One of the most helpful mental models I’ve picked up is simple: we’re moving from a world of links to a world of answers. And in that world, the win condition changes.
When your audience asks a question in an LLM interface, they aren’t met with ten blue links. They’re met with a single synthesis, often confident, often tidy, sometimes wrong, but always influential. The new challenge isn’t “can people find you?” It’s “does the machine include you?”
This is why I keep coming back to the phrase: a citation economy. If answers are the currency, citations are how that currency is backed. Your brand’s authority is increasingly expressed through what gets cited, repeated,