Brand-owned citation
A brand-owned citation is a link in an AI answer that points to a website the brand itself controls.
A brand-owned citation is a link in an AI answer to a website you control: your main site, a second domain, your blog. When an answer links to your own page, it's using your words, in your framing, as its evidence.
That's why owned citations are worth tracking separately. Citations from review sites and articles show what others say about you. Owned citations show whether the platforms trust your own pages enough to send people to them.
Owned, competitor and everyone else
Every page an answer cites belongs to somebody. It's useful to sort them into three groups:
- Your own sites
- Your competitors' sites
- Everyone else: review sites, directories, news, forums, reference sites
For example, an answer comparing coffee subscriptions links to Fernhill Coffee's pricing page, Kestrel Roasters' homepage and two review sites. That's one citation owned by Fernhill, one owned by a competitor and two from third parties.
Cited isn't always named
An answer can link to your page and still not name you. The platform read your page, used it, and recommended someone else, or nobody. When that happens often, look at what your cited pages say. A guide that explains a topic well without saying what you sell can end up as evidence for your competitors.
Getting more of them
The pages that get cited tend to answer one question clearly, near the top, in text a bot can read. Pricing pages, comparison pages, how-to guides and up-to-date product pages often do well. Make sure the platforms' search bots are allowed to read them.
In AnswerOrbit
Sources sorts every source by who owns it: your website first, then your other domains, then your competitors' domains, then everyone else. Your citations number is the share of answers that used a page from your website, and cited, not named is the share of those that didn't name you.