Your distributors are being cited for your own products.
For twenty buying questions in manufacturing we compared who ranks in classic search against who gets cited by AI assistants. Distributors and directories are winning the citation for parts you make. That is an entity and evidence problem, and it is fixable.
In manufacturing, the source an AI assistant names for a product is often not the company that makes it — it is the distributor or directory that carries the same data in clean, structured HTML. Rogue Logic closes that gap by consolidating the entity, moving specifications out of PDFs, and earning the trade-press corroboration assistants trust.
Measured divergence between who ranks and who is cited in this sector: 54%. Source: The Answer Gap, Rogue Logic — twenty buying questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews.
Three things that only apply to Manufacturing.
Distributors own your data
Your specifications live in linked PDFs; your distributors carry the same data in HTML. Assistants read the source they can parse, and name it instead of you.
Specifiers ask machines first
A tolerance-driven, considered purchase now starts with a question to an assistant. If your part is not in the answer, you are not on the shortlist.
The maths justifies the work
Low volume, high value. A handful of specified components a year pays for the entity and citation work nobody else in your category is doing.
Sectors we have data for.
Percentage is the measured divergence between who ranks and who is cited. Sectors without data do not get a page.
Asked in Manufacturing, specifically.
Why are our distributors cited instead of us?
Because their product data sits in clean, crawlable HTML and yours sits in a PDF. Assistants quote the source they can parse, and right now that is the distributor.
Do we have to move everything out of PDFs?
The specifications, yes. The datasheet can stay as a download, but the tolerances, dimensions and materials need to exist as HTML with Product and PropertyValue markup for a machine to read them.
How long before assistants name us?
Entity and schema fixes ship inside the first weeks. Citation movement is a one-to-two quarter story once the corroboration lands, and we measure it against your own question set either way.
Is this different from ordinary SEO?
It shares the technical foundation, but the target is the cited passage rather than the ranked link. In manufacturing the entity work — one canonical name across your site, Companies House and trade directories — does most of the heavy lifting.