Foundations
Citation Share
Your slice of all the citations AI answers hand out for a topic.
Citation share is the proportion of all the citations an AI answer gives out for a topic that go to you rather than to competitors. If the engines answering a cluster of questions cite ten sources and two of them are yours, your citation share for that cluster is 20%. It turns raw citation counts into a competitive metric.
Citation share is useful because it accounts for the fact that AI answers only ever cite a few sources. You are not competing to be cited in the abstract; you are competing for a fixed, small number of slots against named rivals. Tracking the share, by topic cluster, shows where you own the conversation and where a competitor does.
It is closely related to AI share of voice, the difference being that citation share counts attributed source links specifically, while share of voice can also count unlinked mentions.
Related terms
Share of Voice (AI)
Your slice of AI-answer visibility for a topic, measured against competitors.
Citation (AI)
When an AI answer attributes or links a specific page as its source.
AI Visibility Rate
The share of applicable buyer queries where an AI engine names or cites you.
Selection Rate
How often an AI cites your page once it's already in the retrieved set.
LLM SERP
The set of sources an AI answer cites — the generative stand-in for a results page.
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