The five-pillar approach we use on every engagement — the same managed work we're doing on our own products in real time. Watch the case study unfold on the demo page.
Citely uses a five-pillar methodology: Wikidata grounding, JSON-LD schema deployment, dedicated comparison pages, authoritative directory listings, and ongoing content and citation work. The structural work compounds over 30–90 days, with the first measurable citation lift typically appearing in 14–21 days.
AI search has changed who customers find when they research a category. The journey now starts inside an LLM — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini — and ends with two or three named brands the model surfaced in its answer. The customer never sees the ten-link result page that traditional SEO targets.
Google's AI Overview now appears above the organic listings in 48% of searches. For nearly half of every search your customer runs, the AI answer is the entire visible result. If your brand isn't in that paragraph, you weren't in the consideration set. Source: Google Search Central data, 2025–2026
The deeper problem is that traditional SEO doesn't move the needle here. Moz's research found that only about 10% of AI citations overlap with Google's top-ranking pages. The work that ranks you on Google does not get you cited by AI. They are parallel disciplines. Source: Moz AI Search Research, 2025
And the citations matter more than the visits. B2B research has consistently shown that AI-referred visitors convert at roughly 23× the rate of traditional search visitors. The traffic is smaller, but the intent is dramatically higher — these are customers who already trust the model's recommendation before they click. Source: Discovered Labs B2B Conversion Study, 2025
Most brands have no visibility into where they appear in AI or what competitors are saying about them. That's the problem Citely was built to fix.
Five distinct workstreams, executed in parallel across every engagement. Each is a separate citation lever — together they compound.
Wikidata is the structured fact database every major LLM treats as ground truth. When ChatGPT or Claude needs to verify a claim about a company — who founded it, what category it belongs to, what its product is called — Wikidata is one of the canonical sources it reaches for.
Citely submits notability-evidenced entries with sourced claims: founder identity, product category, founding date, key personnel, funding history if applicable. Acceptance is realistic at 30–90 days depending on how much external press and citation evidence exists. For newer companies without significant press, founder-first entries often work — the founder's notability anchors the company entry.
This is a slow lever, but it's the highest-trust ground-truth signal LLMs use. Done right, it pays compounding dividends across every model.
Structured data is the fastest single lever for citation lift — measurable within 7–14 days. We deploy schemas across every relevant page of your existing site: Organization on your homepage and about page, Service on your product pages, Product on individual SKUs if applicable, FAQ on documentation and help content, Person on team pages, Article on every long-form post.
We don't just audit whether you have it; we write it, deploy it to your codebase, and validate it through Google's Rich Results test and Schema.org's validator. The work is yours after delivery — you own the code, not us.
Schema is the most under-rated lever in GEO because it's invisible to humans but maximally legible to LLMs. Every model treats well-formed schema as a high-confidence signal about who you are and what you do.
AI assistants get asked for comparisons constantly: "alternatives to X", "best Y for Z industry", "how does A compare to B". These queries pull from pages explicitly structured around comparison and methodology — they're the highest-leverage citation surfaces in AI search.
We write and deploy /alternatives-to-[competitor], /vs-[competitor], and methodology pages on your site, with your branding and your tone. Each page is structured to capture the literal AI-search queries your customers ask before they reach you.
Methodology pages also establish your authority on the underlying problem you solve. LLMs cite expertise; expertise has to be demonstrated, not asserted.
Every external citation surface that LLMs pull from is a leverage point: G2, Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice (the Gartner network), Crunchbase, AlternativeTo, AngelList / Wellfound, Product Hunt, and vertical-specific directories matched to your industry.
We create, optimize, and maintain these listings as part of the engagement — not as a one-time setup. Each listing is a third-party signal LLMs use to verify your existence, your category, and your positioning. The work compounds: more listings, more cross-validation, more citation confidence.
Lower-tier engagements hit the top 8–12 directories. Premium engagements layer on vertical-specific directories and review-platform optimization across the full Gartner network.
The compounding layer: founder-led LinkedIn content (ghostwritten in your voice with your approval), Reddit and Quora contributions in relevant communities with established accounts, press placement pitching to trade publications and industry newsletters, and Product Hunt launch coordination where applicable.
Reddit and Quora in particular are heavily-cited by LLMs — Reddit is now one of Google's most-cited domains for product research queries. We seed contributions thoughtfully (not spammily) with accounts that have age and credibility.
Press placements in trade publications are the slowest lever and the hardest to predict, but they're also the most durable citation signal LLMs reward. Premium engagements include active pitching with 3–5 pitches per quarter against established trade publication relationships.
GEO is a compounding signal — most of the citation lift happens after day 30. Here's the realistic timeline from day one, based on the work we've done on our own products and on client engagements.
Schema rolled out across your site, foundational pages indexed by search engines, first directory listings created. Citation Gap Audit baseline established.
Citation lift visible on Perplexity and ChatGPT search — the two fastest-retrieving LLMs. Schema and directory work showing in real query results.
Citation lift visible across most LLMs. Wikidata submissions in review. Comparison pages indexed. Day-30 milestone work-completion verified.
Top-5 citation positions emerging on tractable queries. Reddit and Quora seed contributions accumulating signal. Initial press pitches in flight.
Top-3 citation positions on niche queries. Broader category queries trending up. Cross-platform citation rate stabilizing at engagement-level baseline.
Content and citations accumulate. Schema work compounds across new pages. Press placements (when they land) ripple across all six LLMs simultaneously.
The GEO space is full of agencies promising specific rankings, guaranteed citation positions, and 30-day outcome guarantees. That's not how AI search works. Here's what Citely will not commit to — and why.
We do not guarantee specific positions. LLM retrieval algorithms change continuously and are controlled by OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Perplexity, and xAI. Anyone who guarantees specific rankings is misleading you.
We promise day-30 work completion. Outcome lift on day 30 is realistic on the fastest-retrieving LLMs, but not guaranteed. Citation rate stabilization takes 60–90 days at minimum.
We do not control how often models re-crawl, which sources they prefer, or how they weight signals. We optimize the signals we can move; the rest is the model's decision.
We do not subcontract optimization work to offshore teams or junior staff. Thomas does the work himself. If you order an engagement, the person who built the platform is doing the work.
We do not white-label someone else's monitoring product. Citely's dashboard is ours — built end-to-end. That's the cost advantage and the consistency advantage.
GEO targets AI-generated answers; SEO targets ranked search results. Only about 10% of AI citations overlap with Google rankings. They're complementary work, not the same work.
First measurable lift in 14–21 days on the fastest-retrieving LLMs (Perplexity and ChatGPT search). Day-30 milestone is work-completion, not outcome guarantee. Top-3 citation positions typically emerge in 60–90 days for tractable queries.
LLM retrieval algorithms change continuously and are controlled by OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Perplexity, and xAI. Anyone who guarantees specific rankings is misleading you. Citely's milestone payment structure ties your spend to completed work, not promised rankings.
The setup engagement is milestone-protected — you pay 50% on signature and 50% at day 30 only if foundational work is complete. Monthly retainers are month-to-month with no long-term commitment.
All six major AI search surfaces: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok. Most competitors track four or five; we track six to give complete coverage of where your customers actually research.
Those are monitoring software products — they show you the citation data but don't do the optimization work. Citely is a managed service. We do the work; the dashboard is proof of work.
Most GEO agencies are SEO consultants who pivoted in the last 12 months. They rent monitoring tools from Profound or Otterly ($99–400/month per client workspace) and mark it up to you. Citely built the underlying software in-house, so the dashboard is ours, the costs are lower, and the quality is more consistent.
Most agencies pay third-party software vendors $300–500/month per client for the dashboard layer before they've done any work. Citely doesn't have that markup — we built the underlying software, so the savings pass to you while preserving margin for high-quality service delivery.
Start with the $497 Citation Gap Audit. The findings tell you what tier you need — and whether managed service is the right move for your firm.
Request your Citation Gap Audit — $497