Citation and source
A source is a page an AI platform read to answer. A citation is a link to that page inside the answer.
When an AI platform searches the web before it answers, it reads pages. Those pages are its sources. Some of them it links to in the answer itself. Those links are citations.
Sources matter because they shape what the answer says. If the pages a platform reads all recommend your competitor, the answer probably will too.
Used and cited
A page can shape an answer without being linked, so we record both: whether a page was used, and whether it was cited. A page is cited when the answer links to it in its text.
Not every platform shows its sources the same way. Perplexity numbers its sources in every answer. Others only search the web for some questions. How we count has the details for each platform.
Whose page is it?
We sort every source by who owns it, in this order: your website's exact address, then your other domains, then your competitors' domains. Everything else is someone else's site, like a review site, a directory, a news article or a forum thread.
Most of the pages AI platforms read for your questions won't be yours. Knowing which ones they use tells you where you need to show up.
The Citations number
Citations is the share of answers that used a page from your website. For example, if 28 of your 140 answers this week used a page from your site, your citations is 20%.
Under it you'll see citation share, your website's share of all the links in the answers, and citations per answer, how many times your pages are linked in each answer that used them. What the numbers mean defines all three.
Every source the answers used is in Sources.