Quick answer: Fact density – the concentration of concrete, verifiable facts per hundred words – is one of the strongest predictors of AI citation. The original GEO research found that adding relevant statistics increased generative-engine visibility by roughly 30-40% on tested queries. Engines cite numbers because numbers are quotable, checkable and useful; adjectives are none of the three.
What counts as a fact
Numbers with units and dates (“median load time fell from 4.1s to 1.8s after migration”), named entities (“GPTBot, operated by OpenAI”), specific comparisons (“Perplexity cites 5 sources per answer on average”), prices, percentages, dates and study findings. What does not count: “blazing fast”, “industry-leading”, “many businesses” – filler an engine cannot verify or reuse.
Why models prefer dense pages
A RAG pipeline needs evidence to ground its answer. A passage containing three concrete facts gives the model material to synthesise and a reason to cite; a passage of opinion gives it nothing. Dense pages also win corroboration checks – specific claims can be matched against other sources, vague ones cannot.
How to raise your fact density
Audit a page: highlight every sentence containing a verifiable fact. Under one highlight per paragraph is thin.
Replace adjectives with measurements. Every “fast”, “affordable” and “popular” can become a number.
Add original data. Client results (anonymised), survey findings, test measurements – unique numbers force citation because engines cannot get them elsewhere.
Cite your sources. Linked, dated sources make your facts corroborable, which raises the whole page’s trust.
Put facts in extractable form. Short sentences and tables, not buried mid-paragraph.
Fact density in practice
Tools can score this automatically – IndexGraph.ai includes a fact-density scorer that rates pages the way engines effectively do, flagging thin sections before you publish. Combine it with prompt tracking to confirm dense pages earn more citations – in our client work, they consistently do.
FAQ
Can I overdo statistics?
Readability still matters – a wall of numbers loses humans. Aim for one strong fact per paragraph woven into clear prose.
Do made-up or unsourced stats work?
Engines increasingly corroborate. Unverifiable claims get skipped, and being caught fabricating damages entity trust broadly. Publish only what you can stand behind.
Want a fact-density audit of your key pages? Adexorb Technologies includes one in every GEO engagement.