We Sorted 308 AI Citations by Format. Here's What Gets Cited.
An AEO content playbook from real answers: the page AI cites depends on the question, not just the engine.
Search Shift
Dated checks on how Google and the AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude) pick and cite their sources. Every number has a date and a source.
Stories: https://medium.com/@thesearchshift Newsletter: https://thesearchshift.substack.com Data notes: https://rankcontrol.github.io Notes: https://searchshift.leaflet.pub Gists: https://gist.github.com/rankcontrol
Large Language Model Test: ChatGPT's Top Pick Changed on 2 of 5 Questions
We split 15 brand names into tokens and asked ChatGPT the same five buyer questions, the kind a person asks when choosing a product, three times each, and some answers held still while some didn't.
From Free to $4,500 a Month: The State of AEO Tools in 2026
Funding is booming, prices run from free to $4,500 a month, and the AI answers every tool measures change from one run to the next.
Google Handles About 13.7 Billion Searches a Day: 2026 Search Statistics, Sourced
Google publishes a yearly search count, not a daily one. Here are the 2026 Google search statistics, each traced to its source and date.
What Is Agentic Commerce? We Ran 16 Shopping Questions to Find Out
AI assistants now find, compare and sometimes buy for shoppers. We tracked where 16 shopping questions sent them.
What Content Marketing Services Cost: 9 Providers, From $350 a Month
Nine providers' published packages, read line by line on October 19, 2026: what each price includes, what costs extra and what you can automate.
How B2B Buyers Really Use ChatGPT to Pick Software (2026 Data)
AI search builds the shortlist, and humans still pick the winner. Why the 2026 buyer numbers look contradictory, and what connects them.
How to Get Cited by AI Search Engines: The Master Guide
We ran a dozen dated checks on how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI actually pick their sources. Three gates decide the outcome, and most sites never clear the first one.
How to Grow Blog Traffic When Google Sends Fewer Clicks
A finance blog fell from 800,000 readers a month to about 200 visits a day after a core update. Here's how to tell what broke, then build the channels an update can't touch.
We Searched 14 Same-Meaning Query Pairs to See How Semantic Search Works
Rare phrasings mostly got pages written in the common words. Same-meaning searches still got almost entirely different pages. Here's what both mean for SEO.
How Local Businesses Get Mentioned in ChatGPT and Perplexity (We Tested It)
We ran 15 local searches through Google and ChatGPT, typed versus spoken, and tracked who actually got named.
Content Automation Platforms in 2026: Which Ones Plan, Write and Publish
Ten tools, checked against their own pricing pages on October 18 and again on November 8, 2026: which ones put a finished post on your site, and which stop at the draft.
The Most Popular AI Tools in 2026, Ranked Four Different Ways
We pulled search demand, browser extension installs, chatbot visits and developer usage for October 2026, and the four rankings don't agree with each other.
We Tested Programmatic SEO vs AEO: Wise Won, Zapier Mostly Lost
Wise's pages got cited almost everywhere. Zapier's integration pages, 2 times out of 6. The gap says a lot about which templates still work.
AI Statistics for Marketers in 2026 (and the Old Ones to Stop Quoting)
Google's top results for "ai statistics" still repeat numbers from 2017 and 2020. Here are the 2026 figures that hold up, each with its source and date.
