What counts as a citation
A citation is a URL the model used as a source for its answer — whether or not your brand was named in the answer itself. Brand mentions and citations are independent: you can be mentioned without being cited, and cited without being mentioned.What the page shows
- Top cited sources — the domains and pages AI relies on most for your prompts, with per-source frequency
- Owned vs. earned split — how much of the citation pool you control directly
- Which prompts each source influences — so you can weigh a source’s commercial importance
Owned vs. Earned
Each citation is classified by who controls the page:| Type | Meaning | Your lever |
|---|---|---|
| Owned | Your website or a subdomain | Content — write and structure pages so AI can cite them |
| Earned | A third-party site | Outreach — get featured or corrected on pages AI already trusts |
How to use it
Find the sources that matter
Sort by frequency and filter to Must-Win prompts. The handful of sources cited again and again are the gatekeepers of your category.
Check who they favor
Open the top earned sources. If they feature competitors and not you — that’s an Outreach target with a known payoff.
Grow your owned share
If your own pages rarely appear, your content either doesn’t exist for these prompts or isn’t extractable. See Content and Crawlability.
Related
- Citation Share — the metric built from this data
- Authority & Outreach — act on high-value earned sources