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LLM Data-to-Citation Guide

How to turn schema and NDJSON into citations in LLM answers and AI Overviews.

Why citations happen

LLMs cite when a retrieval step fetches a verifiable passage tied to a stable URL. JSON-LD on page and an AI manifest (/sitemaps/sitemap-ai.ndjson) make that mapping explicit and cheap.

Publish token-lean facts via NDJSON

Expose compact JSON-LD objects (one per line) summarizing key pages/entities. Link it from robots.txt with an AI-Manifest line.

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","url":"https://nrlc.ai/","name":"NRLC.ai — Home","inLanguage":"en","dateModified":"2026-03-03"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","url":"https://nrlc.ai/promptware/llm-data-to-citation/","name":"LLM Data-to-Citation Guide","inLanguage":"en","dateModified":"2026-03-03","keywords":["NDJSON","schema","RAG","citations"]}

Stream test:

curl -s https://nrlc.ai/api/stream?limit=3 | jq .

Minimum viable schema for citations

  • @type (e.g., TechArticle), name, url, dateModified
  • @id (use your canonical URL with a fragment if needed)
  • isPartOf and BreadcrumbList for site context
  • Optional Dataset node if you publish sitemap-ai.ndjson as a downloadable asset

RAG preferences you can influence

  1. Serve fast NDJSON with Content-Type: application/x-ndjson and long-lived cache for static files.
  2. Keep page prose concise; move machine details to JSON-LD to reduce tokens.
  3. Link your canonical "reference pages" from relevant sections to increase retrieval odds.

See also: JSON Stream + SEO AI

FAQ

Does Google still render HowTo/FAQ rich results?

Eligibility is limited, but the markup still improves machine understanding and RAG mapping. Keep it.

Where do I declare the AI manifest?

Add an AI-Manifest: line in /public/robots.txt pointing to /sitemaps/sitemap-ai.ndjson.