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3RD splits every citation into two buckets — and the bucket tells you which team fixes it.

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The two types

Owned

The cited URL is on your website or a subdomain (acme.com, blog.acme.com). Visibility you control directly with content.

Earned

The cited URL is on someone else’s website — review sites, listicles, press, forums. Influenced through outreach and authority-building.
A citation is classified as owned when its URL domain matches your brand’s registered domain — which is why keeping your brand profile domains accurate matters.

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Owned → content strategy

A low owned share means AI isn’t learning from you. Either:

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Earned → outreach strategy

High-value earned sources — pages AI cites repeatedly for your Must-Win prompts — are your outreach targets. Getting featured, corrected, or updated on one trusted page can influence every answer that draws from it. See Authority & Outreach.
Don’t treat owned share as a score to maximize. Healthy AI visibility rests on both: owned pages that answer your buyers’ questions, and earned pages that back you up. A 100% owned citation profile would actually be a warning sign — it means no independent source vouches for you.