In answer-engine context, a citation is a named reference to a specific source URL that a generative assistant credits when it synthesizes an answer.
In answer-engine context, a citation is a named reference to a specific source URL that a generative assistant credits when it synthesizes an answer.
Citations are shown in Perplexity's source strip, Google AI Overviews' source cards, ChatGPT Search's source panel, and Claude's cited passages. The primary AEO metric is share of citations per target question.
Measure AI citations by combining direct manual checks (querying each answer engine for your target questions and inspecting the sources), server-log analysis of AI crawler user agents, and where available, third-party monitoring tools — because none of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Gemini currently ships a webmaster analytics dashboard.
Grounded AI assistants choose sources by running a retrieval query against a search index, ranking the returned pages using traditional relevance and authority signals, and then having the model select the passages it can quote with the highest attribution confidence.
License content for AI citation by publishing an explicit license that permits quoted citation with attribution and prohibits wholesale republication — the goal is to make it legally safe for models to quote you while keeping copyright leverage against sites that copy the full text.