Are canonical and Open Graph tags common on cited pages? | Trakkr Research
Yes. 91.4% of cited pages in the study have canonical tags and 89.2% include Open Graph tags.
Methodology: Built from 1,465 AI-cited pages across 950 domains, using 28,033 citation opportunities and page-level crawl analysis.
Direct Answer
Yes. 91.4% of cited pages in the study have canonical tags and 89.2% include Open Graph tags.
What this means
Operators must ensure standard metadata is present to remove technical friction for AI crawlers, making proper tagging a baseline requirement for content publication workflows.
Evidence table
| Metric | Value | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Canonical tag rate | 91.4% | Share of cited pages with a canonical tag. |
| OG tag rate | 89.2% | Share of cited pages with Open Graph tags. |
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of cited pages use canonical tags?
The study found that 91.4% of cited pages include a canonical tag.
How common are Open Graph tags on pages cited by AI?
Open Graph tags are present on 89.2% of cited pages.
What to do next
- Make answer pages denser, more structured, and more explicit about authorship and freshness.
- Use schema where it helps machine readability, but avoid treating markup as a substitute for strong content.
- Design pages to be extractable with concise answers, tables, lists, authors, and clearly marked evidence.
Related pages
Continue through the same study cluster.
- is schema enough on its own to earn ai citations - Related answer page
- what does the benchmark say about page design for ai citations - Related answer page
- canonical tags appear on over ninety percent of cited pages - Related fact page
- cited page traits tracker - Related tracker page
Data & Sources
- The Anatomy of an AI Citation - Flagship study behind this page
- Page JSON - Machine-readable companion file