ChatGPT Citations Decoded!

Just read a new SE Ranking study analyzing 129,000 domains to figure out what actually influences ChatGPT citations and the findings are pretty interesting.

Backlinks and domain-level trust were the strongest signals by far. Content depth, freshness and fast page performance also showed clear correlation. What surprised me most: keyword-optimized titles/URLs and FAQ schema actually underperformed, while broad topical URLs and well-structured long-form content did better.

Community presence on Reddit + Quora also played a huge role, especially for smaller sites trying to get noticed by AI models.

Curious- have any of you noticed ChatGPT citing your sites?
And which signals do you think matter most in 2025: backlinks, brand presence, or content depth?

Interestingly, these results diverge from what many previous studies suggested.
Those emphasized the importance of highly specific content, detailed FAQ sections, and structured schema markup.
The new data indicates that broader authority signals carry more weight than format or content granularity alone.