Site Not Showing in AI Results

Diagnose why your site is not appearing in AI-generated answers, AI Overviews, or LLM citations.

Your site is indexed by search engines, but does not appear in:

• Google AI Overviews
• ChatGPT web search results
• Perplexity citations
• Other LLM-generated answers

Traditional search rankings may be stable or even improving, but AI systems are not retrieving your content.

This behavior is explained by decision traces in generative search. When content cannot be cleanly segmented or lacks atomic, self-contained answers, generative engines create negative decision traces—records that the content failed confidence or relevance thresholds.

Generative engines retrieve content at the segment level, not the page level. If your content cannot be cleanly segmented or lacks atomic, self-contained answers, it will not be retrieved even if the page ranks well.

Common root causes:

• Content is not prechunked for independent retrieval
• Segments lack clear question-answer structure
• Content depends on page context to make sense
• Headers are vague or abstract rather than query-shaped
• Chunks are too long or contain multiple ideas

This symptom typically maps to:

• Failure Modes Index — See "Content Not Retrievable" patterns
• Lack of atomic content structure
• Missing prechunking implementation

1. Check content structure: Can each section stand alone if extracted?
2. Verify headers: Do headers match actual search queries?
3. Test atomicity: Copy a random paragraph—does it make sense without context?
4. Check chunk size: Are sections 40-120 words with one idea each?
5. Review prechunking: Was content structured before writing for retrieval?

To resolve this issue:

1. Restructure content using the NRLC Prechunking Framework
2. Ensure each section answers exactly one question
3. Make headers query-shaped and deterministic
4. Remove narrative glue and dependencies between sections
5. Test each chunk for independent citation eligibility

See Generative Engine Optimization for foundational mechanics.

If these conditions describe your system, the issue is structural rather than tactical. Some teams address this internally. Others ask for help implementing the changes described above across large or high risk sites.

Implementation Support

This is a failure state within AI Optimization, where systems fail to retrieve or select a source during AI-driven search and answer generation.