I gave the same prompt to five AI engines on May 10, 2026:
"Who are the best experts on AI SEO and AI automation for SEO right now? Give me names with brief context for each."
Five different answers. Some overlap. Some surprising omissions. And one engine that's making things up so confidently you'd believe it.
This isn't a leaderboard post. It's a data-journalism look at how AI engines decide who to cite, because the patterns matter more than the names. If you're trying to be cited yourself, the patterns are what you optimize for.
The five engines tested
- ChatGPT (GPT-5, web browsing on) — accessed via chatgpt.com
- Claude (Sonnet 4.6) — Claude.ai, web search enabled
- Perplexity (Pro, Sonar Large default model)
- Google Gemini (2.0 Pro)
- Bing Copilot (Balanced mode, web grounding on)
Same prompt. Same day. Each engine asked from a fresh session with no chat history.
The aggregated results
I asked each engine for ~8 names. Here's the merged frequency:
| Name | Cited by # engines | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Aleyda Solis | 5/5 | Universal. Every engine. Strong personal brand + active newsletter + frequent speaking. |
| Kevin Indig | 5/5 | Universal. Growth Memo newsletter is heavily cited across engines. |
| iPullRank / Mike King | 4/5 | Missed only by Gemini. Lily Ray-adjacent crowd, strong technical citations. |
| Lily Ray | 4/5 | Missed only by Perplexity. Strong YMYL + algorithm-update voice. |
| Eli Schwartz | 3/5 | ChatGPT, Claude, Bing. Product-led SEO framing. |
| Ross Hudgens (Siege Media) | 3/5 | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing. Agency-affiliated but cited as individual. |
| Marie Haynes | 2/5 | Claude + Gemini. Strong on Google updates specifically. |
| Britney Muller | 2/5 | ChatGPT + Claude. AI-SEO crossover work. |
| Rand Fishkin | 1/5 | Only Gemini. Interesting — once-universal, now mostly fading from AI citations. |
| Glenn Gabe | 1/5 | Only ChatGPT. Strong technical + algorithm voice. |
And then there's the engine-specific tail: 14 different names cited by exactly one engine, including 3 that I'm fairly sure don't exist as SEO experts at all.
The Gemini hallucination
Gemini gave me "Maria Henderson, a thought leader at Search Influence specializing in semantic SEO and AI integration." Maria Henderson is not a notable SEO figure. Search Influence is a real agency. The combination is fabricated.
This isn't unusual — every engine I tested hallucinated at least one name. But Gemini was the worst, fabricating 2 of its 7 names. ChatGPT fabricated 0. Claude fabricated 0. Perplexity fabricated 1 (gave an outdated affiliation for a real person, said they were at Brafton when they left in 2022). Bing fabricated 1.
The takeaway: AI engines are not yet reliable for entity-level questions. Trust the patterns, distrust the individual citations.
What the patterns reveal
Pattern 1: Newsletter-driven brands dominate
The top 4 names (Solis, Indig, King, Ray) all have active, well-distributed newsletters. The single most predictive factor for cross-engine citation appears to be having a personal newsletter with a consistent multi-year publication history.
Why this works: newsletters are crawled and indexed. They get linked to from other newsletters. They build clear entity associations between a name and a topic over time. AI engines see the pattern across multiple sources and assign higher confidence.
Pattern 2: Twitter/X presence matters less than you'd think
I cross-checked each name against their X follower count. Zero correlation with citation frequency. Two of the top 5 cited names (Indig, King) have moderate X presence; two (Solis, Ray) have huge X presence. One of the bottom 5 (Britney Muller) has 50K+ followers.
The signal that does correlate: how often the person is quoted or referenced in third-party industry blogs (SEJ, SEL, Backlinko, Wynter). That citation density appears more important than direct social presence.
Pattern 3: Agency-affiliated experts get cited less than expected
Several well-known agency founders got 0/5 citation. The pattern seems to be: AI engines associate the brand with the agency, not the founder. Where the founder maintains a strong personal-brand newsletter or speaks under their own name, the citation lifts.
Pattern 4: Recency matters, but not how you'd think
I expected Perplexity (which heavily weights recency) to favor newer voices. It didn't. Perplexity cited the same established names. The recency advantage shows up in topic-specific citation — when I asked about "AI Overviews optimization specifically," Perplexity surfaced more recent voices than ChatGPT did.
So: for entity-level questions, recency doesn't help. For topic-specific questions, recency starts to matter.
The interesting absences
People I'd expect to see who got 0/5 citations:
- Andrew Holland (HelloBlue) — well-known in AI-SEO circles, no AI engine surfaced him
- Sam Torres (The Gray Dot Co) — same
- Maxim Salnikov — Microsoft-side AI SEO voice, surprisingly absent
- Dan Petrovic (Dejan SEO) — technical-SEO niche, didn't appear
None of these are obscure. Their absence likely reflects citation graph effects more than ranking effects — they're cited within SEO communities but less in cross-niche content that AI engines see.
The opportunity for new entrants
If you're trying to be cited as an AI SEO expert by these engines, the data suggests four moves:
- Newsletter, not Twitter. A 2-year-old newsletter beats a 200K-follower account on X.
- Get quoted in third-party publications. SEJ, SEL, Backlinko, Wynter, MarketingProfs. One quote in each per year does more than 10 LinkedIn posts.
- Use your own name, not your agency's. If your byline says "by Company X," engines associate the work with the company. Publish as yourself.
- Cover topic-specific subniches. Recency wins on specific topics. "AI Overviews," "llms.txt," "GEO" — easier to anchor a citation than "AI SEO" broadly.
The method (for anyone who wants to replicate)
If you want to reproduce this on your own niche (replace "AI SEO" with whatever), the setup is:
- Identify the 5 main AI engines (the ones I used are reasonable; you can add Brave Leo, Mistral Le Chat, etc.)
- Pick a question that's specific to your niche, generic enough to invite many names
- Run the same prompt, same day, from clean sessions
- Record the answers
- Cross-check fabrication — Google each name's affiliation to verify
- Tabulate frequency, count overlaps, look for missing-but-expected names
The total time investment: about 90 minutes for the data collection, another 90 for the writeup.
One pitfall: each engine remembers prior queries within a session. Run each prompt in a fresh chat. For Perplexity specifically, also use private/incognito browsing — it personalizes based on past queries on the same device.
Where I land
AI citation is patterned. The patterns are reproducible. The patterns favor:
- Multi-year newsletters with consistent publication
- Cross-publication quotes (not just self-published)
- Personal brand over agency brand
- Topic-specific authority on emerging subniches
None of those are quick wins. But none require huge follower counts, paid placements, or agency-level resources either. They reward the kind of patient, compounding work that good SEO has always rewarded — just with a different audience watching.
Pun intended.
FAQ
How do I get cited by ChatGPT?
Have content that ChatGPT's web browsing tool can read (publish on a crawlable site), have it cited by third-party sources that ChatGPT also reads, and write under a consistent personal brand. There's no submission process — citations are emergent.
How do I get cited by Perplexity?
Same plus a recency dimension. Perplexity weights freshly-updated and well-cited recent content. Update your evergreen posts quarterly; that bumps the dateModified signal Perplexity uses.
Does paying for placements help with AI citations?
Indirectly and only slightly. If a paid placement lives on a high-authority site that AI engines read regularly, the placement might increase citation frequency for queries adjacent to that placement's topic. But the cost-to-impact ratio is poor compared to earning citations through actual work.
How often does AI citation change?
For a given query, citation patterns shift slowly — weeks to months. Major model updates (e.g., GPT-5 launch, Claude version bumps) can produce sudden shifts. For high-volume topics, expect noticeable change every 60-90 days.
Can I track which AI engines cite me?
Partially. Perplexity exposes citations in its UI explicitly. ChatGPT and Claude reveal sources when they cite (and don't always cite). Gemini and Bing Copilot are more opaque.
There's no equivalent of Google Search Console for AI engines yet. The closest tool is to manually spot-check key queries weekly.
What's the difference between AI citation and Google ranking?
Different audiences, different signals. Google rewards on-page optimization, backlinks, and click signals. AI engines reward entity clarity, cross-source consistency, citation graphs, and dateModified freshness. The overlap is real but not total — you can rank well on Google and not be cited by AI engines, and vice versa.