Citation tracking

Mentioned is not cited, and the gap is the signal

Citation rate is the share of successful runs in which a model attached at least one link to your own domain. It shares a denominator with mention rate, so the two are directly comparable — and Attensira never collapses them into a single score, because they move for different reasons and are fixed by different work.

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By Karl-Gustav Kallasmaa, founder of Attensira · Last updated 3 September 2026

In short

Citation tracking counts the runs where a model attached a URL on your own domain, over the same denominator as mention rate. Below the rate sit the citations themselves: individual URLs, bucketed into source domains, with a source share that does sum to a whole. Rates count runs; sources count URLs, and the two never reconcile.

Same denominator

All successful runs in the window, exactly as for mention rate — so the two rates can be read side by side.

Never blended

Two numbers, kept apart on purpose. A blended visibility score would hide the one diagnosis that matters.

Sources, not just rates

Every citation is attributed to a registrable domain, so you can see which sites the models actually draw on.

Evidence kept

The verbatim answer for every successful run is stored, so a citation is a link you can open, not a claim.

The problem it solves

Two brands can have identical visibility in a blended score and completely different problems. One is named constantly and never linked: the models know it from memory and describe it through other people's writing. The other is barely named at all. The first needs pages that answer the question directly; the second needs to be part of the conversation before any of that matters. A single score cannot tell you which one you are.

Attensira reports mention rate and citation rate separately for exactly this reason. The engine's own framing is blunt: mentioned is not cited — a model can name a brand it never links. A wide gap between your two rates is legible and actionable. You are known but not read.

How it works

A citation is one URL a model attached to its answer, pointing at a domain you own. Links appear as footnotes, source lists, inline references or a sources panel depending on the surface; Attensira normalises all of them to the same object — a URL, attributed to a domain.

citation rate = successful runs citing your own domain
              ÷ all successful runs in the window

As with mentions, the unit is the run. A run where the model links four of your pages counts once toward citation rate. Those four URLs still matter, but they matter to the citations view, which counts URLs rather than runs. Runs where the model wrote an answer with no links at all stay in the denominator, because a linkless answer is a real answer and a real absence of a citation. Failed runs are excluded from the denominator entirely.

Three different objects sit behind this feature, and confusing them is the most common way AI visibility data gets misread:

Term	What it is	Counted as	Answers
Mention	Your brand named in the answer text, no link required	One per run	Does the model talk about you?
Citation	One URL the model attached to an answer	One per URL	Which pages did it link?
Source	A domain bucket aggregating many citations	One per domain, per window	Which sites feed the answers?

Source share is a domain's slice of every citation Attensira recorded across your tracked runs in the window. Unlike mention and citation rates, source shares do describe parts of a whole, because each citation belongs to exactly one domain. Your own domain appears in that list like any other, next to the review sites, forums, documentation hubs and competitors the models actually lean on.

Average citation position is the mean index of a URL within the model's citation list, computed per source domain. Read it as a weak ordering signal and nothing stronger. It is not a rank of your brand, not a search position, and a shift from 2.4 to 2.1 on its own is not evidence of anything.

A worked example

Suppose a topic returns a mention rate of 48% on 120 successful runs and a citation rate of 11% on the same 120 runs. That is a wide gap on a sample large enough to trust, and it has a specific reading: in roughly half of the answers the models considered you part of the recommendation, and in one answer in nine they thought a page on your domain was worth linking.

Three ordinary mechanics widen a gap like that, and they need different responses:

Models answer from memory. A model naming you from what it already knows has no URL to attach. It knows you without having just read you.
Not every surface links. Some surfaces attach sources on nearly every answer and others rarely do, so your citation rate is partly a property of which model surfaces you track.
The link went somewhere else. A model can recommend you and cite a review site, a marketplace listing or a comparison article that talks about you — a mention with a citation to someone else's domain.

The source list is what turns the third case into work. If a single comparison article holds a large source share across your prompts, that is where the models are getting their opinion of you, and it is a page worth being accurate on. From there the agent can find the gap on your own pages and open a pull request against the repository the page lives in — you review it, and nothing merges until you say so.

Before reading any gap as meaningful, check n on both rates, and check whether the movement cleared the two-proportion z-test at 95% that guards every delta. Two rates built on a handful of runs can differ by a wide margin purely by chance.

What it does not do

It does not collapse into one score. There is no visibility metric in Attensira. Visibility is a label on a section of the product, not a computed number.
It does not reconcile with source share. Rates count runs and sources count URLs; they have different denominators and different units, and comparing them is a category error.
Average position is not a rank. It is an index within a citation list, per source domain, and models order citations for reasons that are neither documented nor stable.
It is not crawler data. Citations and AI crawler fetches are separate systems with separate mechanics, and the counts must never be reconciled. See crawler logs.
It cannot attribute. Attensira cannot tell you a citation produced a visit, a signup or revenue. There is no identity join between an answer and a person who later arrived at your site.
Today is always partial. Each prompt, model and country combination runs at most once per workspace-local calendar day, so a drop measured mid-morning is usually just the morning.

Which plans include it

Citation rate, the citations table and source share are on every plan. Your plan sets how much evidence there is behind them: prompt slots, sampling depth, the model surfaces you may read, and how long the readings are retained.

Plan	Per month	Prompt slots	Sampling depth	Model surfaces	Retention
Starter	$129	50	n=1	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI	3 months
Growth	$349	150	n=3	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI	12 months
Business	$699	350	n=3	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI	Unlimited

Yearly billing is charged at ten months' price. Full plan detail is on pricing.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a mention and a citation?

A mention is your brand named in the answer text, with no link required, counted once per run. A citation is one URL the model attached that points at a domain you own, counted per URL. Both rates use the same denominator — all successful runs in the window — so they are directly comparable, and Attensira never merges them into a single score.

Why is my citation rate lower than my mention rate?

Almost always, and the gap is the point. Two independent things have to happen for a citation: the model has to decide your brand belongs in the answer, and then that a page on your domain is worth linking. Models also answer from memory with no URL to attach, some surfaces rarely link at all, and a model can recommend you while citing somebody else's page about you.

Does source share add up to 100%?

Yes, and it is the one number in the product that does. Each citation belongs to exactly one domain, so source shares describe parts of a whole. Mention and citation rates do not: they are independent rates over a shared denominator, and competitor rates routinely total well over 100%.

Is average citation position a ranking?

No. It is the mean index of a URL within a model's own citation list, computed per source domain — how far down the list that domain tends to sit when it is cited. It is not a leaderboard position, not a search result rank, and not comparable across answers with very different numbers of citations. Attensira computes no brand rank at all.

Can I see which of my pages get cited?

Yes. Citations are recorded as URLs, so the pages view shows which of your URLs models actually linked. That is a different object from your site page inventory, which is every URL your site publishes, discovered from the sitemaps listed in your robots.txt plus your home page.

Does a citation mean someone visited my site?

No. A citation means a model attached a link to your domain in an answer. Attensira cannot join that to a visit, a signup or revenue — there is no identity link between an answer a model gave someone and a person who later arrived on your site. Connect it to commercial outcomes with your own analytics, and say out loud that you are doing so.

You set the destination. It handles the route.

Attensira measures what assistants answer, finds what is holding you back, and opens a pull request you review before anything ships.

Get Started Book A Demo

Mentioned is not cited, and the gap is the signal

In short

Same denominator

Never blended

Sources, not just rates

Evidence kept

The problem it solves

How it works

A worked example

What it does not do

Which plans include it

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a mention and a citation?

Why is my citation rate lower than my mention rate?

Does source share add up to 100%?

Is average citation position a ranking?

Can I see which of my pages get cited?

Does a citation mean someone visited my site?

Keep reading

Mention rate

Competitor tracking

Model surfaces

Crawler logs

You set the destination. It handles the route.

The problem it solves

How it works

A worked example

What it does not do

Which plans include it

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a mention and a citation?

Why is my citation rate lower than my mention rate?

Does source share add up to 100%?

Is average citation position a ranking?

Can I see which of my pages get cited?

Does a citation mean someone visited my site?

Keep reading

Mention rate

Competitor tracking

Model surfaces

Crawler logs

You set the destination. It handles the route.