Most businesses understand SEO in terms of keyword coverage — showing up in search results for as many relevant queries as possible. But AI optimization works on a fundamentally different model. When someone uses ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews to research a business question, the AI isn't matching keywords to ranked pages. It's deciding whose information, whose expertise, and whose business to include in a generated answer — and that decision is based on citation signals, not keyword rankings. In this post we introduce the concept of citation coverage, explain how it differs from keyword coverage, and lay out what businesses should be building right now to show up in the AI-powered search landscape that's reshaping how buyers find and evaluate their options.