Where AI gets its answers about your category
Also known as: cited domains, source landscape
The handful of sites an engine keeps quoting when someone asks about your market — usually not the vendors' own sites, and usually the fastest route to being named.
Last revised 2026-09-07. Also available as markdown — request this URL with Accept: text/markdown.
In plain English
Run your buying questions and record which domains get cited. The pattern is consistent across categories and surprises most vendors: review sites, forums, marketplaces and a few independent guides do most of the work, while vendor pages appear mainly for questions that name the vendor.
That changes where effort belongs. A month spent being accurately represented on the three sites the engines actually quote often beats a month spent rewriting your own homepage.
How to fix / set it up
- Record the cited domains from your own prompt set and count them.
- Split them into what you control, what you can correct, and what you cannot touch.
- Fix the correctable ones first: outdated directory entries, wrong pricing on comparison sites, an abandoned profile.
- For the ones you cannot touch, make the underlying claim true and easy to verify on your own site — that is what the next person writing about you will read.
The technical detail
Reddit, YouTube transcripts, Wikipedia, industry directories and comparison sites are disproportionately cited because they are structured, frequently updated and read as independent. None of that is something you can replicate on your own domain.
Distinguish citations you can influence directly (your pages, your documentation) from citations you can only influence indirectly (a review site's entry about you, which you can correct and keep current) and those you cannot influence at all (a forum thread).
The indirect ones are usually the highest-leverage and the most neglected: an out-of-date entry on a directory the engines trust is quoted as current fact.
Do not try to manufacture the community citations. Engines and platforms both detect coordinated posting, and the downside — being classified as spam in the sources that matter most — is worse than the absence you were trying to fix.
FAQ
Should I pay for placement on a comparison site?
Judge it as advertising, on its own return. It may well be worth it, but paid placement is not what makes a source citable — independence is, and paying does not buy that.
How do I get onto Wikipedia?
You do not, deliberately; notability is judged by editors and self-promotion is reverted. Independent coverage is the prerequisite, not the reward.