clearest public statement of what a source worth relying on looks like.
Three of the four can be improved on your own site. Authoritativeness cannot, which is what this step exists for.
What we do
- Identify the sources your category’s answers already lean on, from the Baseline capture
- Correct the plain facts first — registers, association listings, directories, identically worded
- Put a named person behind the expertise, consistent everywhere they appear
- Produce one original data or benchmark asset worth quoting
- Earn editorial mentions with the data in hand. No paid placement, ever
The fastest route in
Asking to be cited is a favour. Publishing the only real numbers in your category is an invitation, and unlike a placement request it does not expire the week you send it.
We hold ourselves to this before we ask it of anyone. The AI Visibility Index measures one category across all six systems on a stated date and publishes the finding with the full question set, so anyone can repeat it and check. That is the kind of asset this step builds in your category: something a machine can quote, and a competitor cannot argue with unless they run the test themselves.
What you receive
The Authority Plan and the placements made against it each month — including the months where an approach went nowhere.