# SourceCited
> SourceCited is a practitioner guide to using Claude to improve a website's visibility across classic search and AI answer engines (SEO, AEO, GEO). It walks front-to-back through auditing, on-page rewrites, technical files, off-page consensus, and measurement, with copy-paste Claude prompts.

## The workflow
- [Overview](https://sourcecited.com/): What SEO/AEO/GEO are, the consensus-engine model, and the five-phase method.
- [Phase 0 — Audit](https://sourcecited.com/audit.html): Audit AI-crawler access, indexing, schema, and answer-readiness with Claude.
- [Phase 1 — On-page / AEO](https://sourcecited.com/on-page-aeo.html): Front-load answers, add fact density, restructure for extraction.
- [Phase 2 — Technical GEO](https://sourcecited.com/technical-geo.html): Generate robots.txt, llms.txt, and JSON-LD.
- [Phase 3 — Off-page consensus](https://sourcecited.com/off-page-consensus.html): Earned media, entity fact sheet, honest community contribution.
- [Phase 4 — Measure](https://sourcecited.com/measure.html): AI share of voice, citation churn, and hidden AI referrals.

## Resources
- [Claude prompt library](https://sourcecited.com/prompts.html): Every prompt from the five phases in one place.
- [Method & sources](https://sourcecited.com/about.html): How the method was derived and how to keep it current.

## Guides & references
- [The AI-search question dataset](https://sourcecited.com/data.html): 3,307 real questions people ask about AI search, harvested from autocomplete with counts and a downloadable CSV (first-party data).
- [Publish original data](https://sourcecited.com/original-data.html): How to become the source AI cites — autocomplete harvesting, first-hand tests, and packaging a dataset with schema and a CSV.
- [Build topical authority](https://sourcecited.com/topical-authority.html): Pillar-and-cluster architecture, internal linking, and the source-preference flywheel.
- [Trends, SERP APIs & GSC](https://sourcecited.com/data-sources.html): Programmatic demand and citation data — Google Trends/pytrends, paid SERP APIs for AI Overview tracking, and Search Console.
- [E-E-A-T](https://sourcecited.com/eeat.html): Experience, expertise, authority and trust — named authors, Person schema, and first-hand experience as citation signals.
- [Surviving core updates](https://sourcecited.com/core-updates.html): Telling core, spam and manual actions apart, diagnosing a traffic drop, and recovering.
- [URL cleanup & canonicals](https://sourcecited.com/url-cleanup.html): 301 vs 404 vs 410, soft-404 fixes, canonical tags, and deindexing what shouldn't exist.
- [Image & video SEO](https://sourcecited.com/media-seo.html): Alt text, transcripts, VideoObject schema, and YouTube as a top AI citation source.
- [How to cite ChatGPT & AI sources](https://sourcecited.com/cite-ai-sources.html): Citing AI tools in APA, MLA and Chicago, including AI images, plus disclosure and fact-checking rules.
- [Free GEO checker](https://sourcecited.com/checker.html): A private, in-browser tool that audits a page’s HTML for AI search readiness — rendering, indexing, schema, canonical, metadata, media, answer-readiness.
- [DIY vs a paid GEO service](https://sourcecited.com/diy-vs-paid-geo.html): An honest comparison of doing GEO yourself versus paying an agency, tracker, or data API — and the red flags before you spend.
- [Content freshness](https://sourcecited.com/content-freshness.html): Keeping facts, statistics and figures current as a citation factor — what decays, how to audit for aging claims, and updating honestly.
- [Rendering & crawlability](https://sourcecited.com/rendering-crawlability.html): Why AI crawlers cannot see JavaScript-rendered content, how to test for it, and how to fix it.
- [AI search glossary](https://sourcecited.com/glossary.html): SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO and LLMO defined, with core concepts.
- [GEO vs SEO vs AEO](https://sourcecited.com/geo-vs-seo.html): How generative, answer, and search engine optimization differ.
- [How to rank in Google AI Overviews](https://sourcecited.com/ai-overviews.html): How AI Overviews pick sources and how to be one.
- [How to get cited by ChatGPT](https://sourcecited.com/chatgpt.html): Showing up in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers.
- [AI visibility tools](https://sourcecited.com/tools.html): How to track whether AI cites you, free and paid.
- [Make your site agent-ready](https://sourcecited.com/agent-ready.html): Agentic browsers, WebMCP, and the Lighthouse Agentic Browsing audit.
- [How each AI engine picks sources](https://sourcecited.com/platforms.html): ChatGPT vs Perplexity vs AI Overviews vs AI Mode, compared.
- [Agentic commerce](https://sourcecited.com/agentic-commerce.html): ACP, AP2 and UCP — preparing a store for AI checkout.
- [AI crawler control and licensing](https://sourcecited.com/crawler-licensing.html): Allow, block, or charge — pay-per-crawl and RSL.
- [Content provenance](https://sourcecited.com/provenance.html): C2PA, SynthID, and authenticity as an emerging trust signal.
- [Technical table stakes](https://sourcecited.com/checklist.html): The classic-SEO checklist AI visibility stands on.