21 Leaders Share What It Takes to Earn AI Search Citations

We asked members of the Inc. Leadership Forum how they succeeded in getting AI Overview or other GEO citations, and how much work was involved. Here, 21 of them share their insights and details on what it took, and how long, to start showing up in AI search as an authoritative or top choice in their field.

1. Produce original research

Our success with AI citations comes down to two things: building an excellent library of content and investing in public relations long before the current GEO frenzy. We’ve done PR since day one and have been consistently earning mentions and links from credible publications. It took a lot of work, especially in the beginning. The biggest boost came when we started producing original research. Our studies now get cited regularly by major media outlets and AI engines. It was a long-term investment. But that’s also the point: You can’t manufacture authority overnight. By the time AI search arrived, we’d already spent years building the signals it looks for. — Liviu Tanase, ZeroBounce

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2. Move the needle with editorial

We rewrote the site with Claude, then structured it in Yoast: FAQ and article schema, tighter title tags, and an internal linking map that ties over 200 podcast episodes to our solution pages. What moved the needle was editorial, not technical: answering one question per page in the first two sentences, in the words a client would actually use, with a named expert behind the claim. It took roughly eight weeks, most of it writing. Google’s May 2026 AI optimization guidance is explicit that there is no schema trick and no llms.txt shortcut; original expertise is the signal. Verify in Google Search Console’s generative AI report, not a vendor’s dashboard. — Maureen Metcalf, Innovative Leadership Institute

3. The person asking the question changes the answer

A brand consultancy client used our AiRR Score as a published criterion for their 2026 ratings across several industries. What we learned from that is that more than the brand itself, it’s the prompt and the person asking it that make the biggest difference. Asking the same question about the same brand on the same large language model can give totally different answers depending on which buyer persona is asking. Most companies optimize for the generic answer instead. — Steven Perlman, Syfter

4. Publish with frequency and topical consistency

Published editorial content on high-authority platforms is the fastest path to AI Overview citations. When our clients publish consistent thought leadership on business magazines, those articles start appearing in AI-generated search summaries within weeks. The key is publishing frequency and topical consistency. One article does nothing. Twelve articles per year on the same expertise area trains the algorithm to recognize you as a source. The work is in the system, not in any single piece. — Kevin Leyes, Leyes

5. Team member dedicated to optimization

Ensuring our brand is well represented in AI models is a fundamental part of our marketing strategy. We have a member of our team who is dedicated to optimizing our website and content for AEO, GEO, and SEO. This includes work like enhancing our schema markup, rewriting our web pages to be easily scannable, and leaning on our original research reports and thought leadership content to earn citations. We’ve already seen promising early results from our efforts, and multiple new leads are telling us they found us via AI recommendations. — Tom McCarty, OrgChart

6. Through verified customer reviews

For us the main way we’ve improved our AI Overview is through customer reviews, sites like G2 that gather verified customer feedback, indexed by software, company size, and industry. This has resulted in some detailed AI Overviews and helped result in getting more customers due to that trust being established. — Jamie Royce, MindCloud

7. Consistency matters

Honestly? I haven’t done anything deliberate. No schema markup, no citation campaign, nothing. If we’re showing up in AI Overviews, my best guess is it’s a byproduct of consistency: the same business info everywhere, real customer reviews, and years of just being clear about what we do. I found out it was happening from a customer who mentioned it, not from any dashboard. If there’s a lesson in there, it’s that consistency beats chasing algorithms. — Andréa Vieira, nailsaloon

8. Fix the facts before writing more content

I audited every profile with my name on it: Crunchbase, LinkedIn, IMDb, Wikidata, and six press bios. Three had different “years of experience” numbers. One listed my company’s founding year as 2005 instead of 2010. I fixed each source, then added matching schema markup connecting all 18 profiles back to my own site. It took three weeks. AI systems cross-check facts across sources before citing them. Mine didn’t match, so I fixed the mismatch instead of writing more content. — Hasan Saleem, DSS MEDIA

9. Hire an agency to win at GEO

Truthfully, it has been difficult. I’ve hired an agency to do it so we can win some of the GEO wars, since GEO is the new SEO. We are nine months into it and we are just now starting to see progress on how frequently we show up in that top three of GEO references. I will continue to invest in GEO as I believe it is a path for long-term success, but if you are looking at this in terms of quick wins, then this is not the place to invest. — Dan Cosgrove, Better Benefits USA

10. Publish authoritative data over generic posts

Winning AI Overview citations wasn’t about chasing a new trend for us. It required refactoring our content around authority and clear data structure. We audited our footprint to ensure our brand entity data was crystal clear, then focused on publishing original, first-party insights rather than generic advice. The legwork, nearly six months of technical optimization, schema cleanup, and restructuring content into direct answers, was substantial. AI engines don’t summarize fluff. They pull from clear, definitive sources. If you want citations, stop publishing generic posts and start publishing authoritative data. — Adam Povlitz, Anago Cleaning Systems

11. Put yourself forward as an expert

Two tactics have been integral for our AI visibility. First, we cleaned up what we can control. After an audit of how we showed up online, we made sure every detail on our website and social accounts was current, so models could crawl and recognize our work accurately. This is easy to execute because it’s a brand-owned component. The slow part is third-party authority. We invest in public relations built on our brand assets, like beneficiary stories and original research. I also put myself forward as an expert on young women in the workforce, landing me in outlets like Real Simple and Money.com, which models cite when capturing who we are. — Christie Garton, 1,000 Dreams Fund

12. Prioritize LLM-favored publications and platforms

We’ve optimized our content strategies, tested prompts and keyword queries using our brand names, and tracked how our brand is represented by AI tools. Large language models, such as ChatGPT, already pick up our website name and individual pages for some industry-related searches. GEO, however, requires more than content optimization alone. It requires the combined efforts of public relations, communications, content marketing, and SEO teams. To succeed, you should prioritize publications and platforms that are consumed by LLMs and that have relationships or partnerships with AI companies. This can increase the chances of your brand being discovered and cited by AI. — Michael Podolsky, PissedConsumer.com

13. Create and un-gate value-added assets

In this aspect, consistency matters a lot. Our success came from improving our domain authority, publishing useful content regularly, and making value-added assets like case studies ungated so search engines and AI systems can access them. We also built our presence across G2, Reddit, and industry and listing sites, while creating original blogs and content around the questions our customers ask. Over time, that improved our organic traffic and helped build a stronger body of information around the problems we solve. — Shiva Dhawan, Attentive.ai

14. Track and target sources that drive AI visibility

We’ve found that succeeding with AI Overviews and GEO citations isn’t about chasing algorithms. It’s about tracking what AI actually reads. For example, instead of chasing “tips and tricks”—which may shift rapidly with new models—we focus on securing client placements in the publications we know these AI models pull from. The work isn’t different than traditional media relations—it’s just tweaking our strategy with AI visibility in mind, thinking of large language models as one audience, not the audience. We also track which trusted sources drive AI visibility for specific topics, ensuring our clients are where engines look to synthesize their answers. — Jennifer Acree, JSA+Partners

15. Be intentional about structuring your website and content

We’re actively working on this rather than claiming we’ve completely figured it out. We’ve spent years creating useful, specific content around the work we perform. More recently, we’ve become much more intentional about structuring our website and content for both traditional search and AI-driven discovery. The work is meaningful: cleaning up pages, improving technical SEO, publishing authoritative content, and making sure our expertise is clearly represented online. GEO feels less like a one-time optimization and more like the next evolution of SEO. — Fabien Reille, Steady Solutions

16. Align schema markup with FAQ content

We started intentionally working on AEO over a year ago. We created content on our website plus FAQs specifically geared toward the questions and searches our ideal clients would ask. We then set up schema markup so Google and AI engines can more clearly understand what each page is about and identify the answers and information we want them to surface. It’s usually an afternoon of work to create and then ongoing monitoring. — Brandy Zachary, DC, The Dr Z Functional Medicine Academy

17. Do deep research first

For a local home services provider in the Midwest, I was able to get them into the AI Overviews for a targeted buyer response within three days that produced high-quality leads in less than 10 days. For an international luxury car rental company, the process took just over a month. The biggest part of the work is in the deep research to identify the most useful opportunities for framing the proper signals the AI Overviews and GEO citations will find acceptable to share with a user, more than the execution. — Rob Tillman, UNIGNORABLE

18. Website analysis and ongoing rework

We are seeing some success in AI Overview and other GEO citations following a significant analysis and ongoing rework of our website. This rework included updating meta tags to match schema requirements for machine readability (see schema.org), adding FAQs reflecting common AI searches and prompts related to services we offer, and editing content to match best practice models for machine readability (hopefully without harming human readability). This is an ongoing process in which we are working on both evergreen pages, landing pages, and transient content, such as blog posts. — Allen Falcon, Cumulus Global

19. Become a source worth citing

We’ve had success earning AI Overview and GEO citations by focusing less on “gaming” AI and more on becoming a source worth citing. That means publishing original, authoritative content, answering very specific questions, building strong topical authority, and making sure our brands have credibility signals across the web. Customer reviews, local/geo signals, expert authorship, and consistent mentions also matter. It’s definitely not an overnight win. Some of this authority took years to build but we’ve found that the fundamentals of great SEO still apply. GEO is really an evolution of SEO, not a replacement for it. — Anna Anisin, AI Loves Data

20. Maintain a professional Google Business Profile listing

Your SEO strategy must continue to adapt and expand with each new element that search engines like Google roll out, so that you rank in the AI Overviews when questions are asked about your type of business. It is also important to have a professional Google Business Profile listing and, rather than just running a Google Ads campaign, become a Google Guaranteed business for additional clout in the search results. — Ron Jumper, Bath Makeover of Arkansas

21. Through the Inc. Leadership Forum