Citation (AI engine)

A citation in an AI search answer is a small attribution chip (a numbered footnote, a sidebar pill, a domain badge) that links the user from the assembled answer back to one of the source pages the engine retrieved. ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and AI Overviews all surface citations differently but all consume the same underlying signal: which source was authoritative enough to be quoted.

A citation is the AI-search analog of a top-ranking organic result. It drives qualified clicks (the user already saw your sentence as the answer); it is the only durable visibility a publisher gets when an engine is mediating discovery. Tracking citations (which queries cite you, which engines, which pages of yours) is the GEO equivalent of rank tracking.

Citation frequency depends on a stack of factors: grounding (the engine retrieved you), authority (it picked you over alternatives), quotability (your sentence was the cleanest answer), and entity confidence (the engine resolves you as a trustworthy source). Each one is improvable independently.