How AI Search Engines Decide Which Brands to Cite

How AI Search Engines Decide Which Brands to Cite

In this episode, Cory Maki breaks down how the five major AI search platforms decide which brands to include in their generated answers. Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot each use different sources and different citation patterns. Most SaaS companies have no strategy for any of them. Cory walks through each platform's source preferences, explains why traditional SEO is necessary but no longer sufficient, and shares the data behind the shift from ranked links to AI-generated answers. He also introduces the ARC Method, a 90-day framework for earning AI search citations. Topics covered: query fan-out, text fragment anchoring, Bing indexation for ChatGPT, Reddit's role in Perplexity, Gemini's split between informational and recommendation queries, Copilot's preference for established publications, and the economics of AI-referred traffic. Cory Maki is an AI search strategist based in Taichung, Taiwan. He is the author of Reddit, AI Overviews and GEO: The SaaS Founder's Playbook for Winning AI Search Visibility, available on Amazon. Learn more at corymaki.com [http://corymaki.com]