> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.surnex.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Improve your AI search visibility

> Measure where AI answers are displacing you, then do something about it.

Ranking first is worth less when an AI answer sits above you and the user never scrolls. This guide works out whether that's happening to you, and what to do if it is.

## 1. Establish exposure

Start at [Google AI Overviews](/ai/google-ai-overviews). It needs no input — the data comes from your existing [rank checks](/tracking/overview).

Read **AIO Triggered** against **Total Keywords**. That's your trigger rate: how much of your keyword set now returns an AI answer.

If it's near zero, AI search isn't affecting your market yet. Note the number, check again in a few months, and spend your effort elsewhere. Everything below assumes a meaningful trigger rate.

## 2. Find where you're losing

Two rates, and only one is yours to move.

**Trigger rate** is out of your control. It's exposure.

**Citation rate** — of the queries that trigger an answer, how many cite you — is the target.

Then sort the table by the situation that costs most: **rows where you rank well but aren't cited**. Ranking third while an AI Overview above you cites three other sites means the answer is being given without you, and your position is delivering less traffic than it looks. These are also the most winnable, because you already have the authority.

## 3. Find out who's being cited instead

Expand those rows and read **Referenced Sources**.

This is the step people skip, and it's where the actual finding is. The cited sources are frequently *not* your competitors — they're industry publications, documentation, community threads, and comparison sites. If those own your topic, editing your own page won't change anything.

Confirm the pattern at scale with [Citation gap](/ai/citation-gap): up to 10 competitors against up to 50 keywords, with **GAP** flagged where they're cited and you aren't. Use **Load saved competitors** to pull your project list.

Then check whether it's universal. [LLM benchmarking](/ai/benchmarking) runs one query across several platforms at once:

* **Cited nowhere** — a content problem. Compare the cited pages against yours.
* **Cited on some platforms only** — platforms weight sources differently. Look at what the platforms citing you have in common.

## 4. Fix the two different problems

**If your own page isn't good enough to quote**, the patterns among cited pages are consistent:

* The question is answered **directly and early**, not after several paragraphs of context
* The phrasing matches how people ask, not internal terminology
* Facts are stated plainly enough to be quoted in isolation
* Headings, lists, and tables make the relevant passage easy to locate

None of this conflicts with ranking well. It's the same discipline applied more strictly.

**If third-party sources own the topic**, no amount of on-site work helps. The work is outreach:

* A comparison site cited for your category that doesn't list you — get listed
* A publication cited repeatedly — that's a coverage target
* Community threads and forums — participate honestly; they're heavily cited and rarely contested by vendors

The [Co-cited with](/ai/citation-gap) detail shows which sources keep appearing alongside you, which is the shortlist.

## 5. Track it over time

One-off lookups diagnose; [GEO](/geo/overview) measures progress. Add your key subjects as **topics** and they're snapshotted daily by default.

Phrase topics as questions where a vendor could plausibly be the answer. "best rank tracking tool for agencies" works; "rank tracking" returns a definition and will only ever produce zeros.

On a [topic's detail page](/geo/topics), watch two things:

* **Mentions and Citation Rate** trending — mentioned without cited means you have awareness but aren't treated as the source
* **Model** — citation behaviour shifts when a platform changes model. Check this column before attributing a step change to your own work

## 6. Expect variance

AI responses aren't deterministic. The same query returns different sources on different runs.

A single absence is not evidence. Re-run anything commercially important a few times over a week — consistent absence is a finding, a one-off is noise. This is the most common way to waste effort in this section.

## What to prioritize

If you only do three things:

1. Read the trigger rate on [AI Overviews](/ai/google-ai-overviews). It tells you whether any of this matters yet.
2. Run [Citation gap](/ai/citation-gap) on your top commercial queries — where a decision is being made without you.
3. Act on the **sources**, not only your own pages. That's where most of the leverage is.

## Next

* [AI search overview](/ai/overview)
* [GEO overview](/geo/overview)
* [Citation gap](/ai/citation-gap)