Site demonstrates topical depth
Why it matters
The one content lever AI-search vendors name in their own guidance is unique, expert depth. Google's generative-AI guide says the durable influence on AI-search presence is content with "unique expert or experienced takes that go beyond common knowledge" rather than recycling "what others on the internet have already said," and Microsoft's AI-citation guidance leads with "strengthen depth and expertise." A homepage plus a pricing page cannot demonstrate that — substantive pages covering different angles of your domain are the evidence that there is expertise worth citing. This check measures the floor: enough real pages on the core topic to show any depth at all.
Severity rationale
Critical because unique expert depth is the only content lever Google and Microsoft themselves name for AI-answer presence, and a site without it has nothing differentiated for an answer engine to cite.
Remediation
Create at least three distinct public pages on the site's core topic, each with a minimum of 100 words of body text and a distinguishably different angle. Documentation, blog posts, guides, and comparison pages all qualify. Add routes under src/app/docs/, src/app/blog/, or MDX files under src/content/blog/.
src/app/docs/page.tsx
src/content/blog/post-1.mdx
src/content/blog/post-2.mdx
DetectionPro
The detection method for this pattern is part of AuditBuffet Pro.
The full method (what to look for, pass and fail conditions, and how results get reported) ships inside the GEO Readiness Audit. The pattern definition, severity rationale, and remediation remain openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0.
External references
- external · google-ai-optimization-guide — Google — Optimizing your website for generative AI features (non-commodity content)
- external · bing-geo-guidance — Microsoft — Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers
Taxons
History
- 2026-04-18·v1.0.0·Initial import from geo-readiness·automated
- 2026-06-10·v1.0.1·Light-touch reframe: replaced the invented retrieval mechanism ("infer topical authority from page count… shallow sites get skipped") with the vendors own framing — Googles unique non-commodity content + Microsofts depth-and-expertise guidance. Criteria and thresholds unchanged.·by geo-first-party-alignment