In the GEO experiments, adding citations to source content was reported to increase source visibility in generative-engine responses.

Cited by documentation

Sources

• GEO: Generative Engine Optimization

  arXiv / ACM KDD 2024 (Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan, Deshpande) · primary source · retrieved 2026-08-21

  “including citations, quotations from relevant sources, and statistics can significantly boost source visibility” — Abstract / Introduction (identical statement repeated in Conclusion)

• GEO: Generative Engine Optimization

  arXiv / KDD 2024 authors · primary source · retrieved 2026-08-21

  “Cite Sources & 5. Quotation Addition: Adds relevant citations and quotations from credible sources respectively” — §2.2.2 lines 121-125, Cite Sources method definition

  “Cite Sources | $24.9$ | $24.5$ | $24.6$” — Table 1, lines 149-167

• C-SEO Bench: Does Conversational SEO Work?

  arXiv / NeurIPS 2025 authors · primary source · retrieved 2026-08-21

  “most current C-SEO methods are not only largely ineffective but also frequently have a negative impact on document ranking” — Abstract/results, lines 55-58 and 73-84

• Optimizing Visibility in Generative Engines: A Critical Survey of GEO (2023–2026)

  arXiv · retrieved 2026-08-21

  “The foundational paper's widely cited gains are valid within its experimental setting but conditional on a source already being present in a fixed context” — Abstract/summary discussion of the foundational paper

• Generative Engine Optimization: What Research Says

  BlogSEO · retrieved 2026-08-21

  “adding citations, quotes, and stats could shift visibility toward a previously less-prominent source” — Summary of the KDD 2024 paper's experiments