Citation Readiness
Citation Readiness is a score measuring how likely a page is to be cited by AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. It is calculated from 6 programmatic checks and costs zero compute to run.
The 6 Checks
- Front-loading (25%) — Whether key information appears in the first 30% of the page
- Entity density (20%) — Proportion of named entities vs total text, targeting 15-20%
- Definitive language (20%) — Use of authoritative statements ("X is") vs hedging ("X might be")
- Readability (15%) — Clear sentence structure that AI parsers can extract cleanly
- H2 questions (10%) — Whether H2 headings are phrased as questions that match user queries
- Capsule links (10%) — Whether answer capsules are free from disruptive outbound links
Threshold & Actions
Pages scoring below 70 trigger automatic corrective actions in the Rankeo dashboard. The score is based on Kevin Indig's Ski Ramp research, which analyzed 1.2 million ChatGPT responses and 18,000 verified citations to identify the content patterns that maximize AI extraction probability.
Related Terms
- Answer Capsules — The format that maximizes citation readiness
- Extraction Pressure — The pillar that directly improves citation readiness
- Pressure SEO — The methodology that systematically raises citation readiness