Rank and citation relationship
The rank-citation relationship is the link between ranking well in Google and being cited in AI answers, real but looser than it was.
The rank-citation relationship is the link between how well a page ranks in ordinary search and how likely AI answers are to cite it. Pages that rank well get cited more often. But ranking first is no promise of a citation, and plenty of cited pages don't rank for the question at all.
It's worth understanding because it tells you how much of your SEO work carries over to AI search. Quite a lot does, though not all of it.
Why the link exists
Many AI platforms search the web before they answer, and a search engine decides what they find. For Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google says a page has to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet to appear as a supporting link, in its guide to AI features. So the basic work of being found and ranked is the entry ticket.
Why it's looser than you'd think
The platform doesn't only search for the question the person typed. It runs several searches of its own, a habit called query fan-out, and cites pages from all of them. A page can be cited because it ranks for a search the person never made.
Ahrefs has studied how many AI Overview citations come from the top ten results for the same search, and in a later study found that share had fallen sharply, which it put down to more fan-out.
What it means for you
For example, Fernhill Coffee ranks third in Google for "best coffee subscription UK" and is cited in the AI Overview for it only some days. Meanwhile, its page on grind sizes is cited often, because the platform keeps searching for grind advice when people ask about subscriptions.
Keep doing good SEO, and widen it: cover the questions around your main ones as well as the main ones themselves.
In AnswerOrbit
You can connect Search Console in Settings, but Google doesn't share its AI Overviews report with other tools yet. The Pages tab in Sources shows which of your pages the answers actually use.