AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) cite sources differently from traditional search engines. The factors that drive citation in AI Overviews and AI search responses: **Structured directness.** AI engines preferentially cite sources that directly answer the query in clear, structured, attribution-friendly prose. The first 100–300 words of an article often determine whether it's cited. Bury your answer below 1,000 words of preamble and you will not be cited. **Named expert authorship.** AI engines reward content authored by named experts with verifiable credentials. Anonymous or generic-author content is cited less frequently than equivalent content with named author bios linking to credentials, publications, and speaking history. **Original research and proprietary data.** AI engines preferentially cite original sources rather than aggregators. Publishing genuinely original Canadian-context data — survey results, client-portfolio statistics, original analysis — produces citation magnetism that aggregated content cannot match. **Schema.org markup.** Article, Person (author), Organization, and FAQPage schema help AI crawlers parse entities and content structure. Sites without schema are crawled and used but cited less consistently. **Citation in established sources.** AI engines partly seed their citation graph from existing high-authority citation patterns. Being cited by Wikipedia, government sites, or major Canadian media (Globe & Mail, CBC, etc.) creates compounding citation likelihood across AI surfaces. **Crawl access.** Some AI engines respect robots.txt directives that exclude their crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended). Sites blocking these crawlers will not be cited. Audit your robots.txt and unblock the AI crawlers you want citations from. **Recent freshness.** AI engines preferentially cite recently-updated content. Pages updated within the last 6 months are cited more frequently than pages last updated years ago, even when content hasn't fundamentally changed. Implement a substantive review and update cadence rather than letting content stagnate. For Canadian businesses specifically, citation magnetism comes from genuinely Canadian-context content. AI engines synthesizing answers about Canadian markets need Canadian sources; generic content with the word 'Canada' added is detected and rarely cited.