A reference an AI answer engine makes to your page or brand as a source for part of its response.
ID
SS-DF-098
Confidence
Established · 81
Evidence
Established
Updated
2026-07-08
Definition
A reference an AI answer engine makes to your page or brand as a source for part of its response.
An AI citation is the moment a generative engine attributes a claim to your content, whether as a visible linked source or a named mention in the text. Citations are the primary currency of GEO because they place a brand inside the answer users actually read, driving awareness and often qualified referral traffic. Earning them depends on being retrievable, quotable and corroborated - the engine must be able to find your passage, extract a clean statement from it and trust it enough to attribute.