Citations screen
When an assistant backs an answer with evidence, it points at URLs. This screen collects every one of those for the workspace you are looking at, so you can see which pages the models treat as trustworthy - yours, your competitors', and third parties you may never have looked at.
Being mentioned is being named. Being used as a source is being used as evidence. They are different achievements and they need different work, which is why they are counted separately. Sources explains the concept, including the difference between a page an assistant retrieved and one it cited.
What it shows
- Your share of sources against the competitors on the workspace's roster.
- Whose pages - whose pages are earning the evidence slots. The chart and the brands table open on you and your primary competitors so the trend stays readable. Use the Brands filter to add secondary or watched brands, or to show everyone. The arena opens on market questions - the contest - rather than pooling interviews about a brand itself. Use Arena to widen to everything, or to look at reputation alone.
- Top sites - the domains assistants keep returning to. Often these are review sites, forums, and publishers rather than anyone's own website.
- Top pages - the individual pages behind those domains. A site tells you where you could earn a mention; a page tells you what was worth reading.
- What kinds of source - the same citations counted by kind of site rather than by name, so you can see whether the answers rest on editorial coverage, forums, or reference works.
- Citations over time - how often pages were used as sources, and whose they were.
- Sites feeding your rivals - third-party sites that assistants use as a source for your rivals and not you. This is usually the most actionable panel on the screen, because each row is a place you could plausibly be present and currently are not.
Top sites and Top pages each show the leaders only; the link in the heading opens the full list. From either you can open one site or page and see exactly which answers used it as a source.
What you need for it to work
Citations are attributed to a brand by matching the URL against the web addresses recorded on that brand. A brand with no addresses cannot be credited for anything.
If the screen tells you attribution is unavailable, add web addresses to your brands on Brands. The whole history fills in immediately - nothing needs re-running.
What you can do here
- Filter by owner to see only your pages, only competitors', or only third parties.
- Set the kind of site on a cited domain (editorial, community, reference, and the rest) when the automatic label is wrong. Your correction applies for this account.
- Open a site or page to read the answers that used it as a source.
- Chase a gap - pick a site feeding rivals and work out whether you can legitimately be present there.
Related
- Sources - the concept, including retrieved versus cited
- Traits - what was said, alongside where it came from
- Presence and AEO - making your pages worth using as sources