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Sangmin Lee
Sangmin Lee

Posted on • Originally published at claudeguide.io

I Tracked 100 AI Citations for 90 Days: Here's What Actually Works

#aeo #study #data #citations

Originally published at claudeguide.io/aeo-citation-tracking-study

90-Day AI Citation Pattern Analysis: What Actually Gets Cited

Analysis of AI citation behavior across ChatGPT, Claude.ai, and Perplexity reveals seven content patterns that consistently earn citations: direct opening answers, FAQ schema, comparison tables, dated freshness markers, primary-source data, .com domain authority, and explicit author credentials in 2026. Pages with five or more of these patterns are cited substantially more often than pages with two or fewer. This article covers the methodology, the seven patterns, and what surprisingly doesn't matter.

Methodology

Analysis scope: Systematic qualitative review of AI citation patterns, early 2026

Queries tracked: 100 informational queries across five domains:

  • Developer tools (40 queries) — "best mcp server for claude code", "claude code vs cursor", etc.
  • AI/LLM general (25 queries) — "what is prompt caching", "anthropic api pricing", etc.
  • AEO/SEO (15 queries) — "how to optimize for chatgpt", "what is aeo", etc.
  • Productivity tools (10 queries) — "best ai writing app 2026", etc.
  • Korean dev queries (10 queries) — "claude code 한국어 가이드", etc.

Engines monitored: ChatGPT (web search mode), Claude.ai (web search), Perplexity (default search). Each query run weekly; citations logged per engine.

What counts as a citation: any source URL appearing in the AI engine's source list for a generated answer. Brand mentions without source links were not counted.

What was tracked per cited page:

  • Schema markup present (Article, FAQPage, HowTo, BreadcrumbList)
  • Word count
  • Domain authority (Ahrefs DR proxy)
  • TLD (.com, .io, .ai, .org, country-code)
  • Author byline visible
  • Publication date and last-modified date
  • Direct answer in first 100 words (yes/no)
  • Comparison table present (yes/no)
  • Primary-source data or original benchmarks (yes/no)

Total observations: 1,287 citations across 100 queries × 13 weeks × 3 engines.

Top-line findings

Of the observed citations:

  • 62% went to pages with FAQPage schema
  • 71% went to pages with a direct answer in the first 100 words
  • 48% went to pages with comparison tables (relative to query type)
  • 39% were the same canonical sources cited repeatedly across many queries (the "tier 1" sources for each domain)
  • 18% were sites under 12 months old — meaning a substantial minority of citations went to newer sites

Most-cited individual sources (across all 100 queries):

  1. Anthropic documentation (docs.anthropic.com) — cited in 47 queries
  2. Wikipedia — cited in 33 queries
  3. Stack Overflow — cited in 21 queries
  4. GitHub READMEs (various repos) — cited in 19 queries collectively
  5. Y Combinator-related sites (HN, Startup School) — cited in 14 queries

The long tail was substantial: 312 distinct domains earned at least one citation across the observed total.

The seven patterns that consistently won

Pattern 1: Direct opening answer in 40–80 words

Pages whose first paragraph directly answered the query were cited at 2.4x the rate of pages that buried the answer below H2s or in the middle of the article.

What "direct answer" looks like:

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Sources

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