Brand and citation signals for AI search

What brand and citation signals are

When someone asks an AI tool “Which garden centre near Leeds delivers plants?”, the answer names a few businesses and, in tools that search the web, links to a few pages. Being named is a brand signal: the tool recognised your business as an answer. Being linked is a citation: the tool used one of your pages as a source.

Neither comes from one setting on your site. AI tools build their picture of a business from many places: your own pages, your profiles, directories, reviews, news, forums and other sites that mention you. The clearer and more consistent that picture is, the easier it is for a tool to recognise you and to trust what your pages say.

Step 1: see what AI tools say today

Before changing anything, find out where you stand. Write ten questions a new customer might ask, the kind where your business should be one of the answers. Mix general ones (“best walking boots for wide feet”) with local ones and comparisons.

1. Ask each question in several tools. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers can all give different results. Use a fresh chat each time, so earlier questions don’t steer the answer.
2. Note who is named. Are you named? Which competitors are? Is what the tool says about you correct: your location, your products, your prices?
3. Note which pages are cited. Tools that search the web show their sources. Write down the sites they cite most. These are the places your topic is discussed, and where a mention of you would count.
4. Repeat on a schedule. Answers change from week to week and from person to person. One check is a snapshot. The same questions asked every week show a trend.

Step 2: let AI search tools read your site

AI tools can only cite pages they can fetch. Each company publishes the names of its crawlers, and most now separate the crawler that searches the web to answer questions from the one that collects pages to train models. You can allow one and block the other.

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

This is a business choice, not a technical one. Blocking search crawlers keeps your pages out of those tools’ answers. Blocking training crawlers does not, but some site owners prefer it. Google-Extended controls use for Google’s Gemini models; it does not remove your pages from Google Search or AI Overviews, which use the normal Googlebot. Our guide to fixing robots.txt explains the file itself.

Step 3: tell one consistent story

AI tools join facts from many sources. If your site says “Example Garden Supplies Ltd”, your map listing says “Example Gardens” and a directory has your old address, the tool may treat them as different businesses, or describe you wrongly.

• Use one name, one address, one phone number and one short description everywhere: site, map listings, social profiles, directories.
• Mark up your business details on your home page and link your official profiles with sameAs. See structured data and author and entity signals.
• Fix wrong details where you find them. Old directory entries and closed branches are common sources of mistakes.
• If your business meets Wikidata’s notability rules, a correct item there helps tools connect the facts. Don’t create one just for search; editing your own item is a conflict of interest to declare openly.

Step 4: be mentioned where your topic is discussed

Go back to the list of sites the AI tools cited. Those are your targets. A mention on a page AI tools already trust for your topic is worth more than dozens of mentions on pages nobody reads.

• Industry lists and comparisons. “Best of” articles and buyer’s guides are cited often. Ask to be considered, and give the writer real facts to check.
• Local and trade press. News about something you did, such as an opening, a result or useful data, earns mentions that last.
• Directories and associations that people in your trade really use.
• Reviews. Ask real customers to review you on the platforms your customers read. Never buy or invent reviews.
• Forums and communities. Answer questions helpfully where your customers ask them, as yourself, and say who you are. Advertising disguised as advice does harm.

When a site mentions you without a link, a polite note asking for one is fair. Our guide to earning quality links covers how.

Step 5: make your own pages worth citing

Mentions bring tools to your name; your pages decide whether they cite you. Look again at the pages the tools cited for your questions. What do they have in common? Usually a clear answer near the top, a date, a named author or source, and facts that are hard to find elsewhere.

• Publish what only you know. Your own prices, measurements, test results, survey answers or before-and-after photos. Original facts are what other pages, and AI tools, quote.
• Answer questions directly. Put the answer under a clear question heading. See answer-focused sections.
• Name your sources and your people. Who wrote this, what do they know, where do the figures come from?
• Keep key pages current. An “about” page, a prices page or a guide with this year’s date is a safer source than one last touched years ago.

Then go back to your ten questions every week. Progress is slow and uneven: one week you are named in two tools, the next in one. Look at the trend over months, alongside enquiries and sales, not at any single answer.