PlaybooksOctober 15, 2026 · 4 min read

Which websites do AI engines cite? Where to show up

AI answers are built from a small set of sources: comparison articles, review sites, community threads and vendor pages. How to find yours and get onto them.

Key takeaways

Cited sources fall into a few types: editorial lists, review sites, communities, reference sites and vendor pages.
Find the exact pages cited for your questions; they're a better to-do list than any generic advice.
Each type needs a different approach: outreach for lists, reviews for review sites, real participation in communities.
Your own comparison, pricing and use-case pages can be cited too if they're clear and fair.

When an AI assistant searches the web before answering, it usually cites its sources. Those citations are the most useful data you can get about AI visibility, because they tell you exactly which pages shaped the answer. If you want to be named more often, being on those pages, or being one of them, is the most direct route.

The five types of sources

Across the answers we collect, cited pages fall into a handful of types. Citemark's dashboard groups them the same way, so you can see which types matter most for your questions.

Type	Examples	How you get in
Editorial and blogs	"Best X tools" articles, comparison posts, industry blogs	Outreach to authors, useful data, guest posts
Review sites	G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, Product Hunt	Reviews from real customers, a complete profile
Community	Reddit, YouTube, Stack Overflow, Hacker News, forums	Genuine participation and helpful answers
Reference	Wikipedia and similar	Only if you're truly notable; don't force it
Vendor pages	Your site and your competitors' sites	Clear comparison, pricing and use-case pages

How to find the pages cited for your questions

Generic lists of "sites to get listed on" are a weak starting point. What matters is which pages are cited for your buyers' questions. To find them:

Put your buyer questions to each engine with web search on, and note every cited URL. The free checker does this for 5 questions; Citemark tracks it daily on paid plans.
Group the URLs by site and count how often each appears. A handful of sites usually account for most citations.
Open each of the top pages and check: are you on it? Who is? What does it say about the winners?

The result is a short, specific to-do list, ranked by how often each page is cited.

Editorial lists and comparison posts

"Best tools for X" articles are cited constantly, because they're written to answer exactly the questions buyers ask. They're also the most direct opportunity.

Check the date. Many lists are updated once a year; a short note to the author before the next update can get you considered.
Make it easy. Send two or three lines: who you're for, what you do better, and a fact they can verify. Offer a free account for testing.
Be honest. Don't ask to be ranked first. Ask to be considered for the use case you actually win.
Create something citable. Original data, like a survey or a benchmark, gets linked by writers, and linked pages get fetched.

Review sites

Review sites are often cited for "best X" and "X alternatives" questions because they compare products side by side. A product with no reviews looks like a risk to a buyer and rarely makes a shortlist.

Complete your profile: category, pricing, integrations, screenshots.
Ask happy customers for a review at a natural moment, like after a successful onboarding.
Respond to reviews, including critical ones, briefly and helpfully.

Community threads

Reddit and similar communities are cited often for questions where buyers want real opinions ("is X worth it?", "what do you use for Y?"). They're also the easiest place to do damage with spam.

Join the communities your buyers already use, and be useful long before you mention your product.
When a thread asks for exactly what you do, answer the question first, then say who you are and why you might fit.
Never post fake reviews or use sock-puppet accounts. Communities notice, and so do the people who read them.

Reference sites

Wikipedia and similar reference sites are cited for general questions about a category. Unless your company is genuinely notable, with independent coverage, trying to get a page there wastes time and can backfire. Focus on the other types first.

Vendor pages: yours and your competitors'

Engines often cite vendors' own pages, especially pricing pages, comparison pages and documentation. If a competitor's "us vs them" page is cited for a question you care about, that's a sign you should have a fair comparison page of your own. Pages that tend to get cited:

Honest comparison pages with a clear table.
Pricing pages with real numbers in text.
Use-case pages for specific buyers.
Documentation that answers "can it do X?" questions directly.

Also make sure AI crawlers can read your site at all. The AI SEO audit checks your robots.txt and homepage for common blockers.

A simple order of work

If you're not sure where to start, this order works for most small teams:

Fix anything that stops AI crawlers from reading your site. It's quick and everything else depends on it.
Publish or tidy up your pricing page and one or two honest comparison pages.
Ask ten happy customers for a review on the review site cited most often for your questions.
Reach out to the authors of the two or three most-cited "best of" articles.
Start taking part in the community threads where your buyers ask for recommendations.

That's a month or two of steady work for one person, and each step is measurable. Do them one at a time so you can tell which one moved your numbers.

Measure the effect

After working on a source, give it a few weeks, then check two things: is the page still cited for your questions, and are you now named in the answers that cite it? Citemark's Fixes tab ties each suggestion to the cited pages behind it, so you can see which work paid off. The playbook for getting recommended puts all of this in order.