Citation share
Citation share is the percentage of source slots in AI answers that link to your domain, measured across a defined prompt set and time window.
Where answer share measures whether your brand is named, citation share measures whether your website is linked. The two metrics track related but distinct outcomes.
How to calculate
citation_share = (citations_to_your_domain / total_citations_in_set) * 100
For each tracked prompt, count every cited URL across all engines, then divide your domain's citations by the total.
Why it matters
Citations drive clicks. In Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, and Google AI Overviews, the cited source pane is where actual referral traffic originates. A brand can be mentioned by name with no citation (visibility, no traffic) or cited without being named (traffic, no brand reinforcement). Tracking both is necessary.
Drivers of citation share
- Domain authority and historical Google ranking strength
- Structured data and answer-first formatting that makes passages liftable
- Crawler accessibility (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended allowed)
- Topical depth — broad coverage produces more retrieval opportunities
- Freshness — recently updated pages get preferred for time-sensitive queries
