---
name: ai-search-optimization
description: Optimizes for AI assistants and AI-generated answers — being retrievable, being cited, and being represented accurately when a model answers on your behalf. Use this when traffic is shifting from links to AI answers, when a brand is misrepresented or absent in AI responses, when planning content for retrieval rather than ranking, or when deciding how AI search changes an existing SEO program.
---

# AI search optimization

Classical SEO optimizes to be *clicked*. This optimizes to be *quoted* — often with no click at all.
That changes what a good page looks like.

## What gets cited

- **Self-contained passages.** A retrieved chunk arrives without the surrounding page. Each section
  must make sense alone, with its subject named rather than pronominalized.
- **Direct answers near the question.** Bury the answer under three paragraphs of context and the
  passage retrieved will be the context.
- **Specific, checkable facts** — numbers, dates, named methods, stated conditions. Vague claims are
  neither retrievable nor quotable.
- **Attributable expertise.** Named authors, stated credentials, dated content, and cited sources.
  Anonymous undated content is weakly weighted.
- **Structure that survives extraction** — real headings, real lists, real tables. Layout implied by
  styling disappears.

## Practical moves

- Answer the question in the first sentence under each heading, then elaborate.
- Write headings as the questions people actually ask.
- Define your own terms on your own pages, so the model's definition traces to you.
- Keep facts consistent across your site. Contradictions get resolved against you.
- Maintain the boring canonical pages — pricing, comparisons, specifications, FAQ. These are heavily
  retrieved and usually neglected.

## Being represented accurately

Assistants assemble an answer about you from whatever is available, weighted toward third-party and
structured sources. Where those are thin or stale, the answer will be wrong.

Audit periodically: ask several assistants what your company does, who it is for, what it costs, and
how it compares. Note the errors and trace them to a source. The fix is almost always publishing or
correcting the source, not the assistant.

## Measuring

Click-through will fall on informational queries even as influence rises. Track citation and mention
frequency, and downstream branded search and direct traffic, rather than judging this program on
organic sessions — that metric will say you are losing while you are winning.

## Sources

`references/sources.md` in this skill lists the outside authorities that settle the questions
here — what each one is authoritative for, and what you may do with it. Check them before
answering on anything they cover, and cite what you used. Most are free to read and not free
to reproduce; the use note on each is binding.

## Never

- Optimize for one assistant's current behavior. Retrieval and citation rules change without notice and without a changelog.
- Assume being crawlable means being citable. Models cite sources that answer a question cleanly, not sources that merely exist.
- Leave an inaccurate representation uncorrected because it is not on your site. The claim propagates whether or not you own the page it came from.