Answered on camera by Dan Milikow, CEO of iShoot.direct · 1:14 · Updated October 6, 2026
Led Gartner's in-house video studio for over a decade; 30,000+ videos produced since launching iShoot in 2018.
Often because the formats firms publish — tax alerts, busy-season webinars, newsletters — don't give AI a clean answer to quote. The citation goes to the page best structured for it: a question and its answer, a CPA named as author, links to authorities like the IRS, tables where they help, and corroboration elsewhere, including reviews.
Watch on YouTube: Why does AI cite other CPAs instead of my firm?
Often, citations go to the page best structured for citability — not to the best CPA.
Somewhere out there right now, an AI is walking a business owner through a tax question your partners answer all the time. State and local tax credits. Entity structure. AI is answering questions smack in the domain your firm is known for, and its answers cite a CPA from a rival firm, or maybe even someone you've never heard of. Because the citation doesn't always go to the best CPA. Most often it goes to the page best structured for citability.
Because tax alerts, webinars, and newsletters are formats bots struggle to pull answers out of.
All that expertise you've published the traditional way — tax alerts, the busy season webinars, the quarterly newsletters — the bots struggle to pull answers out of any of it.
Open with the question and its answer, name a CPA as author, link to authorities like the IRS, add tables and key takeaways, and be corroborated by other sources[2].
So what does structured for citation actually mean? Well, it starts with a question and an answer. The author is a named CPA, not the firm. It links back to authorities like the IRS or state tax bureau. There's tables and comparisons where tables and comparisons are helpful. If the content is dense, there are key takeaways at the top. There's corroboration from other sources. That's what trust looks like to a bot[2].
Try it yourself. Ask AI a question you get every day and see which firm gets named. Then open the cited page and count how many structural boxes it checks.
As remote work continues to evolve, employers should remain mindful of a range of obligations that may arise across jurisdictions…
[Firm] Tax Team · no links
[The CPA's direct answer, in two sentences.]
[Name], CPA · links: [state agency page], IRS Publication 15 · a short table of [obligation / when it applies]
Illustration. Same expertise — one version can be quoted.
Markup won't win a citation on its own — Google says its AI features need no special markup[1]. It makes the who unmistakable: which CPA answered, and which firm stands behind them.
Person with jobTitle, the CPA license as hasCredential, specialties as knowsAbout, and worksFor pointing to the firm[8].AccountingService. That's schema.org's type for accounting firms[9].VideoObject, with a Clip for each question-phrased chapter[10].FAQPage, using the same question and short answer the reader sees.Everything in the markup must match what's visible on the page[1].
Recency matters. In Seer Interactive's study of 47,097 citations across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity (March–June 2026), three in four of the most-cited pages had been updated within the past year — but only about 42% had first been published that recently[5]. Older pages keep getting cited when they're kept current. AirOps found about a third of cited pages had been updated in the past three months, and more than half in the past six[6]. Across 17 million citations, Ahrefs found AI-cited pages were 25.7% fresher on average than Google's regular results[7].
A three-month review keeps every answer inside the window where most cited pages sit. Between reviews, update right away when one of these hits:
| Trigger | What to change |
|---|---|
| New tax year | Any dollar limits, thresholds or rates in the answer, and the year if it's in the headline |
| New IRS guidance on the topic | The answer, and a link to the guidance |
| New federal or state legislation | The answer — and say what changed |
| A deadline season approaching | The deadline questions, before clients start asking |
Change a page's date only when you change its content.
| If the answer is about | Link to |
|---|---|
| Federal tax rules | The IRS.gov publication or form instructions, or the Internal Revenue Code section |
| Payroll and withholding | IRS Publication 15 (Employer's Tax Guide) |
| S corp election | IRS Form 2553 instructions |
| State tax | That state's department of revenue page |
| Accounting standards | The FASB Accounting Standards Codification topic |
| Professional conduct | The AICPA Code of Professional Conduct |