Why AI quotes some pages and not others
AI quotes pages that answer the question straight away, with specifics it can repeat. What those pages have in common, and how yours compare.
When an AI assistant answers “who should I call for a new furnace?”, it reads a handful of pages and quotes the parts that answer the question. Directories and lists matter, and the course on the sites AI cites covers them. But your own website is where the details come from: in our Local AI Index, 57% of answers cited at least one business's own website.
What quoted pages have in common
- They answer the question in the first sentence or two, before anything else.
- They're specific: towns, prices or price ranges, timings, licences, guarantees.
- They're about one thing: one service, or one service in one town, not everything on one page.
- They're easy to read: short paragraphs, headings that say what's below them, and lists where there's a list.
- AI can read them: nothing in the site's settings turns AI crawlers away.
Perplexity · Des Moines, IAWho can replace my furnace this week?
Northbeam Heating & Air is well reviewed for furnace replacements, with same-day estimates and financing [1][2]. Oakline Comfort Co. is another option [3].
- [1] northbeamhvac.com/furnace-replacement
- [2] google.com/maps · 312 reviews
- [3] yelp.com/biz/oakline-comfort
Sample data
What gets skipped
Pages that open with “Welcome to our website”, say “quality service at affordable prices” without a single number, or list twenty services in one paragraph. There's nothing in them an assistant can repeat with confidence.
The rest of this course takes your pages from the second kind to the first, one step at a time.
Do this before the next lesson
- Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity your customers' main question, and open the pages its answer cites.
- For each one, read the first two sentences and note the specifics it gives: towns, prices, timings, guarantees.
- Open your own page for the same service and compare. Write down what it's missing.
In Groow
Groow shows the pages AI cites for each of your questions, yours and your competitors', so you can see which get quoted and why.
Put this to work on your business
Groow checks how ChatGPT, Google and Google Maps see your business every week, tells you what to fix first, and drafts the work for your OK.