AI Citation

An AI Citation occurs when an AI engine — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini — references your brand, product, or content in a generated response. It is the fundamental unit of authority in the AI search era, analogous to what backlinks were for traditional SEO.

Why AI Citations Matter

AI citations are the new currency of discovery. When a buyer asks "what's the best tool for X?" and the AI names your brand, that's a citation. Unlike search rankings where you compete for 10 blue links, AI citations are winner-take-most — the AI typically recommends 2-4 brands. Research shows 34% of AI citations concentrate on a single publisher per category, making citation dominance both achievable and decisive.

Types of AI Citations

• Direct recommendation — "I recommend [Brand] for this use case"
• Category inclusion — "[Brand] is one of the top options for..."
• Source attribution — "According to [Brand]..." or "As reported by [Publication featuring Brand]..."
• Feature mention — "[Brand] offers [specific capability]..."

Each type carries different weight. Direct recommendations drive 3.2x higher conversion than passive category inclusions because the AI is actively endorsing, not merely listing.

How to Earn AI Citations

AI engines cite what they trust. Trust is built through:

1. Earned media — Tier-1 publication placements. AI engines source 82-89% of citations from third-party publications, not brand-owned content.
2. Entity authority — Strong knowledge graph presence and schema markup via entity signals
3. Cross-source corroboration — Multiple independent sources confirming the same facts
4. Freshness — Recent, updated content weighted by recency signals

Track your progress with Citation Velocity and benchmark against competitors using Citation Gap Analysis. See Machine Relations for the full framework.