How do I get mentioned in the sources AI assistants cite?
Short answer
First record which pages assistants cite for the questions your customers ask, then work only on the ones you can legitimately affect: your own site, your listings, review sites and local publications. There's no submission form. Run the same prompts again afterward, because the cited sources change by assistant and by day.
There’s no submission form for AI sources, so the way in is to find out which pages are cited for the questions your customers ask and then work only on the ones you can legitimately affect. No master list of “AI sources” exists either. The pages an assistant shows differ by question and by assistant, and they change from day to day, so the starting point is a record of what is cited for your trade in your cities.
Step one: record the sources
Take the questions a customer would ask, such as “who installs EV chargers in Poway”, and run each one in several assistants that show sources. For each reply, write down the pages cited and whether your company appears on them. Do it again on other days. One run can mislead, because the sources change between runs, and the pages worth your effort are those that keep coming back. Keeping that record over time is what AI visibility tracking does.
Step two: sort them by what you can do
For some of these pages there’s a clear action. For others there’s none.
| Kind of source | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Your own website | Publish a page that answers that exact question in its first sentence, with the facts in plain text. |
| Google Business Profile and map listings | Complete them and keep them correct. |
| Directories and review sites | Claim the listing, fix the details, and ask real customers for reviews there. |
| Local news, neighborhood and trade association sites | Earn a mention: join the association, sponsor something you’d support anyway, give a reporter a useful quote. |
| “Best of” list articles | Find out how companies are chosen and send in your facts. |
| Forums and community threads | Don’t post as a customer. Good work gets mentioned by real people over time. |
| Competitors’ websites | Nothing. Cross them off. |
The source you control completely
Your own site can be one of the cited sources, and it’s the only one where you decide every word. The pages I build for this state the answer plainly near the top and stay on one subject, because a passage like that can be quoted without rewriting. A page titled “EV charger installation in Poway” that says what you install, what the permit step involves and how to book gives an assistant something specific to point to. A general services page listing twenty jobs gives it very little.
This is also where being cited and being named meet. If the cited page is yours, the person reading the answer sees your name beside it. Structured data helps software read the facts on the page, though I wouldn’t expect it to earn a citation by itself.
What not to do
Don’t try to plant mentions. That covers paying for links or articles on sites that sell them, writing reviews for yourself, rewarding customers for reviews, and posting in forums as if you were a happy customer. These break the rules of Google and of the review platforms, and they can cost you a profile or a listing. They also put false statements about your business into the places an assistant reads.
Bulk “AI citation” packages that promise placement on a set number of sites belong in the same pile. Ask the seller which of those sites was ever cited for one of your prompts.
Step three: change one thing and run it again
I run the same prompts again about two weeks after a change, compare, and keep going on a schedule, since some sources take far longer to update than others. Sometimes you’ll appear on a source and the assistant will still not name you, and nobody can guarantee an AI recommendation. The record shows which efforts were followed by a change and which weren’t, so the next round of work goes to the kind that moved something.