Foundations
Citation (AI)
When an AI answer attributes or links a specific page as its source.
An AI citation is when a model attributes a claim to a specific source and, usually, links it. It is a stronger signal than a mention: the engine is not just naming you, it is pointing to one of your pages as evidence for part of its answer. Citations are what drive referral traffic from AI search and what let a buyer verify the claim.
Engines cite the pages that are easiest to trust and easiest to lift from — clear, self-contained passages on pages the model can resolve to a credible entity. Retrieval engines like Perplexity expose their citations openly; others, such as ChatGPT answering from model knowledge without browsing, may not cite at all. That is why the same brand can be heavily cited on one engine and absent on another.
To earn more citations, give engines quotable, standalone passages, keep your facts specific and sourced, and build the third-party footprint that makes the model confident the claim is real.
Related terms
AI Brand Mention
Any reference to a brand inside an AI answer, whether or not it is linked.
Citation Readiness
How ready a page is to be quoted and attributed inside an AI answer.
Citation Share
Your slice of all the citations AI answers hand out for a topic.
Grounding Source
The specific document an AI cites as evidence for a claim in its answer.
Quotable Sentence
A self-contained statement an AI can lift verbatim into an answer and attribute.
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