AI engines quote content that gives them something checkable to repeat: a statistic with a source, a quotation from a named person, a comparison laid out in a table, a one-sentence definition, a direct answer under a question. They skip content that only asserts and pages that bury the answer under an introduction. The content formats AI engines actually quote are the ones built for extraction, and most work just as well on a third-party site as on your own.
That is the finding of the best-known peer-reviewed study on the subject, and later citation-tracking studies agree. The Princeton and IIT Delhi paper that coined the term GEO (generative engine optimization, the practice of making content more likely to be used in AI-generated answers) tested nine ways to rewrite a page. Adding statistics, adding quotations and citing sources were the clear winners, each lifting visibility by up to 40 percent. Adding keywords did not help. This post goes through each format, why engines quote it, and where it belongs.
AI engines quote the formats that are easiest to lift and verify, so write for extraction: lead with the answer, back it with a sourced number or a named quote, structure comparisons as tables, and keep the page current.
What did the Princeton GEO study actually find?
The paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization by Aggarwal, Murahari and colleagues, was presented at KDD 2024. The team built a benchmark of 10,000 queries, ran each source page through nine rewriting methods and measured how much of the generated answer drew on the rewritten page. Three methods stood out: citing credible sources inside the text, adding statements attributed to named people or organizations, and replacing qualitative claims with numbers.
Each lifted visibility by roughly 30 to 40 percent over the untouched page on the paper’s main word-count measure. Edits for fluency and readability gave smaller gains of 15 to 30 percent, and a more persuasive, authoritative tone gave no significant improvement. Keyword stuffing, the one method lifted straight from old search tactics, performed no better than the baseline and in some measures worse. The lift was also largest for pages not already ranking first. Citing sources raised visibility for the fifth-ranked page by 115 percent, while the top-ranked page lost ground on average.
The reason is simple. A language model assembling an answer looks for passages it can state with confidence. A sentence with a number and a source reads as evidence. A sentence with an adjective reads as opinion. Engines quote evidence.
Which content formats do AI engines quote most often?
Citation-tracking studies since point the same way, and they add a second dimension: where the page lives. Profound’s 2026 analysis of 11.8 billion citations found brand websites account for 57 percent of AI citations globally, so about 43 percent go to third-party pages such as media, communities and institutions. On ChatGPT the brand share is 47 percent, so over half of its citations come from pages the brand does not control. Format matters on both sides of that split.
| Format | Why engines quote it | Example | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sourced statistic | A number with a source is self-verifying and easy to restate | “Average turnaround was 11 days across our last 200 orders” | Your site and third-party |
| Named quotation | Attribution gives the model a safe way to make a claim | A line from your founder in a trade publication | Mostly third-party |
| Comparison table | Rows and columns map directly to “X vs Y” and “best for” questions | Tool A vs Tool B on price, features, support | Third-party first, then your site |
| Best-of listicle | Answers “what are the best…” in the shape the engine needs | “10 best payroll tools for small manufacturers” | Third-party |
| Definition paragraph | One or two sentences that answer “what is X” exactly | The first paragraph of a glossary or guide page | Your site |
| FAQ with short answers | Question and answer pairs match how prompts are phrased | 40 to 90 word answers under each question | Your site |
| Original data or survey | Nobody else has the number, so every citation points to you | An annual benchmark report with methodology | Your site, picked up by third-party |
Two patterns run through the table. First, every format carries evidence (statistic, quotation, data) or structure (table, list, FAQ), and both reduce the work of turning a page into an answer. Second, the formats split by location. Definitions and FAQs belong on your own site. Comparisons, best-of lists and expert quotations are more credible, and more cited, when someone else publishes them. A brand comparing itself to competitors on its own site is arguing its own case; the same comparison in a trade publication is a reference.
Why do comparison tables and listicles get cited so heavily?
Because a large share of commercial prompts are comparison prompts. “Best CRM for a ten-person agency.” “Which industrial polymer supplier ships to the EU.” “Cheapest business account for a sole trader.” Each asks the engine to rank or compare, and a page that has already done so is the shortest path to an answer. A table gives the model a clean structure to read; a numbered list gives it a ready-made order of recommendation.
This is why “best of” listicles punch above their weight, a pattern covered in why listicles drive AI citations. It is also why the guest posts we write for clients are almost never “five tips” articles. They are comparisons, buyer’s guides with a table, and data pieces that put a number in front of a trade audience. Those formats earn the citation. Generic advice on the same site does not.
How much does freshness matter?
More than most teams expect. Ahrefs analyzed 17 million citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini and found cited pages were on average 25.7 percent fresher by publish date than pages in Google’s organic results. By last-updated date the gap was smaller, 13.1 percent. ChatGPT showed the strongest preference for fresh pages, and Google’s AI Overviews showed none.
Seer Interactive’s 2026 recency study of 47,097 citations across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity points the same way. Three in four cited pages had been updated within the last year. On the pages where both dates could be read, 72 percent had been updated in the last year but only 42 percent had been published in it. Freshness mostly comes from maintenance. A two-year-old comparison with current prices and a visible “updated” date is competitive. The same page with 2024 pricing is not.
The practical rule: any page you want quoted carries a visible last-updated date, and every statistic, price and product name on it gets checked twice a year.
How do you make an existing page quotable?
You do not need to rewrite the site. Take the ten pages that matter most for revenue and apply the Princeton findings in order of effort.
- Put the answer in the first two sentences. A pricing page states a price or range first. A process page says how long it takes and what it costs.
- Replace one adjective per section with a number and a source. “Fast turnaround” becomes your real figure, such as “a median of 9 days across 2025 orders.” “Trusted by manufacturers” becomes a count of manufacturing clients and a named one.
- Add a named quotation. A sentence from your head of product, a customer or an outside expert, attributed by name and role.
- Turn any comparison into a table. Prose comparisons get lost. A table with criteria down the side and options across the top gets lifted whole.
- Add four to six FAQ items with self-contained answers. Each answers its question in 40 to 90 words without relying on the paragraph above it, marked up with FAQPage structured data.
- Date the page and schedule a review. Visible updated date, calendar reminder every six months.
Then do the same off your site. Pitch a comparison or a data piece to a trade publication in your industry, with the table and statistics already built. The format that earns a citation on your domain earns one on theirs too, and theirs carries more weight on comparison prompts where your own page would look self-serving. Our guide to AEO and GEO covers how to split the work between on-site and off-site, and how to measure your brand’s AI visibility covers how to tell whether it worked.
How Model Marketing helps
We work both sides of the Profound split. Our AEO/GEO service starts with a two-week audit of the prompts your buyers type and which pages get quoted, then rewrites your highest-value pages into the formats above. Scope and price are set after the audit, and movement usually shows within 30 to 60 days.
The off-site half runs through our link building and digital PR programs. Our nine full-time writers produce guest posts as comparisons, buyer’s guides and data pieces and place them on sites that pass a nine-point vetting bar, the ninth check being how often the site is already cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Mode. In engagements we track, brands we have placed in third-party articles, guest posts and listicles have seen AI citations rise by roughly 70 to 80 percent on the prompts where those articles are cited.
Guest posts start at $250 on DR 50 to 69 sites and data-led PR campaigns at $8,000, billed per live unit with no retainer. Full rates are on the pricing page. To see where you stand first, the free LLM visibility checker shows which engines mention your brand today.