Share of citation

What it measures#

Share of citation answers whose pages do AI engines use as sources for our questions?

Engines that search the web list the pages they drew on. Those pages shape what the answer says and which brands it names. Share of citation tells you how much of that source material is yours, and, just as useful, which other domains dominate it.

It is the source-side twin of share of voice. Share of voice counts brands named in the answer text; share of citation counts sites linked as sources. The two often disagree, which is why the dashboard draws them as separate charts. See mentions vs. citations.

How it is calculated#

• A citation is one URL in one answer’s source list. A page cited by three engines on the same day is three citations.
• Citations of the domain counts citations whose host matches the domain, with a leading www. removed. A subdomain such as blog.example.com is a separate host from example.com.
• All citations counts every cited URL from every AI engine in the date range and filters (engine, country, tag). The raw Google organic results (the Google Search baseline) are excluded.
• The same formula applies per URL on the Sources page: one URL’s citations ÷ all citations.
• The result is rounded to one decimal place.

Worked example#

In the last 30 days the answers to your prompts cited 700 URLs in total. Your domain accounts for 35 of them, a review site for 84, and a competitor for 56.

• You: 35 ÷ 700 × 100 = 5.0%
• Review site: 84 ÷ 700 × 100 = 12.0%
• Competitor: 56 ÷ 700 × 100 = 8.0%

The review site is the single biggest input to answers about your category. Being well represented on it may matter more than any page of your own.

Changes over time#

• Dashboard chart. Each day shows each host’s citations divided by that day’s total citations. The legend shows each host’s share over the whole window, so it matches the period figure rather than the last day.
• Sources page. Each domain and URL row shows the change in its citation count versus the previous period of the same length, as a percent change (a move from 20 to 30 citations is +50%), plus a 14-day trend line.

Share of citation vs. neighbouring metrics#

• High share of voice, low share of citation. Engines recommend you based on other people’s pages. Your reputation is doing the work; your content is not.
• High share of citation, low share of voice. Your pages are used as sources, but the answers recommend someone else. Make your brand explicit on the cited pages.

Where to find it#

• Dashboard → Share of citation over time. You plus the top cited hosts, daily. Your domain is always drawn, even at zero.
• Dashboard → Top cited sources. The most cited domains in the period, with the change versus the previous period.
• Sources. Every cited domain and URL with citations, share, change, the engines that cited it and a 14-day trend. A Cited by provider matrix shows which engine uses which source. See Sources.
• Prompt detail. The pages cited for one prompt, per engine, with each URL’s average position in the source list.

What moves it#

• Pages that answer the prompt directly. Engines cite pages that answer the question and the sub-questions they search for. See query fan-out and prompt coverage.
• Being reachable. A page that blocks AI crawlers or renders poorly for agents is hard to cite. Check the domain audit.
• Freshness, for prompts that reward it. Some prompts favor recently updated pages. See freshness and Web Vitals.
• The engine filter. Engines cite very different numbers of sources per answer. Compare periods on the same engine.

Related#