Chapter 6 · Beyond your website: get onto the 20 pages AI already cites

6.1 Where the effort goes, and two numbers that must not sit side by side

What you'll do in this section: Put this quarter's off-site person-hours on the "someone else writes about you" bucket, and remember that two similar-looking percentages each do one job — the share figure only decides whether to work a page-type category at all, the density figure only orders individual pages within a category you have already decided to work. The moment the two appear in the same table, the whole allocation table goes back to be rewritten.

Share figure · decides whether to work a categoryDensity figure · orders individual pages by priority

Ahrefs 43.8%: listicle citation sharedeltaV: comparison page type highest at 1.87 per search

Banned: ordering page priority, setting how many letters to sendBanned: ruling out a whole category, applying across industries

Figure: the share figure and the density figure measure two different things; you cannot use one table to decide the category and order the pages

If you are on the strictly regulated side, read this first: on this side, list-type third-party pages get no listing and no payment, and if you are already listed on one, you ask the publisher to remove you — so this share figure does not apply to you. On the other sides, whether the listicle category goes into this quarter's work depends on your side: check → General Edition 5.3 Quick reference by side (2): testimonials and reviews, comparisons, lists, titles, outbound links, FAQ and captions. Do not copy the conclusion straight from the share figure.

The order of where effort goes follows the share breakdown in → General Edition 1.1 How buyers ask, and what AI reads: 84% of AI citations come from earned media, and paid placements and advertorials account for only 0.3%. The correct reading of 84% is "someone else writes about you", not "you buy the placement" — misread it as "84% comes from third-party sites" and you put your effort into directory listings, paid listings and list submissions, landing exactly in that 0.3% bucket. One more number to note separately: even for brand-name questions, owned content is only 23% — "the website is the main battlefield" does not hold up against the real data.

Default orderIndustries with heavy platform control

① what you can edit yourself ② what someone else writes ③ what you pay for① first fix the wording on platform profiles that need no one's approval ② then do the ones that need approval

Basis: earned 84%, paid 0.3%Basis: back-office edits take effect immediately, no outreach cycle

Total workload unchanged, only the target changesThe container is not yours, but the words can be

Figure: the default order ranks by who decides this slot; for industries with heavy platform control, first fix what needs no one's approval

Example (e-commerce) Store and product profiles on a platform whose door is open are places where back-office edits take effect immediately, so get the wording right there first. Judge the platform's door one retrieval leg at a time, by running curl against its robots.txt; if the platform blocks a leg, the platform counts as not reachable on that leg.

Getting yourself onto a list AI already cites, and ranking #1 on it, is currently the only lever that comes with a figure for the size of its effect; that number and its qualifier appear only once in the whole book, in → General Edition D.1 Number discipline: how to label numbers, and what stays internal hard rule 3 — use it to order the work, never to promise any result.

Within off-site effort, one group alone takes 60%: institutions, government, associations and manufacturers. One more fixed calendar rule: when each page launches, log an off-site target — which source should cite this page — and within 14 days that must turn into either a sent letter or a "not reachable + basis" entry; anything not converted in time gets listed item by item in the monthly review. Write a page without pushing it off-site, and its output just gets pushed back into the "owned content is only 23%" bucket. How to do this group's work in four steps: see → General Edition 6.4 Three source groups, and the Group B actions.

Putting facts into a container that is already cited shows results in days to weeks; building a new page takes 2–8 weeks (inferred, 65% confidence, not measured) — which is why "already present" dispositions are ranked ahead of self-built pages. Review counts and star ratings do get copied into the body of AI answers, but only for recommendation-type questions such as "who's best" — see → General Edition 6.5 Reviews: how to ask, how to reply, how to fill the empty slot for how. Reddit's share of ChatGPT answers has dropped sharply before; the last drop of the same size fully recovered later, and ChatGPT has kept reading Reddit the whole time — what stopped was putting it into the answer. So we do not fix a conclusion here; read your own share every month, rule in 6.4. For the numbers, samples and sources above, see → General Edition A.2 Evidence for picking targets, writing pages, off-site and retests.

6.2 The send gate, paid listings and the citation-slot table

What you'll do in this section: Nail three things — the publishing authorisation, the materials sign-off sheet, and a zero-hit banned-word check — into a single gate; send no outreach letter if even one is missing. For paid slots, first ask how billing works and only take a fixed rate card. Then log every citation slot into the Citation-slot table, and on the monthly review tick off five binary features in passing; once a structure clears the threshold, write it into next month's page spec.

Figure: every outreach letter passes this gate; miss one item and it does not go out

Two documents; if either is missing, nothing goes out. The written publishing authorisation is only required on the side where switch A (agency liability) is on: the licence holder signs it, stating the licence number, the scope of authorisation, the term, and how it can be revoked — without it, publishing under an agent's name means the publishing party bears the liability directly; see the rule and the penalty in your industry edition. The materials sign-off sheet is needed on every side, one per batch: the signatory confirms, line by line, that the facts sent to the third party in this batch (price, registration number, an 80-word description, photo permissions) are true and authorised for publication — without it, if the third party publishes them as given and something goes wrong, the liability lands on you. The compliance memo must open with the liability and penalties page. Check the banned-word list for your side in → General Edition 5.2 Quick reference by side (1): identify the advertiser first; prices, promotions and freebies, result numbers and → General Edition 5.3 Quick reference by side (2): testimonials and reviews, comparisons, lists, titles, outbound links, FAQ and captions. → General Edition 6.3 Six dispositions, bylined contributions and outreach letters uses this same gate: every letter there must clear it before it is sent.

Figure: for a paid slot, first ask how billing works; do not proceed if it is unclear; never buy per-lead billing or a page carrying laudatory terms

Strict side: a list carrying laudatory terms (words like best, top choice, leading or number one in the title, a section name or an entry description) is never done, neither as a paid placement nor as an authorised publication. Disclosing the sponsorship does not make it lawful either; if you are already listed on a page like this, ask the publisher to remove you, and do not send a correction letter. All you can still buy is a pure directory or a price-comparison page whose title and entries carry no laudatory terms, and these two must not be budgeted side by side as equals: a price-comparison page is Group A, a pure directory is a Group C logging action (see 6.4). The lightly regulated side may buy fixed-rate-card listings and ad placements; if the paid page's wording includes comparisons or a claim of expertise, do not do it there either. If switch F (referral commissions banned) is on, pricing per lead, per sale or by commission counts as fee-sharing for clients, so buy only fixed rate cards.

Every paid item must be marked "paid listing" line by line, with its cost listed separately, in every task and every monthly report, and must never be written as "recommended" or "included in an independent review".

The Citation-slot table is off-site's main ledger: its fields are fixed, and none may be added or removed; one row = one URL (not one domain); the 16 fields and how to fill them are in → General Edition B.4 Headers for work orders, ledgers and monthly reports. The input must be the raw domains_cited you get from probing — the aggregated version strips out the target sites and cannot be used as input. Do not leave the "competitor's way in" column blank: a competitor has already tested, for you, which action works on this shelf — leave the column empty and all you know is which page to get onto, not how to get onto it.

Monthly reviewOpen and lookYou open every URL anyway; do it then
Tick in passingFive binary featuresprice table / side-by-side comparison / author byline with credentials / update date / FAQ
CountWork out the rateAbout 15 extra minutes a month, no new separate step
≥60%Write into the specMandatory for every new page next month; a page missing one does not launch
Monthly reportPrint one lineHigh-frequency structures in this month's Top 20, now in next month's spec

Figure: the citation-slot table's second use — reverse-engineer the structure AI already favours in your own question pool

Look only at visible HTML — not source code, not schema — and score anything you cannot tell as 0, never guess. This sample is what AI actually picked from your own question pool, so it fits better than averages borrowed from someone else's market. It cannot be used to override the density gate or the red line on lying: a structure that exists on a competitor's page is not the same as content you are allowed to write — the compliance verdict always comes first. The five-digit string for each row is for your own eyes only; outward-facing materials show only the summarised high-frequency feature names.

6.3 Six dispositions, bylined contributions and outreach letters

What you'll do in this section: Once past the send gate in 6.2, sort every URL in the baseline Top 20 into one of six dispositions, by who decides whether you can get into that slot. Bylined contributions give only checkable facts, under the contributor's own name. One outreach letter fits all cases; send it only to the two classes that should get it; follow up once at +7 and once at +21, then stop. Set no target for the number of letters.

Before sending, clear the send gate in → General Edition 6.2 The send gate, paid listings and the citation-slot table first (authorisation on file / this batch's sign-off sheet signed / zero hits on the banned-word list).

Figure: the six dispositions ranked by who decides this slot — what you can edit yourself first, what you pay for last

The order runs on "who decides this slot", not "which costs least effort": order by effort and you mix paid listings, directory submissions and bylined contributions into the same bucket, when earned media is 84% and paid placements and advertorials are only 0.3%. Total workload is unchanged, only the target changes. A correction-only item still gets a correction letter, and a request-removal item gets a removal request and a check on the due date; then both join the not-reachable items in the monthly review list.

Disposition	Time per item	Expected cycle
Update / correction letter	20 minutes	1–2 weeks (inferred, 60% confidence, not measured)
Group B institutional	15–30 minutes each	Claiming: immediate–3 days; registers and associations: 1–2 weeks
Bylined contribution	20–30 minutes per letter	2–6 weeks (inferred, not measured)
Enquiry and submission	Finding the contact and rate card: 2.5–4 h + writing each swap-in paragraph: 2.5–4 h, sent in two batches 1 day apart	Free editorial slot: 2–4 weeks; paid slot: 4–8 weeks (all inferred, not measured)
Monitor only	0–20 minutes	—

Within enquiry and submission, order individual pages by page-type citation density: send comparison-type and price-guide pages first, the rest after — this density figure is only for ordering within this class, and must never be used to rule out a whole category. A batch outreach reply rate of 15–25%, and a 2–6 week lag from launch to a change in AI citations, are both inferred (55% confidence, not measured) and used only to schedule internal work hours.

①Pick the targetLocal media → association newsletters → government registers → professional journals, in that order
②Find the contactByline → contact page → public email; write "could not be found" if you cannot
③Give the factsExclusive checkable facts: a fixed price table, conditions, timeframes, model numbers
④Write the letterReference their most recent piece; attach a source link to every fact
⑤Sign with a real nameOwn-name byline linking to the person page; never the organisation as author
⑥Follow upAt +7 and +21, then switch to "reachable (no response)"
⑦AcceptanceOpen the live URL and verify it before entering it into the ledger

Figure: how to make a bylined contribution — the contributor's own name, checkable facts only

One letter takes 20–30 minutes. The facts you give out must match the official website line for line, and must pass your side's gate checklist before sending; never pay in exchange for publication — paid placements go through enquiry and submission instead, and the two must never be mixed into one letter. 84% is the global prior across industries; your own industry's measured data overrides it — order the targets by your own shelf's page-type mix.

Example (B2B software) In a snapshot of this industry's category questions, news-type earned media comes in at about 1%, so it drops to the bottom of the order (the sample is too small to support "do not do it", only enough to support "do it last"); free, self-publishable developer-community long-form contributions are measured to get seats, so they go first.

Main letterOne letter fits allThe middle section swaps by disposition: enquiry / update / correction / contribution
+7Follow up onceOne question only: editorial decision, paid (billed how) or not open?
+21Last follow-upNo reply counts as not open; move to the monthly review
After thatSend no moreSend again only in the next listicle rewrite season

Figure: the rhythm of an outreach letter; nothing more is sent after +21

Send only to two classes: remaining reachable Group B items, and Group A items with all three of a specific URL, a usable contact and a written billing basis; never send this letter to a pure directory. The full letter text is in → General Edition B.3 Outreach emails and review replies. Externally, say only "every reachable one gets sent, each one logged" — never give an expected reply count, and never dress up a small number of letters as precise targeting; how many letters to send is an internal scheduling decision, and the approved wording is in → General Edition B.2 Approved wording and scripts.

Cannot giveGive instead

Result numbers such as success rate or win rateProcess duration, cost breakdown, billing method

Result numbers with no stated method or basisNumbers with a denominator, a year and a stated method

Before-and-after photos, a client's identitySpec tables, model numbers, test conditions

Claims like "guaranteed" or "fall behind if you don't"Statements of fact with the conditions spelled out

Negative claims about competitorsOnly your own exclusive checkable facts

A fabricated original or reference priceThe real selling price, with the comparison date noted

Adjectives, recommendations: best, top choiceFactual description, no adjectives

An export of the citation-slot table showing competitors' rankingsFor your own eyes only, never sent out

Figure: what cannot go into outreach material, with a checkable substitute for every one

6.4 Three source groups, and the Group B actions

What you'll do in this section: Clear the compliance verdict first, then allocate person-hours by Group B (government, associations, manufacturers — do first) → Group A (opportunistic slots) → Group C (pure directories, log only). The four Group B steps run in a fixed order; do not touch Group A submissions until they are done. The day a price page launches, send the same price table straight to the price-comparison slots.

Figure: the compliance verdict comes before the group; an item verdicted correction-only, request-removal or do-not-do enters no group

The three groups decide whether person-hours go in; the compliance verdict decides whether you can touch it at all.

articles Article type23.7%deltaV

listicles List type19.6%deltaV

category Category page5.2%deltaV

profile Profile page3.8%deltaV

Figure: in deltaV's page-type share, pure directories and profile pages rank lowest, so person-hours are allocated by group, not by domain size

Group B (government and statutory registers, professional association profiles, official links from manufacturers) is mostly free, stays once done, does not depend on a third-party editor's nod, and turns effort into on-the-list pages with almost no loss. Do not treat it as "cheap, so do it in passing"; the reason for the effort is the opposite: in the ChatGPT source reshuffle of 2026-08, institutional and government sources rose from about 1/6 to close to 1/3 — this is the group whose share is rising, so it is scheduled ahead of Group A; every free item must be done, none skipped. Group C is done only when it is free or very cheap and can be finished in passing; log it in the citation-slot table once done; it takes no person-hour budget, gets no enquiry letter and no separate follow-up.

Group A (price-comparison and price-guide pages, bylined professional content platforms) is kept to opportunistic slots only: send one letter along with the Group B batch only when all three of a specific URL, a usable contact and a written billing basis are present and the verdict is can do; anything missing one is logged to the reserve list — not chased, not followed up, not reordered — and reviewed once a quarter in passing. The number of Group A items is never a threshold for any verdict, and a thin Group A is never grounds to downgrade this quarter's off-site work. On the strict side, Group A is a structural gap: most local third-party comparison slots carry laudatory terms in their titles, so you cannot submit to them, and where one lists you, all you can do is request removal — do not wait on it; move the effort to a self-built, all-products price guide page instead (comparison-page-type density is counted by page type, not by domain ownership, so a self-built page earns it the same way). Do not submit to, or pay for, a laudatory-titled page to fill out Group A either — marking it "paid" does not make it compliant.

Example (dental and aesthetics) Almost every real local third-party price-comparison page carries Best / Top in its title, so none of them gets a submission, and any that lists the business is verdicted request removal. A second search turned up the same batch of titles, so letter counts and schedules are no longer set on the premise of "filling out the Group A list".

①Claim profilesThe five business profiles, every fact field matched word for word
②Check registersGovernment and statutory registers, check only, do not submit; fix any mismatch the same day
③Complete association profilesAdd credential fields to professional association profiles, link back to the person page
④Manufacturer listingApply for a locator with proof of purchase; it links to you (inbound)

Figure: the four Group B steps, in a fixed order; no free item may be skipped

Do not touch Group A submissions until every free Group B item is done; leaving even one free item blank means you may not mark this quarter's off-site work "complete". Step 4 applies only to a brand actually in use; one application pays off in two places at once: a link from a third-party site, plus a third-party endorsement that you use the genuine brand and model. It is an inbound link; on the strict side, your own pages state only the model number and the registered facts, and do not link out to the manufacturer. How to fill in the free-text field, the business post and the URL field for the five profiles: see → General Edition 3.4 Third-party credential tiers, Wikidata and the five business profiles.

The day a price page launches, send the public version of the same table as an attachment straight to price-comparison articles, a directory's price column, and price guides — they all want the same thing, one checkable price table, at close to zero cost. Red line: any price table sent out must match the official price page line for line, and the price wording must follow your side's price rules (→ General Edition 5.2 Quick reference by side (1): identify the advertiser first; prices, promotions and freebies, result numbers); send an update letter the same day a price changes.

Build your own list of sources: write down a price only when a page actually states one, mark unstated prices "quote on request", and mark anything you could not find "unverified"; the compliance-verdict column always outranks the priority column — an item verdicted correction-only, request-removal or do-not-do never gets a submission letter, however high its priority. One set is shared by every side: the five business profiles (Google / Bing / Foursquare / Apple / Yelp) come first, with Bing at P1 and the rest at P0; no fixed conclusion for Reddit — read your own share of domains_cited every month, and only schedule it as a task above 2%; at or below 2%, log it but do not commit effort. See your industry edition for the specific sites and contacts.

This quarter, off-site is judged on only two things, both fully within your own control: ① has everything due to Group B been sent? ② has the all-products price guide page (English + Chinese) gone live and been entered in the page register?

6.5 Reviews: how to ask, how to reply, how to fill the empty slot

What you'll do in this section: First decide, by your side, whether you may ask for reviews at all — the strict side never may, the other two sides may. On sides that may ask, draw from the whole body of paying customers under a fixed set of hard boundaries, keeping the incentive decoupled from the content. On every side, reply within 72 hours and never confirm a reviewer's identity. On the strict side, fill the empty review slot with the highest-strength substitutes first.

Whether each side may ask for reviews, and may display them on-site, is set by your side — check → General Edition 5.3 Quick reference by side (2): testimonials and reviews, comparisons, lists, titles, outbound links, FAQ and captions; this section covers the actions only. On every side, a public reply never confirms that the reviewer is your customer and never restates the service they received — this is a privacy and confidentiality obligation (Conservative line (not statute text)); a customer writing it themselves in a review does not give you authorisation to confirm it publicly.

BeforeTemplate signed off firstLight side: the template goes word for word into the compliance memo, signed before use
WhoThe whole paying baseDrawn from the same batch of paying customers by rule, never picked by satisfaction
IncentiveDisclosed and applied equallyWritten into the invitation; tied to whether they wrote a review, never to the score
WritingNever written for themNo staff, friends or family posting fake reviews; no dictated content
DisplayText only, where allowedThe side that may display shows text only; embedding only an aggregate score counts as not done
CountOnly the number sentNever the number of reviews produced

Figure: on the side that may request reviews, send the request like this; count only the number sent

On the lightly regulated side, until the sign-off is back, all you may do is "ask them to leave a review", with no steering on what to write. Whether asking for a review on this side falls under the restrictions on professional advertising is uncertain: our confidence in the original text is under 60%, and it is not measured. Do not decide this on your own. The strict side may not ask even with a sign-off. A written sign-off resolves only the three stop-and-escalate situations; it never turns something banned as Statute text into something publishable. See → General Edition 0.4 The three labels for compliance sentences, and the stop-and-escalate rule.

Example (e-commerce) Asking for reviews is allowed and must be done: send the invitation to the full set of that batch's paying buyers, not "ask if they're happy" first and decide from that; state any incentive in the invitation, and give it the same regardless of the score.

There are two layers of gatekeeper: the platform's seller policy (which can suspend your store outright) and how fair-trading enforcement treats false and misleading reviews. Follow whichever is stricter; platform policy is usually more detailed than the law, so follow the platform's first. Who the gatekeeper actually is — the law, a professional code, a platform rule or platform terms — has to be measured industry by industry, never inferred from the side.

WordingRed line

Route to the right role, leave a contactNever combine a project name, a branch name and personal details

Reply within 72 hours, negative reviews includedNever state a price, an outcome, a success rate or a peer comparison

Use the same template for every negative reviewNever argue, never restate what happened

Figure: replying to reviews is the same on every side — never confirm a reviewer's identity, never restate what they bought

①Price and comparison pagesTiered fixed-price pages + third-party price-comparison pages, highest density
②Named long-form contentInstitution-bylined professional educational long-form; not settled yet, not scheduled for now
③Profile credentialsThe five profiles + /facts + checkable third-party credential tiers
④Links from institutionsGroup B, free, must do: government, associations, manufacturers

Figure: on the strict side, the four substitutes that fill the empty review slot, in order of strength

Pure directory listings do not count in these four — measured data shows it is the lowest-citation-density page type, and belongs to Group C logging actions. For the third item, state only the credential tier's name and issuer; the strict side never writes a manufacturer-granted tier (Conservative line (not statute text)); never write "highest", "only" or "leading" — even if true, it is always banned. "AI copies the credential tier, not the review" rests on only a single-engine general-search snapshot, and until locally retested it is used only for internal ordering and direction, never in outward-facing materials — evidence in → General Edition A.1 Evidence for mechanics, the door and identity. Reply templates in Chinese and English are in → General Edition B.3 Outreach emails and review replies; the monthly three review numbers are in → General Edition B.4 Headers for work orders, ledgers and monthly reports. The strict side's monthly report always adds one fixed line in its review section: we do not request reviews. The figures above are a passive record of reviews that arose naturally and are not used as a work target or acceptance measure.

6.6 Annual rankings and off-site asset decay

What you'll do in this section: For an annual ranking, do only three things — build a calendar and ask about the next edition's window, send only the participation link and never fill anything in for others, and write a factual statement once the result is out. Write the monthly review of off-site assets into the deliverables — they decay, and left unmanaged they quietly leak away. The ledger tracks only three numbers.

①Build the calendarTwo reminders: three weeks before the window to prepare, and the day it opens
②AskEmail to ask the next edition's window dates and the participation link
③Prepare materialsTwo lists: peers who could recommend you, and customers willing to take part
④Send only the linkSend only the participation link and instructions — never fill it in for them, never write the recommendation, never pay for it
⑤After resultsPut the list's URL into the citation-slot table; a factual statement with the original link, no adjectives

Figure: for an annual ranking, do only these steps; being selected is never treated as something you control

Example (legal) An annual best-of ranking co-run by a newspaper and a statistics body: the survey window has clear start and end dates, self-nomination is explicitly banned, and the page states no fee anywhere (zero-fee entry, 85% confidence). It is worth a standalone entry because it is free, annual and from an authoritative domain, and there are third-party list-type pages that openly use it as a ranking input — but who gets in is decided by the organiser and the voters; all you can guarantee is preparing, taking part and keeping a record, on schedule.

For peer-voted or panel-judged rankings: the annual cycle runs 3–9 months, entry is free (unverified), self-nomination is banned, and the calendar reminder and preparation process are the same as above; see your industry edition for the specific ranking names. Once selected, citing the placement in your own advertising should still only be a factual statement with the original ranking link — no adjectives, never write "the best"; on the strict side, your own pages do not quote the placement (see → General Edition 5.3 Quick reference by side (2): testimonials and reviews, comparisons, lists, titles, outbound links, FAQ and captions), and whether the website mentions it goes to the compliance officer first.

Figure: the six kinds of off-site asset decay, checked one by one in the monthly review

Review frequency: check listicles monthly from Q4 each year; check annual rankings 3 weeks before the annual window; check the other four monthly; tick each one "present / gone / page deleted". Leaving the price item unmanaged results in AI quoting a wrong price, and complaints.

D1 afternoonProduce the citation-slot tableRaw domains_cited, three states plus a verdict, URL by URL
Week 1Updates, corrections and removalsSend every letter for already-present, correction-only and request-removal items
Weeks 1–2Group B firstProfiles → registers → associations → manufacturer locators
Week 2Annual rankingsSend the enquiry email, build the calendar reminder
Weeks 2–3Contributions and submissionsBylined contributions first, Group A enquiries follow, 1 day apart
Weeks 3–5Follow-up and close-out+7 for the whole batch in weeks 3–4, +21 for the whole batch in week 5
From week 4Monthly reviewTick three states, produce three numbers, tick the five binary features in passing

Figure: the work order for off-site's first two months

The first two months total about 19–22 hours, then about 1.5 hours a month after that. No new tool is needed; the only machine input is the raw domains_cited — never the aggregated version, which strips out generic domains, and business-profile and review-site domains are exactly this step's target sites.

The ledger tracks only three numbers (none depending on AI's own fluctuation):

Pages on the list X/20: the denominator is the frozen baseline Top 20, opened and screenshotted by hand, URL by URL;
New listings, tracked separately, not counted in number 1: third-party URLs newly on the list this quarter that were not in the baseline Top 20, each one marked whether it has been cited in an AI answer this quarter — one not yet cited is only a record of work done, never a result number;
This month's new and dropped citation slots, URL by URL.

Three deliverables — not produced by month-end means not done (headers in → General Edition B.4 Headers for work orders, ledgers and monthly reports):

Deliverable	Content	Frequency
Citation-slot table	Baseline Top 20, every row filled, "could not find" where you could not find it	First version produced from the quick-start coarse screen on D1, marked "quick-start basis, to be reproduced on D6"; reproduced to overwrite once the D6 baseline is frozen; monthly after that
Outreach ledger	Three states — sent / replied / live — with the email date and the live URL	Weekly
Off-site asset ledger: three numbers	The three numbers above	Monthly, and into the monthly report

A one-page Maintenance notes, kept always at hand: which items need re-submitting every year, which rankings get redesigned, that a price change in the profiles must be synced across all five, and that the strict side does not proactively request reviews. Paid-listing discipline is an integrity red line: for any listing obtained through a paid slot, mark it "paid listing" line by line, with the cost listed separately, in the plan, the task list and the monthly report; never pay for any specific ranking, never buy reviews, never organise fake recommendations, never pose as an independent review, and never use a platform billed per enquiry or by commission share. Disclosing a payment fixes an integrity problem, not a regulatory one: an item verdicted correction-only, request-removal or do-not-do must not go in, even when it is marked paid. How these two disciplines are worded externally: see → General Edition B.2 Approved wording and scripts.

Off-site assets decay: that is the only answer to "why keep doing this" you can give without lying.

6.7 Long videos narrated by the named expert

What you'll do in this section: Within 14 days of every thick page going live, pair it with an 8–15 minute video narrated by the named expert — the script is simply reading out that page's H2 questions in order, one by one; the description holds the page URL, the full transcript and a link to the person page, with timestamps matching the H2s. Do not chase view counts.

YouTube mentions (title/transcript/description)0.737Ahrefs 2026

Backlinks0.218same study

Figure: correlation with AI Overviews visibility; for video mentions it is more than three times that for backlinks

This leg needs no viral hit: the correlation between view count, likes, subscriber count and citation frequency is about −0.03 (a different study, measuring citation frequency, not the same measure as the chart above), so buying views, chasing plays and fancy editing return nothing. It is scheduled into off-site, and not last, because it is the strongest single correlation among all measured factors, and YouTube accounts for 23% of citations in Google's AI answers: on the Google leg, nearly a quarter of citation slots are videos. The benefit lands mainly on Google and Perplexity; do not use ChatGPT's seat count to check it. ⚠️ 0.737 is a correlation coefficient, not causation; the working hypothesis is that a YouTube page is already inside the cited set, so whatever text sits on it gets a chance to be copied — the causal mechanism is not measured. Sources in → General Edition A.2 Evidence for picking targets, writing pages, off-site and retests.

TitleMain question + location + year, in the buyer's own words that match the page's H1

On cameraThe thick page's named expert, in person, narrating throughout

Length8–15 minutes; under 8 minutes does not count

Description · line 1The full URL of that thick page

Description · bodyThe complete transcript, in full

Description · endThe named expert's person-page URL

TimestampsOne per H2 of that page, in order, text matching the H2 word for word

BylineThe one authoritative legal-name spelling, linking back to the person page

AI voiceover or a slide deck instead of a real persondo not doDon't

Buying views, boosting, chasing playsdo not doDon't

Jump cuts, background music, effects, a hook-first opening, cutting into Shortsdo not doDon't

RequiredDon't

Figure: the blocks of a video page — every one is text for retrieval to read; no gimmicks of any kind

94% of YouTube's AI citations go to long-form video; on this leg, short clips are effectively invisible. Timestamps follow the H2s because 78% of videos with timestamps get cited repeatedly; the description holds the full transcript because description length correlates with being cited (r = 0.31) — the engines crawl the text around the video, and the description is the main crawlable text on this leg.

The script is simply that thick page's H2 questions read out one by one, one section per H2, in the page's own order, adding no fact that is not already on the page — everything comes straight from the fact table. The transcript is public advertising text; the outline and the full transcript go through the compliance gate in the same process, with the same signatory, as the thick page, and nothing is published before sign-off. On the strict side, the video covers only process steps and duration, device or product model numbers, the cost breakdown and who it is not suitable for: never outcomes, never before-and-after images, no clients on screen, no mention of peers. Who appears on camera follows the anchor layer: the organisation lead, the named professional, or the product owner.

Example (training) A public course clip is already a long video with its own chapters; timestamps follow the H2s of the course outline.

Division of labour and time are fixed: the script takes 1 hour (by the page writer, produced in the same batch as the thick page), filming takes 30 minutes (one take, never a full reshoot), post-production takes 1 hour (only four things: trim the head and tail, add captions, export the transcript, and set timestamps by H2), compliance review happens in the same batch as the thick page, and logging takes 10 minutes (one line into the outreach ledger). Do not publish the video before the thick page is live — the description's first line needs that URL, and publishing first just leaves a 404. This is a mechanical gate within the page-writing flow: see → General Edition 5.4 The 30-day writing order and the three mechanical gates.

14 days after launchTake a unique phraseA unique checkable fact string that appears only in the narration
Same dayAsk on threeChatGPT / Perplexity / Google, once each
RecordLog each resultQuoted back / listed as a source / neither
Keep on fileScreenshot into the ledgerThe result goes into that row of the outreach ledger

Figure: video acceptance, valid even at n = 1: it measures whether it was read, not which position it ranks

Never track view count, subscriber count or completion rate — these three numbers have almost no relation to citation frequency; writing them into a report just reports a number already known to be irrelevant.

Verdict (six items)

Every live thick page has a matching video, or a line in the page register stating why not;
Length ≥8 minutes, the named expert on camera throughout;
All three description items present: the thick page's URL (line 1) + the full transcript + the person-page URL;
Timestamps set for every H2, text matching the page's H2s word for word;
The transcript has passed the ban table for your side and has been signed by the signatory;
The 14-day quote-back test has been run, all three outcomes recorded, screenshots on file.

Common mistakes

Making a 2–3 minute promotional clip instead;
Putting only a one-line blurb in the description and skipping the transcript, effectively hiding the body text;
No timestamps;
Jump cuts and fancy on-screen text added for looks, breaking up the narration so the transcript gets chopped up;
The named person does not appear, replaced with a slide deck plus AI voiceover;
The video states a fact that is not on the page;
The transcript published before it clears the compliance gate;
Publishing the video before the page is live, leaving a 404 in the description;
Reporting view count, or stopping the effort because view count is low.

6.8 Off-site verdicts, common mistakes and rituals to cut

What you'll do in this section: This quarter's off-site work is not done until every one of nine verdicts is ticked. Hit the abstain line (12 or more "not reachable" items in the baseline Top 20) and off-site work stops for that intent — state the reason and switch to monitor only. Check the ritual table, cut the actions that never move rankings, and put the saved time back into week-1 identity fixes and weeks 1–4 off-site work.

Nine verdicts

Every URL in the baseline Top 20 has had its three-state check and compliance verdict done, no gaps;
Every update letter, correction letter and removal request for the three classes "already present", "correction only" and "request removal" has been sent;
Every Group B item that is reachable and verdicted can do has been sent out, none left, each logged in the outreach ledger with a date and a live URL; a Group A item with all three present is sent in passing, anything missing one goes to the reserve list — no floor on the number sent, and this is never counted as a gap; Group C is not counted in this item. One more item counts equally: the all-products price guide page (English + Chinese) is live and entered in the page register, all three of its specs ticked — one page covering all products / set alongside the official benchmark (how it is set alongside varies by side: on the strict side the official benchmark stands as its own section, with none of your own prices in that section — see → General Edition 5.12 Price guide page (1): why it is always the first page (pt02)) / the H1 carries the year and dateModified is up to date. Neither of these two items depends on whether the third party accepts your submission — they are judged only on whether it was sent and is live; whether the third party takes it up is still never promised;
All five business profiles claimed, the URL points to the landing page, not the homepage, and every free-text field has passed the banned-word list;
Every off-site cost marked "paid listing" line by line, no item billed per lead or by commission;
Review actions run by side: zero review-request actions on the strict side; on the light side, any request must first have a signed compliance memo, with an actual sending record;
The annual-ranking calendar reminder has been built;
Both off-site-asset maintenance and paid-listing disclosure are written into the process;
Every off-site material has zero hits on the compliance memo's banned-word list, with a signed materials sign-off sheet; on the side where switch A (agency liability) is on, the publishing authorisation is also on file. Missing any one of the three means do not send (see the send gate in → General Edition 6.2 The send gate, paid listings and the citation-slot table).

Figure: hit the abstain line for not-reachable items, and this intent's off-site work stops, switching to monitor only

Common mistakes

Using the aggregated domains_cited as input — it strips out the target sites;
Ticking the three states by domain rather than by URL — the same domain can have some pages open and others not;
Testing outreach one letter at a time — the whole Group B batch should go out in one go;
Sending Group C pure directories to pad the letter count — the count was never the target; stop once Group B is done and Group A's opportunistic slots are sent;
Waiting for the Group A list to build up before starting — Group A is a structural gap and never fills up; the right move is a self-built all-products price guide page;
Treating comparison-page type as something only others can give you — density is counted by page type, not by domain ownership, and a self-built page earns it the same way;
Reporting an expected reply count externally;
Writing a paid listing as "included in an independent review";
Paying for a laudatory-titled ranking slot on the strict side, thinking that marking it "paid listing" makes it compliant;
Citing any third-party directory that claims to be certified by a regulator — the only citable official credential is your own licence/registration number plus a link to the official lookup page;
Using a per-enquiry or per-commission traffic platform when switch F (referral commissions banned) is on — this is not a purchase, it is fee-sharing for clients;
Filling a business profile's URL with the homepage, or posting promotions or reposted reviews as a business post;
Not sending an update letter after a price changes — the stale price left in a third-party profile gets quoted by AI as current;
Nominating yourself for a peer-nominated ranking — the ranking's own rules explicitly ban self-nomination, and a single self-nomination can count against you for the whole edition;
On the side where switch A (agency liability) is on, publishing material externally under an agent's name without a publishing authorisation on file;
Sending a review-request template on the strict side;
Setting long-term disposition from a single month's fluctuation — see → General Edition D.1 Number discipline: how to label numbers, and what stays internal hard rule 5;
Treating off-site as a one-off project — see → General Edition 6.6 Annual rankings and off-site asset decay.

The rituals to cut are, every one of them, actions that "get done but never move rankings"; they share one table with the target-picking layer, and the five overlapping items are written only in → General Edition 1.4 Three kinds of things not to do:

CutReplace with

A full baseline of 30 questions × 5 rounds × 2 enginesTwo-stage probing + one same-week retest round

Page-by-page audits + ledgers + calendars + a strategy deckA one-page work order on D1 afternoon

Multiplying four scored factors, divided by costAnnual opportunity value = price per order × gross margin × monthly capacity cap × 12

Always running URL-level and answer-level double countingDeferred until the first retest

A deep review run on your own siteAimed only at competitors; deep-review questions never enter the question pool

Positioning-statement checks + fields logged but never usedDelete them; turn negative/excluded tendencies into same-day queue-jumping alerts

Paid listings and submissions as the main lineOpportunistic slots only — by their mechanism they take none of the three paths

Six-way classification / JSON-LD / permutation testing / notarised screenshots / pure-symptom questionsSee the fixes in 1.4

Figure: the off-site and target-picking rituals to cut, and what to replace them with

Paid listings cannot move rankings, and the reason is mechanical: what money buys is only exposure or an intelligence product — not one word about you on that page changes. Of the three paths (putting facts into an already-cited page, expanding the candidate set, raising confidence that it is the same business), it takes none; see → General Edition 1.3 Three gates and three paths. The 0.3% figure is the citation share of paid advertorials: it is only supporting evidence, not the basis for this rule, because paid listings and ad placements have never been measured separately. Cutting the first six rows of this table plus the five items in 1.4 saves about 81 person-hours per quarter (summed line by line, estimated; the same-week retest is already netted back in as an added cost).