Citability of documents is the question of whether the content of the files on your website can be processed by machine. Companies often have their most valuable information precisely in documents – price lists, technical sheets, manuals, methodologies, case studies – and at the same time in a form the system cannot read. The most common cause is a scanned document with no recognised text, tables inserted as an image, and files with no heading structure. The solution has three steps. Make sure documents have actual text content, not an image of text. Add headings and a document title so it can be divided into meaningful sections. And repeat the key information from documents directly on the web page as well, since that is processed more reliably. Leave the files accessible to crawlers unless you have a reason not to.
See also: Content chunking, Data feed for AI assistants, Paywall and AI access.
