Citation rate
Definition
Citation rate is the fraction of AI answers that cite a brand’s own website as a source, out of all answers collected for its tracked questions. It measures whether assistants are reading and crediting your site, not merely naming you.
An assistant can name a brand from third-party sources alone: reviews, directories, comparison articles. Citation rate isolates the cases where your own pages made the reading list. A healthy mention rate with a near-zero citation rate means AI talks about you using other people’s words.
Citations are also the receipts of an answer. Engines that show sources let you trace exactly which page earned the mention, which is what makes citation-level evidence auditable rather than anecdotal.
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