When buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overview for the best tool, they get one short list of names. Here's how to get onto it — based on what actually drives the answers, not guesswork.
We ran the real questions buyers ask across 14 SaaS categories through Perplexity and Google AI Overview and looked at where the answers come from. The pattern is consistent enough to act on. Five levers, ranked by leverage.
Every AI recommendation is assembled from a small set of pages. Across our data, these domains were cited most often — a genuine review, listing or mention here is the single highest-leverage move:
Concretely: get listed and reviewed on the big review sites (G2, Capterra, PCMag-style roundups), earn honest coverage in the "best [category] tools" listicles that rank, and get a credible YouTube review. AI models lean on these because they're what humans cite too.
AI pattern-matches the buyer's phrasing to the content it cites. Publish pages that answer the exact questions people ask before choosing — in their words, not your marketing's.
One clear page per real question beats one clever homepage.
"[Competitor] alternative" and honest head-to-head comparisons are catnip for AI answers — they're structured, factual, and exactly what a buyer-intent query maps to. Be honest in them; AI cross-references competitor claims and de-ranks pages that lie.
Reddit was among the most-cited sources in our data, and AI assistants index it heavily. That doesn't mean spam — it means being genuinely present and helpful in the subreddits and threads where your buyers already compare tools. Real recommendations from real users are what get pulled.
Give the model clean facts to lift: a plain "what it is" sentence in your first 100 words, a single clear H1, FAQ and Product structured data, and specific numbers over vague claims. Pages that are easy to parse get cited more.
Start by measuring where you stand. Cited runs the real buyer questions in your category against Perplexity and Google AI Overview and shows exactly where you're named — or not — who wins instead, and the specific sources AI reads from for your category. Free, no account.
Get your free AI-visibility reportSee the full data behind this guide in The State of AI Search Visibility 2026, or browse who AI recommends by category.
Get onto the sources AI reads (review sites, listicles, YouTube, Reddit), publish pages that answer buyers' exact questions, and make yourself easy to extract. Measure first so you know which sources matter in your category.
No fixed timeline — AI answers shift as sources update. New mentions on high-authority sources can surface within weeks. Change the inputs and track weekly.
Yes — SEO ranks you among ten links; AI search returns one short list. Overlapping tactics, different winners and sources, and no page 2.