Last verified: 2026-10-15 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/7-things-ppc-people-believe-about-gettin
This page answers the questions covered by the article 7 PPC Myths About Getting Cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, budget buys clearly labeled ad placement but does not buy citation, while citations go to passages that directly answer the prompt. An analysis of 863,000 SERPs found only 37.9% of cited pages also ranked in the top 10 for the same query, and the article recommends quotable 40 to 80-word answer blocks, regular refreshing, and measuring citation rate by repeating the same buyer prompts. Citation work is ongoing maintenance rather than a one-time project because retrieval changes, with reported overlap falling from 76% to a range of 17-38% after a default model change in January 2026.
According to groas, no. Ads in answers run as clearly labeled Sponsored blocks above, below, or inside the answer, pulled from existing search and shopping inventory, while the citation list is built separately from pages used to form the response. The article states there is no evidence that buying the ad slot moves a page into cited sources, so budget buys labeled placement and passages earn citations.
Read more: 1. “I can pay my way into the answer”
The article states that getting cited is a retrieval contest for passages, not pages, and rank cannot force a quote. An analysis of 863,000 SERPs found only 37.9% of pages cited in AI answers also ranked in the top 10 for the same query, with only about 10% of citation URLs matching the top 10 on one engine and 79% not appearing in the top 100. According to groas, rank can help a page get found but reviewers should read the answer block before relying on position.
Read more: 2. “Rank #1 and ChatGPT has to cite you”
According to groas, no. An empirical test across answer engines found schema markup had no measurable effect, with domains running complete schema performing no better than those running none, and a separate 1,885-page test found no meaningful lift from adding it. The article recommends keeping schema for purposes such as rich results but budgeting citation work for plainly answering the buyer's question.
Read more: 3. “Just add schema and the bots will find you”
The article states that answer engines need passages that fit the question and do not owe a mention for each URL. A review of 26,283 source URLs found 43.8% of citations went to best-of list content, with 79.1% of those pages updated in 2025, pointing to direct answer fit and freshness rather than volume. According to groas, one page that gives the number, steps, and date in 120 clear words can do more work than ten 600-word posts that circle the question, so update the winner rather than cloning it.
Read more: 4. “More pages means more mentions”
According to groas, no, because answers can return different text and sources across runs, users, and sessions. One 42-day study drew 445 distinct domains for a single broad prompt, with day-to-day domain turnover around 60 to 70%, which is why single-query snapshots are statistically meaningless. The article recommends running the same five buyer prompts ten times each and tracking citation rate with confidence intervals rather than spot-checking.
Read more: 6. “I checked one prompt, so I know my visibility”
The article states it does not hold because retrieval keeps changing; after a default model change in January 2026, reported overlap between top results and citations fell from 76% to a range of 17-38%, attributed to greater reliance on fan-out query results. According to groas, citations should be treated like search terms to check regularly: give the money page a quotable 40 to 80-word block, match the buyer question in the first two sentences, sample the same five prompts ten times each, and refresh details such as price, date, and availability monthly. The article describes a routine of thirty minutes on Tuesdays to record citation rate and refresh the winning page rather than launching once.
Read more: 7. “AEO is a project you finish”
[1] https://groas.com/post/7-things-ppc-people-believe-about-gettin (the article this page answers from)