Citation
A reference to a source by an AI engine — the unit of success in AI visibility.
What is a citation?
A citation is a reference to a source by an AI engine — when it names, links to, or draws its answer from a specific page or brand. Earning citations, not ranking links, is the goal of AEO and GEO.
In AI search the citation replaces the click: it is how an engine credits the source behind the answer it wrote.
When an answer engine composes a reply, it often grounds claims in specific sources and surfaces them as citations — a named brand, a linked URL, or a passage clearly drawn from one page. A citation is that act of crediting. It is the closest thing AI search has to the old organic click, and it is what determines whether a brand benefits from being part of the answer.
Citations are the atomic unit Share of Voice is built on. Mention rate counts whether you are cited at all, Word Count Share how much of the answer your citations occupy, PWC how prominently, and Citation Authority Score how trusted the cited sources are. Every level of the pyramid is, at bottom, a way of weighing citations.
Not every citation is equal: one to your own page builds authority (and lifts CAS), one to a competitor does not. The citation tracker attributes each detection to the right entity so the loop can tell brand citations from third-party ones and act accordingly.