"Ranking" in AI search means being cited in an AI-generated answer, and that is driven primarily by off-domain mentions, not traditional on-page ranking factors. The two are related but not the same discipline.
[01]/ the data
What we found
Companies with zero AI citations in our study had strong on-page content but almost no third-party comparison or directory presence; citation, not keyword rank, was the deciding factor.
[02]/ how to do it
Three steps
Build/get listed in category comparison content.
Add FAQPage/HowTo schema to your own pages so engines that do crawl direct content (Gemini) can parse it.
Track citations across all 4 engines, not search rank alone.