Why AI is not citing you

Absence from AI answers has a small number of root causes, and they are checkable in order. Work down this list and you end with a fix, not a hunch.

Step 1: Classify the absence

Open the gap diagnosis and find the prompt. The gap class tells you which of the three worlds you are in:

1. Absent: the AI never surfaces you for this prompt
2. Mentioned, not cited: the AI knows you, but links other pages
3. Inconsistently cited: you appear sometimes, which makes this a durability problem

Step 2: Audit the page

Run the citability audit for the prompt. It compares your page with the competitor's winning page and reports the content reasons: missing direct answers, missing concepts the AI researches, weak answer shape, blocked crawlers, or slow response. If your passage matches the competitor's, the audit points off-page: the sources the AI trusts do not feature you.

Step 3: Fix in the order that works

1. Publish proof the AI cannot generate: original data, project results with real numbers, tested comparisons, customer-question FAQs, local specifics
2. Make the entity unambiguous: clear about and service pages, consistent name and address everywhere, profiles on the platforms the AI already cites
3. Support with schema: valid Organization, Service and FAQ markup that matches visible content; schema never rescues weak content
4. Target buying-intent prompts: one citation on "best X for Y" beats volume on "what is X"

Deprioritize the folklore: llms.txt files and mass-produced shallow answer pages do not move citations.

Step 4: Measure

Re-run the topic and watch the prompt in the reports rollup. Drift shows when the answer starts moving; the audit can be repeated against the same prompt after changes.