Hi friends 
I’ve been digging into AI citation optimization, and one thing keeps coming up in discussions:
Not all mentions are equal.
What signals do you think actually help you get cited by AI? (anything that worked, or didn’t?)
Curious what people are seeing in practice 
Hi Kristina, interesting take 
I’ve been looking into this too, and I feel like getting cited is about creating enough cross-references for the AI to feel safe quoting you. It’s like the model needs a second opinion before it puts your brand name in a footnote.
In terms of actual steps, I’d say for global or niche brands, it’s good to get mentions in high-authority news or industry sites, but with very specific, unique data points. For local businesses, it’s all about consistency between Google Business Profile and local directories.
Have you seen a brand start getting cited regularly thanks to a specific trigger event, like a press release or viral mention? Would be great to hear from others.
Love the “second opinion” framing, that’s actually a solid way to think about it.
On trigger events: haven’t seen a single one do it alone, but original data that gets picked up by third-party sources seems to be the closest thing. Generic claims don’t travel, but specific numbers do. That’s what gives the AI something concrete to cross-reference.
As a blog author, I often notice the same claims circulate (even false ones 
), and that’s basically a case of ‘LLM hallucinated one time, and it snowballed out of proportion’.