09/11/2026
AEO crisis: status page. 🚨
When citation share crashes, treat it like an outage. A status page — with updates and a checklist — turns panic into process.
THE INCIDENT (example):
🟥 INVESTIGATING · SEV-1
“Citation share dropped 47% overnight”
Affecting: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude
Trigger window: schema deploy at 02:14 UTC
Started: 08:42 UTC · Elapsed: 1h 18m
THE UPDATES (newest first):
→ 10:00 UTC · IDENTIFIED
Root cause located. Schema deploy at 02:14 UTC dropped : Article from 218 URLs. Rolling back. ETA 30 min.
→ 09:15 UTC · INVESTIGATING
Cross-engine drop confirmed. Drop is global, not engine-specific — suggests on-site cause. Server logs show normal bot crawl rates. Schema regression suspected.
→ 08:42 UTC · INVESTIGATING
Citation share fell 47% overnight. Detected via daily monitor. ChatGPT −52%, Perplexity −44%, Claude −39%. Investigating now.
THE 9-STEP RESPONSE PLAYBOOK:
→ FIRST HOUR
✓ Confirm drop in 3+ tracking tools
✓ Check last 48h of deploys
✓ Validate schema sitewide
→ FIRST FOUR HOURS
✓ Identify root cause
✓ Roll back or hotfix
☐ Force-recrawl affected URLs
→ FIRST 24 HOURS
☐ Re-verify across all engines
☐ Write post-mortem
☐ Add CI check to prevent recurrence
Most teams treat citation drops as “a thing to look into next week.” The teams that recover fast treat them as SEV-1 incidents — with the same response discipline as a production outage.
Save this — and run a tabletop exercise with your team before you need it for real.
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