TJ Robertson finds AI-cited pages more often start with direct answers
TJ Robertson’s analysis of 193,507 AI answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews shows that pages cited by the AI are more likely to open with a direct answer. In the same AI responses, cited pages provided a direct answer 23% of the time, compared with 14% for uncited pages. When the cited pages were matched against Google top‑10 pages that the AI never retrieved, the gap widened to…
Key points
- Cited pages gave direct answers 23% of the time versus 14% for uncited pages in the same AI responses
- Compared with Google top‑10 pages never retrieved by AI, cited pages opened with direct answers 20% versus 5% for non‑cited pages
- Cited pages scored higher on completeness (2.3/5) than passed‑over pages (1.7/5) and had similar promotional‑tone scores (3.8 vs 3.7)
The study also found cited pages scored higher on completeness (2.3 on a 1‑to‑5 scale) than the “passed‑over” pages (1.7) while both groups had similar promotional‑tone scores (3.8 vs 3.7). Additional traits linked to higher citation odds included a recent publish date (+88% odds), tables (+69%), first‑hand experience (+45%) and prices (+28%). Conversely, an author byline (‑28%) and a call‑to‑action (‑12%) were associated with lower odds. Robertson cautions that these are associations, not proven causes, and suggests further testing to see if adding direct answers changes citation rates.
The findings imply that SEO practitioners might improve AI citation likelihood by placing concise answers near the top of their pages, though the impact remains a hypothesis pending controlled experiments.
The story so far
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AI-Cited Pages More Often Got Straight To The Answer via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern
Search Engine Journal · 28 October 2026
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