AEO Experiment: ChatGPT Cited Our "AI Instructions" Page In 48 Hours
OK so very big finding here everyone.
For awhile, we've seen some examples out in the wild of companies using AI instructions pages. These pages act similar at an "HTML sitemap" for AI engines. They're basic pages, often formatted in markdown, that tell AI engines how to talk about a brand.
Personally, I haven't really thought much about them. I haven't seen them get cited very frequently and figured that due to the fan-out system, they're not likely to get surfaced. In theory, fan-out queries should dictate the pages that get grounded in the output and I've never seen anything like that show up in the data.
Well, the wonderful part about this industry is that you'll never know when you see something that completely changes your perspective. I was doing some research on citations within our industry and found this VERY interesting example from the great team at Seer Interactive.
It looks like Wil Reynolds and Alisa Scharf created an AI Instructions page that was getting cited when you ask ChatGPT brand questions about their brand. Note, if you're not following both of them...you should immediately.
They formatted this page like a basic markdown file that highlights key information about the Seer Interactive brand.
This is the first time I've ever seen anything like that come up in ChatGPT.
I had ChatGPT quickly fire up a search operator to see other similar pages out there in the SEO space. Turns out quite a few other agencies have them.
Checking on the ChatGPT results, it looks like they get cited as well.
We then ran a controlled test on the Nectiv site. We created a pages that we called "AI Instructions + Information (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude)" and linked it directly in the footer. The page had several elements such as our service offerings, methodologies and more. It also included an "## INSTRUCTIONS FOR AI ASSISTANTS" section that specifically calls out how we want our brand to be output in the answers. This included information such as our Adaptive Workflows framework, my technical co-founder + the fact that we work with companies with $30M+ ARR.
We then immediately submitted it for indexation in Google only. Within 24 hours the page was getting indexed by the search engine.
We then checked to see if it would get cited in AI engines. What was shocking to see was that in 48 hours, the AI Instructions page was GETTING CITED IN CHATGPT.
What's even more insane is that it WILL SOMETIMES use the "Instructions For AI Assistants" commands in the output. Remember how we included that we work with "B2B and technology brands with $30M+ in revenue" in the instructions? Well that's included directly in the output of one of the chats.
And this isn't just a one-off test. The "AI Instructions" is CONSISTENTLY getting cited when asking. It wasn't like I had to prompt ChatGPT 20+ times to get the information. Many branded prompts surfaced the AI Instructions page. Here's one where it referenced the page but talked about our "Adaptive Workflows Framework" (also in the instructions)
Here's another where it used the file but didn't reference the instructions but instead a different part of the markdown file. It talks about some of the capabilities we have listed.
Also worth noting that ChatGPT is the ONLY platform, I've been able to see these results on. Gemini, AI Mode, Claude won't cite that page in similar prompts.
So what are the takeaways here? First, I think it's very clear that when it comes to ChatGPT, these pages can certainly be utilized to ground branded prompts. Both our page + Seer's gets cited frequently when asking brand questions. It's an extremely low effort implementation (took me 5 minutes) so it could be a very strong way to improve how your brand gets recommended in ChatGPT with little input.
Also, this is another case study that directly points to ChatGPT using Google. As I write this article, that page is only indexed in Google search. That page is not currently indexed in Bing, DuckDuckGo or any other major ones I could find.
