Citation
A citation is a link or source name AI search shows next to its answer to indicate where a piece of information came from.
In a little more detail
Citations are useful evidence and a poor scoreboard. Being cited means a page of yours was read. Being named in the sentence means a buyer heard about you. They often happen together and they are not the same event, so it is worth deciding which one you are counting.
Related terms
- Mention rate: Mention rate is the share of answers that named your business, out of all the times a question was asked.
- Retrieval: Retrieval is the step where AI search fetches live web pages in the middle of answering you, instead of relying only on what it already knows.
See it on your own site
The scan reads your site the way AI search does and reports where you stand on this and sixteen other checks.