Sistrix ranks GEO tactics by how often AI engines cite them
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:
- Current year in the title: 2.7x
- Table of contents (used by only 14% of pages): 1.7x
- Article schema markup: 1.6x
- Five or more H2 headings: 1.6x
- 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).
The record: SISTRIXChatGPTGoogle AI Overviews
Glossary: GEOAI OverviewsAI Mode
Via Sistrix Blog ↗
Posted to the wire October 22, 2026. Edited by Joe Balewski.