Earned citation
An earned citation is an AI answer citing an independent page that mentions you, like a review, a news story or a list article.
An earned citation is an AI answer citing a page you don't own and didn't pay for that talks about you: a review, a news story, a list article, a forum thread. Your own website gives you owned citations. Everything someone else wrote about you, of their own accord, gives you earned ones.
They matter because AI platforms lean on independent sources when they compare brands. A review site saying you're good carries a different weight than you saying it.
Earned, owned and paid
The split comes from marketing's old way of sorting media. Owned is what you publish yourself. Paid is what you buy, like ads and sponsored posts. Earned is what others publish because they chose to.
In AI answers, owned citations tend to come up for questions about you: your prices, your opening hours, your returns policy. Earned citations tend to come up for questions about the category: which is best, which is cheapest, which to avoid.
An example
For example, say 40 answers to Kestrel Roasters' prompts cite at least one page this week. 10 cite Kestrel's own site. 22 cite independent reviews and list articles that mention Kestrel. 8 cite pages that don't mention Kestrel at all.
Most of Kestrel's citations are earned, then. That's good news while those pages are accurate and up to date, and a risk when one of them gets a price or a product wrong, because Kestrel can't edit it.
Earned citations in AnswerOrbit
Sources sorts every page by who owns it: your website, your other domains, your competitors' domains, and everyone else, grouped by type, such as press and publications, community and social, or reference. The Gaps tab shows independent sources that name your competitors but not you. If an earned source says something wrong about you, Claims shows the page behind the claim.