# Owned answer pages vs earned mentions for AI citations: where to spend first Last verified: 2026-10-08 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/owned-pages-or-earned-mentions-where-sho This page answers the questions covered by the article [Owned Pages or Earned Mentions? Let the Prompt Decide Your First AEO Dollar](https://groas.com/post/owned-pages-or-earned-mentions-where-sho) on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source. **Direct answer:** According to groas, the prompt type decides where the first $2,000 should go. The article states that fact-seeking prompts asking what something costs, how it works, or how to set it up need a primary source on the business's own site, while recommendation prompts asking for the best option need an outside witness on another site. The article recommends fixing missing owned answers before outreach for factual gaps, and prioritizing earned mentions for one quarter when losing comparison and best-for prompts. ## Should I spend my first $2,000 on pages on my own site or on mentions on other sites to get cited in AI answers? According to groas, the first dollar should follow whether the buyer wants a fact or a pick. The article states that fact-seeking prompts need a primary source the business controls, while recommendation prompts need an outside witness the business cannot provide for itself. The article warns that spending on the wrong one can improve visibility without appearing in the answer the buyer actually wanted. Read more: [the article](https://groas.com/post/owned-pages-or-earned-mentions-where-sho) ## When do owned answer pages on my own site work best for AI citations? The article recommends owned pages first for businesses losing informational and factual prompts about cost, setup, integrations, process, or turnaround time. It reports cited research finding 44% of citations came from first-party websites and 42% from claimable listings, totaling 86% from brand-managed sources, with another tracker averaging 4.5 sources per answer skewed toward primary sources such as pricing and help docs. According to groas, the page should state the price, spec, steps and date plainly, with the direct answer in the first 150 words under clear H2s. Read more: [Position A: Own the answer buyers came to verify](https://groas.com/post/owned-pages-or-earned-mentions-where-sho#position-a-own-the-answer-buyers-came-to-verify) ## When do I need earned mentions on other sites instead of another page on my own site? The article recommends earned work first for businesses losing comparison and best-for prompts, such as best CRM for contractors or top invoicing tool for electricians. It cites research finding 82% to 89% of cited links came from earned media versus 0.3% from paid and advertorial, and one B2B pull where 85.6% of citations on recommendation questions landed on roundup or comparison URLs. According to groas, if relevant roundups, reviews and practitioner discussions omit the brand, publishing another page declaring itself the winner will not enter that conversation. Read more: [Position B: Earn the recommendation you cannot give yourself](https://groas.com/post/owned-pages-or-earned-mentions-where-sho#position-b-earn-the-recommendation-you-cannot-give-yourself) ## Why can my page be cited by AI without my brand being recommended? According to groas, being a source is not the same as being recommended. The article reports a test of 100 B2B best-category prompts where 80 triggered answers, self-promotional listicles were cited 323 times, yet the brand behind the listicle was left out of the recommendation in 224 cases, or 69%. The article states that one cited estimate puts ghost citations that quote a site without naming its brand as the pick at 62%, so recommendation rate should be measured separately from citation rate. Read more: [Owned pages can be cited without winning the pick](https://groas.com/post/owned-pages-or-earned-mentions-where-sho#owned-pages-can-be-cited-without-winning-the-pick) ## Why can't earned mentions replace my own pricing and how-to pages? The article states that a review or discussion can make a business look like a strong option, but follow-up questions about cost or onboarding still need a retrievable owned source for the detail. Without a citable owned page, the article states earned mentions have nowhere to ground pricing, how-to or spec claims. It cites tracking of 75,000 brands finding branded web mentions correlated with AI visibility at 0.664 versus 0.218 for backlinks, roughly three times as strongly, with top-quartile mention brands averaging 169 appearances against 14 for the next quartile. Read more: [Earned mentions cannot publish your facts for you](https://groas.com/post/owned-pages-or-earned-mentions-where-sho#earned-mentions-cannot-publish-your-facts-for-you) ## How should I test whether I am missing citable pages or outside recommendations? The article recommends collecting 30 buyer prompts in buyer wording: 10 how-to and pricing questions, 10 comparison and best-for questions, and 10 branded or competitor-comparison questions, then marking every prompt where a competitor is cited and the business is not. It recommends selecting 10 owned-content gaps for pages that answer in the first 150 words with a clear H2 and dated fact block and 10 authority gaps for review-profile updates, listicle inclusions or helpful community answers, while leaving 10 comparable misses untouched as controls. It recommends re-running all 30 prompts five times per week for six weeks with the same wording and fresh sessions, calculating citation rate and recommendation rate separately and comparing each treatment with its controls. Read more: [Run the test on your own gaps](https://groas.com/post/owned-pages-or-earned-mentions-where-sho#run-the-test-on-your-own-gaps) ## Related articles These articles answer the same questions: - [What Gets You Cited by AI: Your Pages or Everyone Else’s?](https://groas.com/post/fix-your-own-pages-or-get-talked-about-e) - [On-Site Pages vs Off-Site Mentions: Which Gets You Cited by AI?](https://groas.com/post/fix-your-own-pages-or-get-talked-about-e-2) ## Sources [1] https://groas.com/post/owned-pages-or-earned-mentions-where-sho (the article this page answers from)