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Definition

AI Citations

Source references that AI platforms include in their responses, pointing to the content they used to generate their answer. Especially prominent in Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.

What are AI Citations?

AI citations are source references that AI platforms include alongside their responses. Perplexity lists the websites it drew from. Google AI Overviews link to referenced pages. ChatGPT cites sources when using web browsing.

Why they matter

Citations serve two purposes: they drive direct referral traffic when users click through to your site, and they signal content authority - being frequently cited can further improve your AI visibility.

How platforms handle citations

  • Perplexity - Explicitly cites with numbered references (most citation-heavy)
  • Google AI Overviews - Links to referenced pages below the summary
  • ChatGPT - Cites when web browsing is used, not from training data
  • Claude - References sources less consistently

How to earn citations

Create content with specific data points, statistics, and original research. Structure it clearly with semantic headers. Keep it current. Build domain authority. AI cites content it can extract clean, attributable information from.

Related Terms

AEOAI MentionsAI OverviewsAI SearchAI Visibility

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