The short answer is uncomfortable but consistent: get into the top ten organic results. When South African AI Overviews are examined citation by citation, the pages being cited are almost always pages already ranking on the first page for that query. AI visibility is currently an outcome of search visibility, not a parallel discipline you can win separately.

That reframes most of what is sold as AI optimisation. Below is what the evidence supports, and what it does not.

What the citation data shows

Take any South African cost or question query that triggers an AI Overview, list the cited domains, then check where each ranks organically. The pattern repeats: cited pages sit in positions one to nine. Pages ranking below that are not cited, regardless of how well structured they are or how much schema they carry.

This holds across query types. It is why a well-written page with tables, headings and complete markup can be invisible to AI while a thinner page ranking third gets quoted.

Which queries trigger an AI Overview at all

Not all of them, and the pattern is useful. In South African results, commercial "service plus city" searches such as "digital marketing agency Pretoria" frequently return no AI Overview at all. Cost and question queries almost always do.

Query shape	AI Overview?	What it means for you
Service plus city	Usually not	Clicks are not being intercepted. Standard local SEO applies.
Cost and pricing	Almost always	High-value target. Publish real figures.
How and what questions	Almost always	Answer the question directly and specifically.
Best or comparison	Usually	Often cites directories and roundups rather than agency sites.

What does not work

Schema alone. Structured data helps machines parse a page. It does not cause a citation. It is worth having and it is not a strategy.

FAQ schema specifically. Google retired FAQ rich results in May 2026. Adding FAQ markup no longer earns a search feature. The visible question-and-answer text still matters, because that is what gets read, but the markup by itself no longer buys anything.

Adding more pages on the same topic. Publishing five overlapping articles on one subject splits your own authority and can trigger the scaled-content problems that suppress a site entirely. One strong page beats five thin ones.

Writing for machines. Content stuffed with question phrasings and no substance reads badly to humans and is not preferred by assistants either.

What does work

Rank first. Everything else is secondary. If you take one thing from this article, that is it.

Answer the question in the opening lines. Assistants extract answers, so bury the answer and it will not be found. State it plainly, then explain.

Publish real numbers. Cost queries are dominated by pages carrying actual prices in tables. Vague ranges and "contact us for pricing" are not citable, because there is nothing to quote.

Match the question in your URL and title. Cited pages consistently use the question itself as the slug and carry a year in the title. It is not magic, but it is a strong and free signal of relevance.

Build authority off-site. Assistants weight source trust heavily, and directories, review platforms and genuine press coverage carry weight your own site cannot generate about itself.

Measure it honestly

Analytics referral data attributed to AI assistants is unreliable, and frequently badly so. Sessions labelled as coming from assistants are often spoofed referrers, producing large numbers with no engagement or enquiries behind them. Reporting those as AI success is a way of not knowing how you are doing.

Use a tool that tracks whether your brand is actually named in assistant answers across a set of prompts, and treat that as the metric. It is usually a smaller and more honest number.

The order that makes sense

Fix technical health and indexation. Build authority through directories, reviews and press. Rank for the questions your customers ask. Then structure those already-ranking pages to be easy to quote. Doing the last step first, which is what most AI optimisation packages sell, produces beautifully structured pages that nobody reads.

Juicy Designs runs AI search optimisation as part of an SEO programme rather than instead of one, from R5,500 per month. Our AI search visibility audit measures where you currently stand.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get listed in AI searches?

Rank in the top ten organic results for the question being asked. Analysis of South African AI Overviews consistently shows citations drawn from pages already ranking on page one, which means AI visibility is currently an outcome of search visibility rather than a separate discipline. Structured, question-shaped content helps, but only for pages that rank.

Does schema markup get me cited by AI?

Not on its own. Schema helps machines understand a page, but it does not cause a citation. Google retired FAQ rich results in May 2026, so FAQ schema no longer earns a search feature either. The visible question-and-answer text is what assistants read.

What kind of content gets cited?

Pages that answer a specific question directly, near the top, with concrete figures in a clear structure. In cost queries the cited pages almost always carry prices in a table, a year in the title, and a URL that matches the question closely.

Do ChatGPT and Gemini use Google rankings?

Not Google's rankings directly, but they ground answers in live web search results, which means the same underlying visibility problem applies. A site that search engines rank poorly is unlikely to be surfaced to an assistant either.

How do I measure AI visibility?

Use a tool that tracks brand mentions across assistant answers rather than relying on analytics referral data. Referral traffic attributed to AI assistants in analytics is frequently spoofed and overstates the position considerably.