What do independent sources say about you?
Ask a customer’s question in AI search and open the cited sources. Reviews, coverage, community discussions, and other people’s pages may shape the answer. Check what they say and whether the business details are accurate.
Where can you add something useful?
Start where your customers already ask questions. Offer a substantive answer, contribute expertise to a relevant conversation, or give a client a reason to describe their experience honestly. The goal is credible evidence, not a pile of mentions with no substance.
What should stay on your website?
Clear information about your work, useful answers, and sources readers can check. Your site still needs to help someone understand the business and decide what to do next. Keep it current while building a public record beyond it. No single mention or source type guarantees that AI will recommend you.
Sources
Sources
- McKinsey: New front door to the internet, winning in the age of AI search (16 October 2025). A brand's own sites comprise 5 to 10 percent of the sources AI search references.
- Jeff Fargo, Fargo Factor Insight: Why AI Recommends Your Competitor When You Know More
Transcript
Verbatim from the Fargo Walks clip, as recorded.
If ChatGPT is searching for whatever your business offers, you're not going to be found because of your website. McKinsey said so last month. 99% of AI search is third party citations, third party data, not self-generated. We already know how great you are. Other people need to be talking about how great you are. So that's reviews, that's forums, that's anything else that is not paid media. Definitely be blogging, but the blogs have to have citations of sources that are obviously third party and not paid. I'm Jeff Fargo. I help businesses get found through AI search. Go forth.
Note on the numbers: the clip says 99 percent and last month. McKinsey's published figure is 5 to 10 percent for a brand's own sites, which puts third-party sources at 90 to 95 percent, and the article was published in October 2025. The correct figures are used throughout this piece.