{"id":1843,"slug":"rule-favor-body-text-citations-stats-over-schema-for-ai-visibility","title":"R3 — Favor body-text citations, quotations and statistics over schema markup as the AI-visibility lever; the peer-reviewed lift is in body text","kind":"rule","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["structured-content","agency-methodology","editorial-discipline","generative-engine-optimization"],"reference_body":"**Rule:** When the goal is AI-answer citation, invest editorial effort in **body-text citations, quotations and statistics** before investing more in schema markup. The peer-reviewed evidence is on the body-text side.\n\n**Why:** [[geo-paper-aggarwal-kdd-2024-citations-stats-40pct-visibility]] — over 40% visibility lift in generative-engine answers from edits to *visible page text*, NOT schema. The methodology caveat ([[geo-paper-methodology-caveat-body-text-not-schema]]) is explicit: schema is not the lever. There is no independent or primary evidence for the corresponding schema claim ([[gap-no-independent-primary-evidence-schema-improves-ai-citation]]).\n\n**How to apply:**\n- On every working-surface page, build editorial discipline around: (a) citing primary sources by name and date; (b) including direct quotations; (c) including hard statistics with attribution.\n- The pattern is what this very brief does — every claim has Source / Confidence / Caveat. Apply that discipline to client content where AI-citation matters.\n- This rule is editorial-discipline ([[editorial-discipline]]), not technical-SEO.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"geo-paper-aggarwal-kdd-2024-citations-stats-40pct-visibility","title":"Aggarwal et al., \"GEO: Generative Engine Optimization\" (Princeton / Georgia Tech / Allen AI / IIT Delhi, KDD '24) — citations + quotations + statistics in visible text lift source visibility by >40% across queries","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"geo-paper-pawc-30-40-percent-relative-improvement","title":"GEO paper — Cite Sources / Quotation / Statistics methods achieved 30–40% relative improvement on the Position-Adjusted Word Count metric","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"geo-paper-subjective-impression-15-30-percent","title":"GEO paper — 15–30% relative improvement on the Subjective Impression metric (LLM-rated answer quality from the source)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"geo-paper-perplexity-37-percent-live-engine","title":"GEO paper — visibility improvements up to 37% on Perplexity.ai (live engine, 200-sample test)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"geo-paper-methodology-caveat-body-text-not-schema","title":"GEO paper — critical methodology caveat: the lifts come from BODY-TEXT edits, NOT schema markup; authors explicitly note \"less likely to affect search engine rankings\"","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"gap-no-independent-primary-evidence-schema-improves-ai-citation","title":"GAP — no independent or primary evidence that schema markup ITSELF improves AI-answer citation; vendor claims (FAQ schema → 2.8× citations, author schema → 3×) are single-source and unverified","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-website-as-working-surface-june-2026","title":"Research brief: the website as a working surface of the business — four capabilities, AI-citation decoupling, freshness as a real signal (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.783Z","updated_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.783Z"}