TL;DR:

According to Muck Rack’s 2025 AI citation study, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini overwhelmingly cite journalistic, non-marketing content, especially on energy and climate. Over 27% of AI-cited links come from news outlets, while promotional material is mostly ignored.

If you want your clean energy company to be cited in AI summaries about solar or energy trends, don’t sell; instead educate and build entity recognition with credible, third-party validation.

AI doesn’t reward marketing. It rewards clarity, authority, and intent-matched answers.

What sources do AI models trust the most? 

As AI replaces traditional search, it’s important to understand which sources are trusted by popular AI search tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. Muckrack (a media database tool for PR professionals) conducted a July 2025 analysis called “What is AI reading?” Their report evaluated over 1 million citations from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to identify patterns in citations. 

We’ve captured some of the most interesting findings in this blog and we offer recommendations for how you can keep your clean energy company visible in AI search. 

Not all AI searches are created equally 

There are two types of AI searches: those with citations and those without. Older or free versions of ChatGPT, for example, may have citations disabled, meaning that searches are only pulling from the LLM's historic memory, or “core knowledge,” and not from the web. These “memory-based” search results are often limited and outdated. Using a search feature where citations are enabled significantly alters responses, leading to more robust answers with cited references.

Believe it or not, many users are still using Chat without citations, or without the web-enabled feature; we’ll be sharing more information about that this fall. Stay tuned because Tigercomm will be releasing a report in Fall of 2025 on how memory-based and live searches compare for clean energy companies. 

For the purpose of this article, let’s assume the user has enabled citations, or "live search". 

How can a cleantech company show up in AI summaries?  

Why does AI cite some clean energy brands and not others?

According to Muck Rack's 2025 Generative Pulse, “What is AI reading?” 

• Earned media is better than paid (advertising). Media coverage from journalists (what we call earned media) is an important driver in AI pickup. 

  • More than 95% of links cited by AI are non-paid coverage. 

  • Of those, over 27% are journalistic content. 

  • The majority of cited content is not promotional or salesy in nature.

• Outlet authority matters. AI searches tend to cite well known sources. For example, we see that media outlets like Forbes, Reuters, Axios, Associated Press and Financial Times are frequently cited by LLMs like Gemini and ChatGPT. 

• Recency matters. Stories written in the last year tend to do better. Among cited journalism content, there was a strong bias towards stories published in the last 12 months (recency preference varied across AI models).  

• Owned media helps, and the clean energy sector is falling behind in that space. Drilling down to the energy sector specifically, we see that owned media is underrepresented. Owned media is content that a company controls directly, like a website or blog. While other industries see 43% of cited links from company-owned sources, only 30% of links cited in the energy sector are from company-owned sources.

AI models like Gemini and Claude prioritize sources that clearly explain technical topics, use recognized data, and publish frequently, with regularly updated content.

The MuckRack research surfaces another opportunity: AI rewards niche content, especially on hyper-specific topics that may not generate as much mainstream coverage.  That means that getting coverage in a hyper-specific clean trade outlet like pvmag, PV Tech, or Solar Power World can help your clean energy brand. 

To get sited in AI summaries, clean energy brands must optimize for semantic relevance, entity authority, and snippet-ready formats. More on all of that below. 

What is semantic SEO and why does it matter?

Semantic SEO structures content based on user intent and real-world entities rather than keyword repetition. User intent might be for information (education), or commercial (sales) purposes. AI prefers content that serves educational or informational user intent. 

Real-world entities are people, places, and things that are known in the real world, like the Empire State Building, the Declaration of Independence, or Nike.  

Example:

• Poor: “Our solar product saves money.”
  
  
• Better: “How is the OBBBA impacting solar tax credits: deadlines you need to know”

Including recognized entities in your content enables search engines and LLMs to interpret context and intent which creates more exposure on AI searches. 

How to structure your clean energy company’s content for AI discovery

You can demonstrate your knowledge on an issue by adopting a topic pillar-cluster strategy. 

A topic cluster strategy helps you build authority on a topic through a high volume of content on your website. Think of the pillar as the main concept. Then surround the pillar with “clusters” of smaller pieces of content. 

The pillar–cluster strategy makes it easier for search engines to understand your website and it makes it more useful for readers. This will help you rank better for broad topics while also targeting specific related keywords.

How the pillar–cluster strategy works for cleantech companies

Pillar Page: A pillar page is a comprehensive, high-level overview of a broad topic that’s central to your business. It covers all key surrounding issues at the surface level but does not go deep into any one area. Think of it as a hub that links out to multiple cluster pages for deeper dives.

Cluster Page: A cluster page covers a specific subtopic in greater detail. Cluster pages target long-tail keywords which can be more specific, and less competitive. All of your cluster pages should link back to the main pillar page (and the pillar should link to its clusters), creating a strong internal linking structure.

Using the pillar-cluster structure on your site signals to Google that you are an authoritative source for the whole topic.

Pillar page example:

The Future of Clean Energy Storage in the U.S.

Cluster page examples:

• U.S. Energy Storage Adoption Trends: A Closer Look At 2010-2025 

• What Are the Different Types of Lithium Batteries? 

• What Is a Heat Battery and How Is It Different From a Heat Pump?  

• How Data Centers Are Driving Demand for Long-Duration Energy Storage

• Storage Credits Survived the 2025 OBBBA, What’s Next?

• How Are Energy Storage Developers Addressing Fire Risk?

Bonus points if you can pepper your cluster pages with internal links using varied, semantic anchor text (e.g., “grid-scale storage,” “IEA forecast,” “solar tax update”).

Schema markup essentials for cleantech businesses

First, what is a “schema markup"? Schema markup is hidden code within your website's HTML that helps search engines understand your content. Schema markup is not immediately visible on your website page but, when done well, can lead to enhanced search results. These are called "rich results,” and they display additional information like ratings, reviews, prices, images, and other details directly in the search snippet, making it more informative and attractive to users searching on Google. 

Schema markup: Use structured data to help AI interpret your content. Recommended types:

• Blog Posting
  
  
• FAQ Page
  
  
• How To
  
  
• Speakable (for voice search and assistants)
  
  

AI & SEO FAQs for clean energy marketing

Q1: How can my content get cited by ChatGPT or Claude?

Publish semantically rich content that explains energy topics in depth. Reference trusted entities and structure pages with schema.

Q2: Is it worth investing in schema markup?

Absolutely. AI uses schema markup to understand your content. Schema improves visibility in Featured Snippets, Discover, and People Also Ask

Q3: Should I still focus on traditional SEO tactics?

Yes, but prioritize content quality, entity optimization, and structured answers over keyword repetition.

Q4: What is entity optimization? 

Entity optimization means you are using well-known entities in your content, in a way that demonstrates how they connect or relate to other entities so that AI can connect the dots.

Final thoughts: future-proof your cleantech company by building AI-visible content 

Generative AI is now a primary interface between users and content. In clean energy, that means your brand needs to be both findable and quotable.

Big 3 takeaways

1. Structure your site with topic clusters and use FAQ, schema and entity-rich content to win Featured Snippets and “People Also Ask” placements.
2. Publish original insights, such as surveys, data analysis, whitepapers, fact sheets, even explainer blogs — that answer key industry questions in natural language.
3. Focus a portion of your marketing and comms budget on PR: generate earned media attention with newsworthy announcements that can get placed in credible third party media outlets. 

Focus on clarity, structure, and trust. Don’t just aim to rank, aim to be referenced.