Implications for your strategy
The most accessible optimizations are also the highest impact. Configuring robots.txt to allow AI bots, implementing semantic HTML, and adding basic Schema.org are changes most sites can make without restructuring their content. Our data shows that these three factors combined explain most of the difference between sites that are cited by AI assistants and those that are not.
Heading hierarchy and content structure are the next level of optimization. A document with logical headings and well-delimited sections allows RAG systems to extract relevant fragments without losing context, which increases the probability of accurate citations and correct attribution.