How to Make Your Investment Firm’s Content Easier for AI to Cite

In an earlier LoweDown post, we proposed a test for investment firm content: Could AI have written it? Content that passes tends to do one of two things: It takes a view that only the firm’s own experts could offer, or it demonstrates an outcome, such as showing what the firm did for a client. 

That leaves a practical question: Once a firm has something distinctive to say, how should it publish it to improve its chances of appearing in AI-generated answers? 

The question matters because many readers now get what they need from the answer itself. As our earlier post noted, Pew Research found that people who see a Google AI Overview click through to a cited source only about 1% of the time. That makes being the source an answer names an increasingly valuable form of visibility. 

Five recent studies offer some guidance. The newest of them also suggests that popular add-ons such as FAQ sections and summary boxes are no substitute for answering the question a reader asked. 

What the research found 

Study	Finding	What it suggests
Muck Rack, May 2026	Among more than 25 million links cited by AI, 84% were classified as earned media; 27% were journalistic.	Third-party sources carry the most weight.
Bonfire, July 2026	Advisor-owned websites accounted for 45% of citations in 135 questions asking ChatGPT to recommend an advisor in one of five cities.	An advisory firm’s own website can matter when people look for an advisor.
Ahrefs, April 2026	In 1.4 million ChatGPT prompts, cited pages had titles that aligned more closely with the questions used in search.	Use titles that say precisely what a page covers.
Semrush, January 2026	AI-cited pages scored about 33% higher on clarity and summarization, and 23% higher on section structure, than pages ranking in Google for related searches.	Make key information easy to locate.
Chen and Koudas, October 2026	Across 158,099 AI answers, whether a page surfaced in search mattered far more than its features. Comparing pages on the same site, relevance to the question held up; FAQ and summary boxes did not.	Get found, then answer the question.

The studies examine different questions and AI systems; their percentages are not directly comparable. The Chen and Koudas paper is a preprint.  

What to do with the findings 

Start with the question 

Work out what a reader wants to know, then answer it. An asset manager writing about interval funds might explain how repurchases work, what happens when requests exceed a fund’s limits and how holdings are valued. A wealth manager writing about a business sale might address timing, future income needs and the decisions best made before a buyer appears. 

Give those subjects plainly worded titles and headings. AI tools often break one question into several narrower searches, and pages are cited more when their wording matches those searches. A page also has to turn up in those searches before anything else about it matters. 

Make the point easy to find 

Put the main point in the first paragraph. Use sections that stand on their own. Put a comparison in a table if that helps. For longer articles, a short set of key takeaways may be useful. 

Semrush’s comparison shows that cited pages tend to be clearer and better organized. Whether adding a summary box helps is a separate question; Chen and Koudas, comparing pages on the same site, found no consistent benefit from FAQ or summary boxes. Organization should serve the reader. 

Publish something worth citing 

A portfolio manager’s interpretation of a market shift, a planner’s account of how a family weighed competing goals, original data or a careful comparison gives an AI assistant something more useful than another overview. Name the expert, for readers’ sake. Use numbers where they sharpen the point. Attribute facts and distinguish them from judgment. 

Think beyond the firm’s website, too. Muck Rack found that AI relies most on third-party sources, so getting a firm’s experts quoted in trade and financial press matters. Bonfire shows that firms’ own sites can still be prominent for advisor searches, though the mix shifts with the question: advisor sites drew 66% of citations for tax-planning searches and 21% for estate planning. 

None of this guarantees a citation. Platforms change and much depends on the question being asked. Say something specific, give it a clear title, explain it directly and support it well.