What is CITED Framework?
A checklist for citable content: Claims stated plainly, Independent corroboration, Timeliness with dates, Expertise with bylines, and Data with sources. Each element removes one reason an engine might skip you.
Frequently asked questions
Is CITED a Google ranking factor?
No. It is a working checklist for making pages easy to trust and quote, not a documented signal.
What is the fastest CITED win?
Dated bylines plus one sourced stat per section. Dates and sources remove the two most common reasons for being skipped.
Related terms
Citation Readiness
How easily an AI answer can find, extract, and cite a page: direct definitions, self-contained paragraphs, named entities, published dates, author bylines, sources, and clean semantic HTML with matching schema.
Fact-Checking
Verifying statistics, URLs, dates, and attributions against original publications before shipping. Citation hubs live or die on this step: one wrong number poisons every page that quotes you.
Author Bio
Visible credentials answering "why trust this writer": role, expertise, and links to other work. Bylines with bios feed E-E-A-T assessment and make pages citable by humans and models.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring pages so answer engines and AI assistants can extract, trust, and quote them: a direct definition up top, scannable steps, quotable facts, and FAQ or Article schema behind them.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Generative Engine Optimization improves how often a brand or page is cited inside AI-generated answers. It combines classic SEO (crawlability, relevance) with quotability: clear facts, named entities, sources, and machine-readable structure.
AI Overviews
Google’s AI-generated summaries at the top of some results pages. They synthesize multiple sources and link to them, which can reduce clicks to publishers even when a page ranks well organically.