# Sistrix ranks GEO tactics by how often AI engines cite them

Published: 2026-10-22T11:37:46.158Z · Source: Sistrix Blog (https://www.sistrix.com/blog/citation-worthiness-study/)
Source date: 2026-10-22
Flags: Sistrix study — vendor-published
Entities: sistrix, chatgpt, ai-overviews

Sistrix compared 48,527 pages cited by ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews in the second quarter of 2026 against uncited pages on the same domain, isolating page-level factors from brand strength across 96,418 URLs, 17,380 domains and 43 features, using conditional logistic regression. The strongest citation factors, each page's odds of citation versus its matched uncited counterpart:

1. Current year in the title: 2.7x
2. Table of contents (used by only 14% of pages): 1.7x
3. Article schema markup: 1.6x
4. Five or more H2 headings: 1.6x
5. FAQPage schema: 1.5x

Pages carrying many of these features were cited 2.1 times as often as minimally optimized ones, per Sistrix. The dataset covers the German-speaking (DACH) market; on ChatGPT specifically, question-phrased titles carried a separate 1.9x factor.

Why it matters: It's one of the first large-sample studies to control for domain authority by design, matching each cited page against an uncited page on the same domain — and it still finds a positive schema effect, in tension with Ahrefs' and a separate domain-authority study's null results on markup (both logged in the record).

## What this answers

**Does a table of contents help a page get cited by AI search engines?**

Per a Sistrix study of 96,418 URLs, pages with a table of contents were cited 1.7 times as often as matched pages without one — though only 14% of pages in the dataset use one.

**What page feature correlates most with being cited by ChatGPT, AI Mode or AI Overviews?**

Having the current year in the page title, per Sistrix — a 2.7x citation factor, the strongest single signal in its 96,418-URL study.


Canonical: https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-10-22-sistrix-ranks-geo-tactics-by-how-often-ai-engines-cite-them/
From Anything Engine Optimization (AEO Wire) — https://anythingengineoptimization.com/ · Standards: https://anythingengineoptimization.com/standards/