A link to, or mention of, a source inside an AI-generated answer.
An AI citation is a reference to a website or brand within an answer produced by an AI system, such as a linked source under a Google AI Overview, a footnote in Perplexity, or a named recommendation in ChatGPT.
Citations matter in two ways. A linked citation can send traffic, and a named recommendation shapes which brands a buyer considers, even when no click happens.
Citation rate is usually measured against a fixed set of prompts: for each prompt, whether the brand appears, where it appears, and which competitors are named instead. Google counts clicks from its AI features in Search Console, so cited traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode appears in the Performance report.
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