# Source citation

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> A source citation is a link an AI answer attaches to the page it drew on. What counts as one, how often people click it, and what decides which page gets cited.

- Canonical page: https://attensira.com/glossary/source-citation
- Family: glossary
- Last updated: 2026-10-04
- Author: Karl-Gustav Kallasmaa (https://attensira.com/about)
- Claims as data: https://attensira.com/claims.json?slug=source-citation

**In short:** A source citation is a link an AI answer attaches to show which page it drew on: a footnote, source list or inline link. It differs from a mention, because an engine can name a brand without linking it, or link its page without naming it. Citation rate counts answers that link your domain.

**ChatGPT, asked 2026-10-03:** "how does AI pick which sources to cite"

> Citation selection: Of the material retrieved, which sources should be attached to particular claims? → The model is instructed to cite sources that directly support the text, rather than indiscriminately citing everything it encountered. And importantly, the number of sources retrieved can be larger than the number actually cited. OpenAI explicitly notes that the Sources list can contain more URLs than the inline citations because only the most relevant references are normally surfaced as citations.

Sources cited, in order: developers.openai.com, help.openai.com.

Attensira: not named.

_Source: attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP, as of 2026-10-04 (1 stored answer, ChatGPT, 2026-10-03)._

## Key facts

- Counted as: One URL the answer attached, grouped by its domain
- Not the same as: [A mention: the brand named, with or without a link](/glossary/share-of-voice)
- Rate formula: Answers linking your own domain ÷ all successful answers
- Ranked by: [Citation share × position, not raw count](https://docs.attensira.com/measure/deciding-sources)
- Clicks on them: [Rare; measured rates on zero-click search](/glossary/zero-click-search)
- In the docs: [Measure › Citations and sources](https://docs.attensira.com/measure/citations-and-sources)

When an AI assistant answers with the web, it usually shows where it looked. Those links are source citations. They are the only part of an AI answer that points at a specific page, which makes them the most direct evidence of what the engine actually read.

## What counts as a source citation?

One URL the engine attached to its answer. It might appear as a numbered footnote, a sources panel, an inline link or a card under the answer, depending on the engine. Attensira normalises all of them to the same object: a URL, attributed to the domain it belongs to.

Three objects are worth keeping apart, because confusing them is the most common misreading of AI visibility data:

| Term | What it is | Counted as |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mention | Your brand named in the answer text | One per answer |
| Citation | One URL the answer linked | One per URL |
| Source | A domain, gathering many citations | One per domain |

## How is citation rate calculated?

```text
citation rate = answers linking your own domain
              ÷ all successful answers in the window
```

An answer that links four of your pages counts once toward the rate. The four URLs still count individually on the page-level view. An answer with no links at all still counts in the denominator: a linkless answer is a real answer and a real absence of a citation.

## Where do the citations in real answers point?

We read our own category the way we would read yours: the 61 questions Attensira tracks, asked of ChatGPT and Perplexity every day, and every link the answers carried in the 30 days to 4 October 2026, read over the Attensira MCP. Of the 100,380 citations, 74.6% pointed to third-party sites, 14.3% to tracked competitors' own sites, 8.4% to AI platforms' own help and docs and 1.6% to our own sites.

The same read shows that being named and being read are separate events. ChatGPT linked attensira.com in 6.6% of its 2,349 answers but named Attensira in only 4.2%. It reads our pricing and comparison pages for facts, then recommends other products. On Perplexity the gap ran the other way: linked in 3.9% of 2,175 answers, named in 4.5%. [Reference rate](/glossary/reference-rate) covers why we keep those two rates apart.

## Who owns the pages the engines cite?

Mostly other people. The 4,524 answers to the 61 questions we track carried 100,380 citations, about 22 per answer, and fewer than two in every hundred pointed at our own sites. The pages that decide answers in a category are mostly someone else's, and that is where the work is.

**Who owns the cited pages, 30 days to 4 Oct 2026**

| Owner of the cited page | Citations | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Third-party sites: publishers, review sites, forums, docs | 74,884 | 74.6% |
| Tracked competitors' own sites | 14,382 | 14.3% |
| AI platforms' own help and docs | 8,383 | 8.4% |
| Attensira's own sites, all subdomains | 1,588 | 1.6% |
| Reference sites | 1,143 | 1.1% |

_Source: attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP, as of 2026-10-04 (n=100,380 citations in 4,524 answers)._

## What decides which page gets cited?

ChatGPT's own account, in its answer of 3 October 2026 to "how does AI pick which sources to cite", splits it into two decisions: which pages to retrieve, and which of those to attach to a claim. In practice the engine searches, ranks the results, reads some of them and writes. A page has to clear every step:

1. **It can be fetched.** The engine's search crawler is allowed by [robots.txt](/glossary/robots-txt) and gets server-rendered HTML.

1. **It is retrieved for the question.** Usually through the engine's own index or a search partner, which is where classic [SEO](/glossary/seo) still matters.

1. **A passage answers the question on its own.** The engine lifts passages, not pages.

1. **Other sources agree.** An engine prefers a claim several pages make.

Attensira ranks the pages that decide each answer by citation share times position, not by raw count, because a page linked first in every answer decided more than one linked last in a few.

## What do people get wrong about citations?

- **Counting clicks as the payoff.** Almost nobody clicks the links inside Google's AI summaries; see [zero-click search](/glossary/zero-click-search) for the measured rates. The citation shapes the answer the reader acts on; the click is a bonus.

- **Treating the link as proof of accuracy.** The sentence above a correct link can still be wrong. Read the answer and the source together.

- **Reading average position as a rank.** Position is where a URL sat in one answer's list of links, averaged per domain. It is not a ranking of your brand.

- **Optimising for citations where you are never named.** If engines do not consider you part of the answer, a more citable page will not change that. Fix the mention first.

## How do you track your own?

Attensira reads every answer daily, stores the full text and its links in order, and reports citation rate per engine beside share of voice, each with its sample size. The [citation tracking](/features/citation-tracking) view lists which of your pages are cited and for which questions; [win this answer](/features/win-this-answer) lists the pages that decide each question and whether you are on them.

## FAQ

### What is a source citation in an AI answer?

It is a URL the engine attached to its answer to show where a statement came from. ChatGPT shows them as inline links and a sources panel, Perplexity as numbered footnotes, Google's AI Overviews as supporting links. Attensira normalises all of them to the same thing: one URL, attributed to one domain.

### What is the difference between a citation and a mention?

A mention is your brand named in the answer text, with or without a link. A citation is a link to a page. They are counted separately because they fail for different reasons: an engine can know you without reading your pages, and can read your pages without recommending you.

### How often do people click citations in AI answers?

Rarely. The measured click rates for links inside Google's AI summaries, with their source and sample, are on our zero-click search page. A citation is mostly worth having for the answer it shapes, not for the click.

### Does a citation mean the engine read my page correctly?

No. Retrieval and writing fail separately. A correct link can sit under a sentence that misstates what the page says, which is why Attensira stores the full text of every answer next to its citations, so the claim and the source can be read together.

### Why is my citation rate higher than my share of voice?

Because engines use your pages as evidence on questions where they recommend someone else. It happens in Attensira's own data: in the 30 days to 4 October 2026, ChatGPT linked attensira.com in 6.6% of 2,349 answers but named Attensira in 4.2%.