What actually changes
On a classic results page, ten links share attention and ranking decides how clicks are distributed. In a generated answer, one to five sources are cited and the rest do not exist. The competition is no longer about position but about selection.
That shifts the optimisation work. It is no longer about making a page broadly relevant, but about making a specific passage extractable and attributable.
Five properties of citable content
Self-contained passages. A paragraph quoted out of context must remain accurate. It cannot open with «as we saw above» or a pronoun whose referent lives elsewhere.
Answer first. The opening sentence answers; the development follows. A paragraph that builds for five lines will never be extracted.
Attributed data. «62 % of requests handled automatically, measured across 1,800 monthly requests in 2025» is citable. «A high automation rate» is not.
An identifiable author. Technical content signed by a person whose expertise can be verified is markedly more often reused than content signed «the team».
A coherent entity. Name, activity and contact details must be identical everywhere: site, structured data, directories, professional profiles. A blurry entity does not get named.