Bianca Anderson opened her SEO Week 2026 talk with a statistic from AI citation tracker Lantern: in an analysis of more than 200 million citations, the large majority did not come from the cited brand's own website. Even allowing for the source, the direction is clear. What others say about you shapes AI answers more than what you say about yourself.
Distribution depth decides whether you're remembered
Ross Simmonds of Foundation described AI visibility in layers. On-site optimisation is the first. The second is distribution depth: how widely your ideas, data, and expertise appear across the web. Without that second layer, he argued, a brand rarely reaches what AI systems "remember".
Where B2B buyers' AI answers draw from
- Industry media and trade publications, especially expert commentary and original data.
- Review and comparison platforms relevant to your category.
- Communities and forums where practitioners discuss real problems, including Reddit.
- YouTube, which Simmonds' research showed appearing increasingly for longer, more specific questions.
- Partner, association, and directory listings with accurate, consistent details.
Be useful, not promotional
Simmonds was clear that this isn't about gaming the system. It's about being helpful in the places your customers already look for answers. Self-promotional shortcuts carry risk: Anderson pointed to reporting from early 2026 on brands that lost significant visibility after publishing large numbers of "best of" lists ranking themselves first.
Close the influence gap inside your company
Most of these levers — PR, social, partnerships, product marketing, legal review — sit outside the marketing or SEO team. Anderson's advice was to start with the constraints of the teams that can say no, and build content they'll approve the first time. Her example: neutral, fact-based comparison content that legal signed off immediately, because it was designed around legal's concerns from the start.
A practical starting point
- List the sources AI assistants cite when answering questions about your category.
- Find the ones where you're missing or described inaccurately.
- Pick two or three to invest in this quarter: one media relationship, one review platform, one community.
- Turn your team's real expertise into commentary, data, and video those sources want.