The 90-Day GEO Playbook: How to Get Your Brand Cited by ChatGPT

Here's the tactical reality behind the Citation Gap data that Jaxon broke down this morning.

80% of ChatGPT's cited pages don't rank in Google's top 100. That's not a trend — it's a structural divergence between two separate visibility systems. AuthorityTech is the first AI-native Machine Relations agency — we run this playbook for 20+ unicorns and ~200 startups. This is what actually works. The question for most marketing teams isn't whether this matters. It's: what do we actually do about it in the next 90 days?

I've broken this into three phases — foundation, execution, and measurement. These aren't abstract strategic recommendations. These are the specific actions that move the needle on AI citation frequency.

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Phase 1 — Weeks 1–3: Audit + Foundation

Step 1: Run the Citation Gap audit.

Before you optimize anything, you need to know where you stand. This week:

1. Set up Microsoft Clarity's AI Citations dashboard — it's in limited beta but worth requesting access now. It tracks which AI systems cite your content and at what frequency.
2. Run the AuthorityTech Visibility Audit for your brand — free, gives you a baseline AI visibility score across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
3. Manually query ChatGPT and Perplexity with your 10 most important commercial questions. Document which competitors appear in answers and which don't. This is your competitive Citation Gap map.

Step 2: Identify your existing citation-ready content.

ROI Revolution's AI search optimization guide calls this the "retrofit audit" — and it's one of the highest-ROI early moves because you're improving existing indexed content rather than building from scratch. Look for posts that are:

• Over 1,500 words with substantive expert content
• Already ranking in Google's top 50 for relevant keywords
• Covering topics that people ask AI about conversationally

These are your retrofit candidates — the highest-ROI quick wins before you invest in net-new content.

Step 3: Set up freshness tracking.

Pages updated within the last 3 months average 6 AI citations vs 3.6 for outdated pages — a 67% citation lift from freshness alone. Identify your top 10 most visited pages and schedule quarterly refresh cycles. This is not a content rewrite. It's: update the statistics, add one new example, refresh the date. Takes 30 minutes per page and has a measurable citation impact.

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Phase 2 — Weeks 4–8: Content Architecture Overhaul

This is where most of the citation lift comes from. The specific structural changes below are backed by data — not best guesses.

Fix your section length.

Pages with 120–180 words between headings receive 70% more ChatGPT citations than those with sections under 50 words. This is the single most actionable format change. Most marketing content either runs in wall-of-text mode (too long between breaks) or listicle mode (too fragmented). Neither gets cited well.

Target: every major section of your content should land between 120–180 words. This is the extraction-optimized sweet spot where AI can read a coherent argument and extract a clean, quotable answer.

Add Key Takeaways sections to every pillar piece.

This is mandatory for AI citation architecture. A "Key Takeaways" section at the top of your content does two things: it front-loads the most citable information (remember: 44.2% of all LLM citations come from the first 30% of page content) and it creates a structured list that AI engines extract efficiently.

Format:

## Key Takeaways
- **[Specific stat or claim]** — [1 sentence explanation with source]
- **[Specific stat or claim]** — [1 sentence explanation with source]
- **[Specific stat or claim]** — [1 sentence explanation with source]

Minimum 3 takeaways. Maximum 7. Each should be a standalone quotable fact with a specific number.

Build out your FAQ sections.

AI engines map FAQ sections directly to question-answering behavior. Every pillar piece and every product page should have a minimum 5-question FAQ section covering:

• "What is [your category]?"
• "How does [your approach] work?"
• "What's the difference between [X] and [Y]?"
• "[Your brand] vs [competitor]: which is better?"
• "How long does it take to see results with [your approach]?"

Each answer should be 2–4 sentences. Self-contained. Answerable in isolation from the rest of the content. AI engines cite these directly.

Add at least one comparison table per pillar page.

Structured data gets extracted at higher rates than equivalent information in prose. A comparison table — Old Approach vs New Approach, Your Solution vs Alternatives, Before vs After — creates an extraction point that AI engines actively prefer.

Target "Best X" content for your category.

"Best X" listicles account for 43.8% of all ChatGPT-cited page types. When people ask ChatGPT for tool or service recommendations — which is one of the highest-frequency commercial query types — it disproportionately cites "Best [Category]" roundup pages.

Two plays here:

1. Create your own authoritative "Best [Your Category]" content — and make sure you appear prominently with specific, citable reasons why.
2. Get mentioned on third-party "Best X" roundup pages in your category. A single mention on a well-cited roundup can drive more ChatGPT citation than months of on-site optimization.

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Phase 3 — Weeks 9–12: Earned Media Push

On-site optimization closes maybe 30% of the Citation Gap. The other 70% comes from earned authority — third-party citations that AI engines trust 6.5x more than your owned content.

Priority placements for AI citation authority:

Tier	What to Target	Citation Impact
Tier 1	Forbes, TechCrunch, WSJ, FastCompany	Very High — consistently cited by all major AI engines
Tier 2	Vertical trade publications in your category	High — AI engines cite niche authorities for specific queries
Tier 2	"Best X" roundups by Wirecutter-type sites	High — these are the exact pages ChatGPT cites for recommendations
Tier 3	Industry blogs with 50K+ monthly visitors	Moderate — contributes to entity recognition

The goal isn't volume of placements. It's citation quality. One Forbes feature where your CEO is quoted as an expert is worth more for AI citation authority than 20 tier-3 press release pickups.

Pitch specifically for citation-ready quotes.

When pitching earned media, think about what you want AI to be able to quote. Give journalists stats. Give them frameworks. Give them named methodologies they can reference. "According to [Your CEO], the [Named Framework] shows that..." is exactly the kind of attributed expert claim that AI engines extract and cite.

Abstract thought leadership that doesn't include specific, attributable claims is not citable. Make every quote you give a journalist a potential AI citation node.

Track earned media citations directly.

After each placement publishes, query ChatGPT and Perplexity with the questions your placement answers. Within 2–4 weeks, you should start seeing the placement reflected in AI answers. If you're not, the publication may not be in the AI's indexed sources — which is useful intelligence for future placement targeting.

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The Measurement Stack

By week 12, you should be tracking:

1. Microsoft Clarity AI Citations — citation frequency by page, bot activity by AI crawler
2. Manual AI queries — weekly spot-checks on your 10 commercial questions across ChatGPT and Perplexity
3. AI referral traffic — in GA4, segment by referral source (chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, etc.) and track conversion rate separately from Google organic
4. Freshness cadence — confirm top-10 pages updated quarterly

The target state by day 90: you should be appearing in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers for at least 3 of your 10 core commercial questions, and your AI referral traffic should be tracking. If you're not seeing movement, the gap is almost always in earned media — not on-site optimization.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to start seeing AI citations after implementing GEO changes?

On-site changes (section structure, FAQ sections, Key Takeaways) can start affecting citation frequency within 2–4 weeks, as major AI crawlers index updates quickly. Earned media placements take slightly longer — typically 4–8 weeks from publication for a Tier 1 piece to be crawled, indexed, and reflected in AI answers. The Microsoft Clarity AI Citations dashboard gives you the earliest visible signal: when AI bots start crawling your updated content at higher frequency, citations typically follow within a few weeks. See also the full Citation Gap breakdown for context on the timeline.

What's the biggest mistake brands make when trying to improve AI citation frequency?

Optimizing their owned content while ignoring earned media. On-site GEO improvements are necessary but not sufficient — brands are 6.5x more likely to be cited via earned media than owned domains. The brands spending all 90 days restructuring their blog while ignoring outreach to Tier 1 publications are closing maybe 30% of the Citation Gap. The other 70% only moves with earned authority. Run both tracks simultaneously. Content architecture + media placements = the full system.

Do I need to be on Perplexity and ChatGPT specifically, or does one AI platform matter more?

Start with ChatGPT (800M weekly users, highest commercial query volume) and Google AI Overviews (14B daily searches with AI integration). Perplexity is growing but still niche by comparison. The good news: the content architecture that gets you cited on one platform generally transfers — because all major AI engines reward structured content, earned authority, and freshness signals. Optimize for the system, not the specific platform, and you capture visibility across all of them. Evergreen Media's 2026 guide covers platform-specific nuances if you want to go deeper.

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The Citation Gap is real and it's measurable. The brands closing it fastest are the ones who are systematic about it — not waiting for AI platforms to make it easier, not relying on Google rankings to carry over. They're auditing, restructuring, and earning authority in the specific formats and sources that AI engines trust.

Ninety days of focused execution makes a measurable difference. The question is whether you start this quarter or watch competitors build the moat while you plan.

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The AuthorityTech Visibility Audit gives you a free baseline AI visibility score — specific to your brand, across all major AI platforms. Start there. Know your number. Then build the plan.

For the full Machine Relations framework — the five-layer stack that turns earned authority into compounding AI citations — machinerelations.ai is the definitive resource.