Understand your results
Citation & source analysis
Use the sources shown with AI answers to understand what evidence recurs around buyer questions and where stronger public proof may be needed.
AI answers and citations are different signals
The answer
Shows whether the AI recommended, mentioned, or did not surface the brand for a specific buyer question.
The citations
Show sources exposed alongside that answer as supporting evidence. They help you inspect the evidence environment around the response.
What you can inspect
- Buyer Prompt and buying scenario
- Recommended, Mentioned, or Not Visible state
- Per-engine result
- Raw AI answer
- Cited source links and source domains
- Source ranking signals such as citation count and positive-answer rate where available
How to read recurring sources
When the same domain or source type appears across multiple high-value questions, treat it as a research signal. Read those pages to understand the proof points, comparison criteria, product detail, or editorial context surrounding the category.
Useful question: what does this cited page make easy for an answer engine to verify that our own public pages do not yet explain clearly?
A practical source-analysis workflow
- 1Choose a high-intent Prompt where your brand is Not Visible or only Mentioned.
- 2Read the raw AI answer before drawing a conclusion from the headline metric.
- 3Open the recurring citations and compare their claims, structure, proof, and external references with your own public pages.
- 4Decide whether the gap is answer-ready content, product proof, comparison clarity, entity consistency, or external evidence.
- 5Use the GEO optimization report to turn the evidence into a prioritized implementation task.
What citations do not prove
- A citation does not prove that every sentence in the AI answer came from that page.
- A citation count does not automatically increase Visibility Score or prove a source is universally trusted.
- A missing citation to your own page does not by itself prove that your content is inaccurate; inspect the Prompt, answer, and available public evidence together.
- Repeated citations are a useful prioritization signal, not a complete causal explanation of AI ranking.
Need the score definitions behind the report? Read Metrics.