How should a page be laid out to get cited in AI summaries?

Short answer: AI summaries prefer to cite pages that state the answer in one clear paragraph at the top and organize the rest into scannable blocks. The goal of the layout is to let the model extract the answer without effort.

Elements of a citable page layout

• A two to three sentence direct answer paragraph right below the H1
• Each H2 and H3 heading resolves exactly one subquestion
• Lists, tables and short definition blocks instead of walls of text
• A question and answer block marked up with Schema.org FAQPage at the end of the page
• Trust signals such as author, date and cited sources

ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and DeepSeek select passages that are self-contained and verifiable, so every section must read on its own. TYS Digital Performance measures the effect of such a layout against a baseline: recurring question tests check which page gets cited for which questions, and the layout is refined based on that data. A fixed citation rate cannot be promised; what gets reported is the measured direction.