A 6-part AI search framework to make content more citation worthy

GEO is about more than keywords, website structure or technical tweaks. What matters now is whether AI tools can find, trust and cite a brand’s content.

Lisa Peyton, senior AI marketing strategist and AI for strategic communications professor at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication, said communicators have a direct role in how brands show up in AI-generated answers.

“PR is having a moment right now when it comes to AI,” Peyton said. “We need to be at the table and in the room when we’re talking about AI visibility because more than ever before, credibility is what moves the needle when it comes to AI visibility.”

She developed a citation framework for owned content that should help make brand content easier for AI systems to understand, extract and cite, she said.

The framework includes six pieces:

1. A distinctive point of view: Brands need to say something specific and not publish generic commentary, Peyton said. For example, instead of saying “AI is changing healthcare,” a health system could explain where AI should and should not be used in patient communication. This shows greater authority, she said.
2. An extractable claim upfront: The clearest claim should appear near the top. If a company wants to be cited for its research on employee trust, the article should state the main finding in a direct, clear sentence at the top of the piece.
3. Expertise signals: AI tools look for credibility. Peyton said content should have a clear byline from a credible author. That could be a chief communications officer, a subject matter expert, a researcher or another person with authority on the topic.
4. Topical consistency: One article is not enough. Brands need a “whole canon of content” around the topic they want to be known for, Peyton said. A cybersecurity company, for example, should not publish one post on AI risk and expect to be treated as an authority. “It needs a steady body of useful work,” she said.
5. Citation-friendly structure: This includes plain language, clear headers, FAQs, definitions, examples and scannable sections. Peyton called many of these items “table stakes at this point,” but they’re still important because AI tools need clean, organized information to pull from.
6. AI accessibility: The content must be available to AI systems. Peyton said this is regularly overlooked. “You have to make sure that that site is open, it’s not gated, and they can fetch the information,” she said. Some websites block AI “crawlers” from pulling its content. But this is really to their disadvantage, she said. If AI tools can’t access the page, they may only understand it through outside references.

Beyond this checklist, Peyton said understanding how owned content is cited is only one part of the work. Trust is another key factor.

“The way that AI is deciding if it’s credible and trustworthy is how many other folks are talking about it,” she said.

This is where earned media becomes central, she said. AI systems don’t just look at what a brand says about itself. They look at what journalists, trade outlets, researchers, forums, social platforms and other third-party sources say about the brand or topic.

PR teams need to understand the “source pools” AI tools use for important prompts in their category, Peyton said. For one industry, AI citations may come heavily from trade press. For another, they may come from Reddit, Wikipedia, research reports or aggregator sites, she said.

“We have to understand what sources that platform is pulling from,” she said.

This shift has changed the PR team’s role, Peyton said. Instead of waiting for another team to define AI visibility, communicators can show leaders where credibility is being built.

“Having the answer and being able to say that lets us lead instead of sit behind and wait for marketing or digital marketing or whatever analytics team is currently running the SEO to give us direction,” Peyton said. “I think we really need to lead here.”

She said if 25% of AI citations for a key industry question come from earned media, PR pros can make a case for a better media strategy. If research reports are driving answers, the brand may need stronger data. If community forums are shaping perception, the team may need improved listening and response plans.

“PR owns AI visibility right now,” she said. “We need to come forward. We need to have a point of view, which means that we have to understand it.”

Courtney Blackann is a communications reporter. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at [email protected].