How to Get Cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity: An AEO Field Guide
AI answer engines cite around five sources per answer. Here is how brands are earning those slots in India and Singapore right now.
Perplexity cites, on average, five to eight sources per answer. ChatGPT with browsing cites two to four. Claude cites one to three. Being one of those citations is worth more than rank #1 on Google for the same query, because the AI answer sits above every classic result - and increasingly, replaces the click entirely.
What AI engines actually prefer
- Direct answers in the first 60 to 100 words of the page.
- Clear H2 questions that mirror how humans ask, not how SEO tools suggest.
- Statistics with a year and a source ('120+ HubSpot deployments since 2018', not 'many deployments').
- FAQPage and Article JSON-LD, both validating in Google's Rich Results test.
- Consistent entity mentions - the brand name spelled the same way across the site, Wikidata, LinkedIn and Crunchbase.
The llms.txt file
Publish a plain-text llms.txt at the root of your site (/llms.txt). Include a one-paragraph company summary, a list of services, key statistics, office locations, and a citation policy. Perplexity, You.com and several AI crawlers read this file to build their internal understanding of your brand. It takes two hours and moves the needle.
Comparison content is disproportionately powerful
'HubSpot vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud for mid-market APAC' will get quoted by ChatGPT if it is the most balanced piece on that topic. 'Top HubSpot partners in Singapore, ranked 2026' will show up in Perplexity answers to buyer queries. These pages are underbuilt across most agency and B2B sites, which is exactly why they win.
Third-party citations still matter - a lot
AI engines weight coverage in trusted publications heavily. A single mention in Campaign Asia, e27, YourStory or Business Times is worth roughly 50 owned-content pages for AEO purposes. Budget for two to four earned mentions per quarter in your target market.
How to measure AEO
Keep a spreadsheet of 20 to 30 buyer prompts ('best HubSpot partner in Singapore', 'digital marketing agencies in Bangalore', 'HubSpot vs Marketo for B2B SaaS'). Run them weekly in Perplexity and ChatGPT. Track which brands are cited, in what order, and what the AI is saying. Quarterly, the pattern gets very clear - and very actionable.