Off-page SEO
Off-site, or off-page, means everything said about your brand on websites you don't run: reviews, press, directories, forums and list articles.
Off-site, also called off-page, means everything said about your brand on websites you don't run. Reviews, news articles, directories, forum threads, list articles, comparison pages and your competitors' own sites are all off-site.
In AI search, off-site pages often carry more weight than your own. When a platform searches the web before answering, most of the pages it reads usually belong to someone else. What those pages say about you, or whether they mention you at all, shapes what the platform says.
Why it matters more in AI search
A person who lands on your site knows they're reading your own pitch. AI platforms seem to work the same way: to recommend a brand, they look for what other people say about it. A list of "best coffee subscriptions" on a respected food site says more about Fernhill Coffee than Fernhill's own homepage does.
So the pages that decide whether you're named are often ones you can't edit. You can still influence them.
What off-site work looks like
Off-site work is mostly about being present and correct on the pages the platforms already read:
- Getting added to list articles and comparisons that name your competitors but not you
- Listing your brand in the directories for your industry
- Earning reviews from real customers on the review sites people use
- Correcting pages that say something wrong about you
- Taking part in forum threads where people ask about your category, openly as yourself
For example, say Kestrel Roasters finds that a popular review roundup is used in many of its answers and says Kestrel's beans are only sold in bulk. Kestrel changed that last year. A short note to the editor with the current details is off-site work, and it can do more than a new page on Kestrel's own site.
Off-site in AnswerOrbit
Sources sorts every page the answers used by who owns it, so you can see how much of what the platforms read is yours and how much is someone else's. The Gaps tab lists the sources that name your competitors but not you. In Recommendations, you can group the list to see the work on your own sites apart from the work on other sites.