The CitationEconomy
AI Marketing · B2B Revenue · The New Buyer Journey
What happens to your pipeline when buyers stop Googling
and start asking AI for recommendations?
What determines whether your brand is cited as the answer when a buyer asks AI who to trust?
The question at the centre of this book
The shift that rewrites every marketing playbook
In The Citation Economy, Praveen Maloo maps the most significant change in buyer behaviour since the invention of search — the moment buyers stopped Googling and started asking AI.
When a prospect types “best [category] software” into ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overview, a shortlist appears instantly. Brands on that list get pipeline. Brands off it are invisible — no matter how good their product, no matter how much they spend on ads.
This is not a future risk. It is happening now. And the rules that govern citation are completely different from the rules that governed ranking.
Old playbook meets new architecture
The Search Funnel
↓
The AI Shortlist
The buyer journey no longer starts with a keyword. It starts with a question — and ends with an AI-generated shortlist that most brands never see and cannot influence through traditional channels.
Keyword Rankings
↓
Citation Authority
Ranking on page one no longer means being in the conversation. Citation authority — the degree to which AI engines trust and reference your brand — is the new determinant of B2B visibility.
Content Volume
↓
Answer Density
The content strategies that built SEO dominance produce the wrong signal for AI engines. What is measured now is whether a piece of content directly and concisely answers the question a buyer is likely to ask.
Brand Awareness
↓
Entity Recognition
AI engines do not respond to brand salience. They respond to entity clarity — the degree to which structured, corroborating signals allow a model to identify precisely what your company does and for whom.
Six ideas this book will change how you see
Why 94% of B2B buyers use AI in their purchase journey — and what it means for every team that touches revenue.
How AI engines decide which brands to cite — and the three factors that determine whether yours makes the shortlist.
The Entity Authority framework: how to make your company legible to the models that are writing your buyers’ shortlists.
The content architecture that produces citations — including the 134–167 word density principle and the self-contained answer block.
Platform-specific AEO: what signals ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Copilot each weight differently.
The 90-Day AEO Sprint: a sequenced programme that moves a brand from invisible to cited.
Praveen Maloo
Entrepreneur · Author · Product & Marketing Leader
Praveen Maloo has spent twenty years at the intersection of technology and buyer behaviour — starting at Microsoft, then Amazon, then as an independent consultant, then as a founder, and now at G2. He has watched the rules of B2B visibility rewrite themselves once before, during the rise of search. He believes they are rewriting themselves again.
“The question is not whether AI is changing how your buyers find you. It already has. The question is whether you are visible in the answers they are getting.”
Available now
Kindle ebook · Paperback · Available worldwide