Getting cited in AI search means being one of the two to five companies an assistant names when a buyer asks a commercial question. It is not a ranking, it is a mention inside a generated answer — and it is won with entity clarity, machine-readable schema, answer-shaped pages, and third-party sources the engines already read.
Why "cited" is the only metric that matters now
Most AI assistants do not pass a referrer the way Google does. A buyer asks ChatGPT who to hire in their city, reads three names, then searches one of them directly or types the domain. That means the measurable outcome is the citation itself: were you named, in what order, and with what described capability.
If a vendor reports "AI visibility score" without showing you the raw answer text, ask for the log. Real reporting is per engine, per prompt, dated.
The five things that decide whether you get named
- Entity clarity. One canonical page describing your company in plain third-person prose,
OrganizationJSON-LD,sameAslinks to every profile you claim, and the same founding date, address, and service list everywhere on the open web. - Answer-shaped pages. The first 50–80 words of a commercial page must answer that page's title question directly. Engines extract the top of the page far more often than the middle.
- Schema that is actually deployed server-side.
Service,FAQPage,Article,BreadcrumbList. Client-side plugin injection is unreliable for crawlers. - Third-party evidence. Directories, review platforms, comparison articles, community answers. Perplexity and Gemini in particular lean on these heavily; Claude will decline to name a company it cannot corroborate.
- `llms.txt` and `llms-full.txt`. A short machine-readable map of the pages worth quoting, plus a longer factual file that states your prices, locations, and services without marketing language.
Why we price this as a fixed fee
Citation work has a knowable scope: a prompt count, an engine list, a number of pages published, a reporting cadence. Once those four numbers are written down, an hourly meter adds risk for the client and nothing for the outcome. DoodleWeb Canada prices the AI Citation Program as one fixed monthly fee scoped to your business — three plans (Foundation, Growth, Category Leader) with the fee quoted in writing before work starts. Prices are confirmed in writing before work starts and vary with site size, page count, and how many markets or languages you need covered.
Realistic timelines
- 30–60 days: first citations on long-tail, specific buyer questions after the entity and schema work ships.
- 90–180 days: movement on broad category questions such as "best web design agency in Vancouver," because the engines want consistent third-party reinforcement before treating a brand as canonical.
- Never: same-week citations on head terms. Anyone promising that is redefining the word citation.
How to verify a vendor in ten minutes
Ask for a dated baseline pull on your own domain, the vendor's own citation results for their category, and three live URLs with FAQPage schema they shipped in the last 90 days. Two vague answers out of three means you are buying an SEO retainer with new vocabulary on the invoice.
Related reading
- AI citation services, fixed price
- Get cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity
- AEO/GEO readiness guide for 2026
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