Citation Rate

Citation rate is the share of AI answers, across a fixed set of questions, in which a given source is cited: linked, footnoted or named as where a statement came from. It is a property of a source over many answers, so a single answer has a citation, and a page or business has a rate.

How it is calculated

Fix the set of questions first; a rate over questions that change from month to month measures the questions. Put each one to an assistant, keep the answer verbatim, and record whether the source appears among the answer’s citations. Citations divided by answers is the rate. Two decisions shape the number more than anything on the page does: which assistant is asked, since each cites at a different density and with different presentation, and whether the count is per answer or per citation slot, since an answer that cites five sources gives the same source a smaller share of attention than one that cites two.

On this site the panel is twelve buyer questions for one trade in one place, put to one assistant, Claude with live web search, and asked again on the same questions once the fixes are live and every month with monitoring; the visibility score is built from those answers, and the method is on the methodology page.

Citation rate, mention rate and visibility score

Three numbers come out of the same answers and are often run together. A mention is the business named in the prose, with or without a link, so mention rate is usually the higher figure. A citation is a link or attribution to a page, and an assistant can mention a business without citing its site, or cite a directory page about it instead. The visibility score is built on the mention, linked or not, which is why it can move while the citation rate stands still.

The rate cannot be higher than the share of pages that give an assistant something to attribute. In this site’s audit of 9,483 small-business sites, 61.5% carried no question-and-answer content at all, so the passage a citation would point to did not exist.

A common question

Why do two assistants give the same page different citation rates?

Because the assistant asked is one of the two decisions that move the figure most, ahead of anything on the page itself. Each one cites at a different density and presents its sources differently, so the same source can appear in a larger or smaller share of answers without changing. The other decision is the unit of counting: a rate computed per answer differs from one computed per citation slot, since a reply that names five sources gives each a smaller share of attention than a reply that names two.

Sources

Mechanism of source-side visibility: Aggarwal et al., “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” (KDD 2024). The audit figure is this site’s own; sample drawn per metro and trade, percentages describe the sample.