In short
- Earned
- What others write about you without you placing it: trade press, news, independent reviews, Wikipedia.
- Owned
- Your own site and everything you publish yourself. Necessary, but it carries less weight than you would hope.
- Big-brand bias
- Big brands get picked up more often. For a small player that is not a reason to stop but to choose more carefully where to be visible.
- Per engine
- The preference differs per engine and per language. One strategy for all engines leaves opportunities on the table.
What does the study say?
The earned, owned and social distinction is the heart of the finding. Classic search engines still give your own site a strong position; a generative engine would rather build its answer on what independent sources say about you. Your own words therefore count mostly once someone else picks them up.
| What was measured | How | What the study does not say |
|---|---|---|
| AI search against classic web search | comparative analysis with source classification (earned / owned / social) across several engines | that your own site is redundant — it measures weight, not necessity |
Chen et al. (2025). Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI Search. arXiv 2509.08919
Why does this matter to you?
Because it changes the order of your work. Getting your site in order stays necessary — a page a crawler cannot reach gets picked up nowhere — but it is the start, not the goal. Anyone working only on their own site is optimising the source that weighs least.
What does ceeme do with it?
Our source analysis shows which sources an engine actually fetched when it spoke about you, and what kind they were. That turns “work on your authority” into a list of addresses. And the fixes explicitly recommend external mentions where the proof already sits on your own site but is confirmed nowhere.
Frequently asked questions
So does my website no longer matter?
It does. Your site has to be crawlable and citable, otherwise you drop out everywhere. But external authority weighs at least as much, and that is the part most companies skip because it does not live in a CMS.
Should I start sending press releases?
Not first. Start with the sources that already exist in your sector and that an engine fetches: trade directories, review sites, professional bodies, local media. A mention there is cheaper and more reliable than a press release nobody picks up.
What if I am a small brand?
Then the big-brand bias works against you, and going broad is the worst answer. On a narrow question where you are the best answer, a small player can be chosen — and that is exactly what per-question measurement makes visible.
Read on
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