> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.get3rd.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Authority & Outreach

> See the off-site signals — backlinks, mentions, and third-party citations — and get an outreach plan for the AI answers you do not own.

Most of the citation pool is **earned** — third-party pages you don't control. Authority tracks how the web talks about you; **Outreach** turns that into an actionable plan to earn citations on the sources AI already trusts.

## Authority signals

Authority tracks brand-mention signals across the web, with evidence per source — where you're being talked about, and whether those mentions build the kind of trust AI models lean on when choosing which brands to recommend.

## Outreach: from source to action

Outreach identifies high-value third-party pages frequently cited by AI where your brand could benefit from being featured. For each source:

<Steps>
  <Step title="Sources are prioritized">
    Each source is weighed by how often AI cites it, which competitors it features, how many of your prompts it influences, and how commercially valuable those prompts are. The highest-payoff targets sort to the top.
  </Step>

  <Step title="You get a strategy">
    Click into a source for an AI-generated outreach strategy tailored to that page — what to pitch, and what angle fits the site — so the work starts at "act on a plan" instead of "research from scratch."
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Why one earned citation can move many answers

AI models draw on a surprisingly concentrated set of trusted sources per category. Getting featured on one page that's cited across dozens of your Must-Win prompts influences every answer built from it — that's why outreach targets are ranked by the prompts they influence, not just raw traffic.

<Tip>
  Cross-reference with [Citations](/results/citations): a source that heavily features competitors but not you, on prompts you care about, is the definition of a high-priority outreach target.
</Tip>

## Related

* [Owned vs. Earned citations](/results/owned-vs-earned) — why earned needs outreach, not content
* [Sentiment](/metrics/sentiment) — outreach also fixes negative framing at its source