AI citation
Definition: An AI citation is a link or named source that an AI assistant or AI search feature shows alongside a generated answer to indicate where the information came from.
Also called: LLM citation, AI source link, AI reference
Updated
Citation or mention?
The two are easy to confuse. A mention is when an AI answer names your brand. A citation is when it links to one of your pages as a source. You can get either without the other: an assistant may recommend your product while citing a review site, or cite your guide without ever naming your company.
Citations matter because they are the only part of an AI answer that can send a visitor to you, and because they show which sources the system trusts on a topic.
What tends to make a page citable
No AI provider publishes rules for choosing citations, so treat any checklist as informed guesswork. The pattern across assistants is consistent enough to act on:
- The page is reachable by the assistant’s search crawler and is in its index.
- A section answers a specific question plainly, near the top of that section.
- Numbers come with their source and date.
- The page is current, with a visible update date.
Research shows that in the GEO benchmark study, adding citations, quotations and statistics to a source made it more visible in generated answers. That was measured on a test engine, not on live products.
How to track citations
- Write down 20 to 50 questions your customers actually ask.
- Run them in each assistant every month, ideally more than once each, because answers vary between runs.
- Log which domains are cited, not just whether you are.
The sources that keep appearing for your topic are the publications worth earning coverage in. The AI visibility checker tests whether assistants can reach your pages, and how to get cited by ChatGPT covers the platform specifics.