Citation Intelligence Dashboard
The Citation Intelligence dashboard provides deep analysis of how AI platforms cite sources across all your AI Visibility Reports. Understanding citation patterns helps you optimize content to be more frequently cited.
What You'll Learn
In this guide, you'll learn:
- How to interpret citation analytics
- What different citation formats mean
- How to identify influential third-party sources and filter them by date, platform, and project
- How to use citation trends for content strategy
- How to create PR projects directly from top citation sources
Prerequisites
Citations are tracked based on the AI Visibility reports you run for the property. If you haven't run a report there will not be any data here to view.
Citation Overview
At the top of the dashboard, you'll see summary metrics:
- Total Citations: How many times sources were cited across all reports
- Owned Media: How many times your domain (or competitor domains you track) was cited
- Non-Owned Citations: All citations that did not come from one of your owned domains. This is the broadest "external coverage" number — it includes press, editorial mentions, review sites, reference sites, and any source we haven't been able to classify into a more specific bucket
- Listicle Citations: Citations from list-format content like "best of" or "top 10" articles
Charts and Analysis
Media Type Distribution
This chart breaks down all of your citations by the kind of source that produced them — not by what kind of page it is, but by the relationship that source has to your brand.
| Media Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Owned Media | A citation from your own domain or one of the competitor domains you've added to the property. |
| Press Coverage | Citations from established press outlets — major national/international newspapers and magazines, and B2B trade publications. |
| Web Articles & Blogs | Citations from open-web articles and blogs that aren't established press — independent blogs, agency content, course providers, partner pages, and most brand-adjacent articles on the wider web. This is the broadest "earned" bucket: it does not specifically mean "mentions of your brand" — to filter by which brand a source mentions, use the Brand Attribution filter on the Third-Party Citation Sources table further down. |
| Review Sites | Review platforms like G2, Capterra, Yelp, Trustpilot. |
| Social & Community | Forums, Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn, Substack, Medium. |
| Reference Sites | Wikipedia and other reference/encyclopedia sources. |
| Video Platforms | YouTube, Vimeo, embedded video. |
| Unclassified Source | Sources we haven't been able to classify into one of the buckets above. We try to keep this slice as small as possible — see the methodology page for how source classification works. |
A note on the "Non-Owned Citations" KPI vs. the buckets above. The KPI at the top of the dashboard counts every citation that is not from an owned domain. That's a single number. The Media Type Distribution chart then splits those non-owned citations across all of the source-type buckets above (plus owned media). So the KPI total and the sum of all non-owned slices in this chart should match.
Source Authority
This chart groups each cited source by what kind of organization runs it. While Media Type Distribution asks "what role does this source play in coverage?", Source Authority asks "who runs this site?"
| Authority Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Academic | Universities, research institutions, peer-reviewed journals, and major scientific publishers (.edu domains, nature.com, arxiv.org, etc.). |
| Government | Official government sources at any level — federal, state, local, or international (.gov, .gov.uk, europa.eu, etc.). |
| Major Media | Tier-1 mainstream press — large national/international newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks that a non-expert would recognize. |
| Trade Media | Industry-specific publications and B2B trade press — outlets whose audience is professionals in a specific vertical rather than the general public. |
| Industry Analysts | Research and advisory firms, management consultancies that publish research, and elite business publications (Gartner, Forrester, McKinsey, HBR, etc.). |
| Professional Orgs | Industry associations, professional bodies, standards organizations, foundations, charities, NGOs, advocacy groups, and other non-profits. |
| Review Aggregators | Platforms whose primary business is collecting and publishing reviews or ratings of products, services, or businesses. |
| Reference/Encyclopedia | Reference and encyclopedia sites — authoritative knowledge bases, dictionaries, and consumer health/medical references. |
| Other Brand Websites | Any commercial brand website that isn't press, reviews, reference, etc. — corporate sites, product/SaaS sites, agencies, ecommerce stores, B2B vendor sites. Also includes a small number of nonprofits we couldn't pin to a more specific bucket. |
If your citations are primarily from lower-authority sources, focus on building presence on higher-authority platforms — major media, trade press, and analyst firms tend to carry the most weight.
Platform Coverage
This chart shows which AI platforms generate the most citations. Understanding which platforms are generating more citations can help you decide which platforms to focus on optimizing for.
Citation Content Formats
This chart groups citations by the editorial format of the cited page — how the content is structured, regardless of who runs the site.
| Format | Description |
|---|---|
| Listicle | Best-of, top-N, or comparison content (e.g. "Top 10 CRM tools", "5 best alternatives to X"). |
| How-To Guides | Tutorials, step-by-step instructions, and walkthrough guides. |
| Reviews | Product or service review content with pros/cons or hands-on assessment. |
| Research | Studies, statistics, original research, and data-driven reports. |
| Case Studies | Customer success stories, before/after walkthroughs, and detailed case studies. |
| News | News articles, press releases, and announcement-style coverage. |
| Reference | Encyclopedia or dictionary-style reference content. |
| Videos | Video content (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.). |
| Podcasts | Podcast episodes or audio content. |
| Other Articles & Pages | Pages that don't match any of the more specific formats above — typically regular informational articles, product/about/service pages, marketing pages, and plain blog posts that aren't formatted as a list, guide, or review. |
Some formats are more likely to generate click-throughs than others. Listicles are a very common format for citations since they naturally describe differences in category options.
Citation Trends Over Time
The trends chart shows how citation patterns change across your report history:
- Rising citations: Your authority is growing
- Stable citations: Maintaining position
- Declining citations: May indicate increased competition or content staleness
Look for correlations between citation trends and:
- New content publication
- Content updates
- Competitor activity
- AI platform changes
You can compare breakdowns over time of different types of citations:
- Earned media vs. owned media
- Media Type
- Source Authority
- Content Format
Top Third-Party Citation Sources
This list shows which external domains are most frequently cited in AI responses, ranked by citation count. The list updates in real time when you change any filter (date range, project, platform, or content format) — so if you narrow the view to a specific platform or date window, the source rankings reflect only that filtered data.
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Domain | The cited website |
| Citations | Number of times cited within the active filter window |
| Media types | The content types that were cited from this domain |
Using This Data
Outreach Opportunities: High-citation sources in your space are influential. Consider:
- Contributing guest content
- Building relationships for backlinks
- Monitoring their content strategy
Competitive Intelligence: If competitors' domains appear here frequently, study what content gets cited.
Content Gaps: If certain topics are always cited from third parties, you may need to create authoritative content on those topics.
Creating a PR Project from Citation Sources
Each source row has a checkbox. Select any combination of domains you want to monitor and a Create PR Project button appears in the card header showing the count of selected domains. Clicking it takes you directly to the New Project form with:
- Project type pre-set to PR
- All selected domains pre-filled as publisher targets
From there you only need to confirm a name, set a start date, and assign prompts. This is the fastest way to turn "we're being outcompeted on these third-party sites" into a structured PR campaign with tracked goals.
Tip: Use the date range and platform filters first to find the sources that matter most for a specific context — for example, filter to the last 30 days and a single platform to see which publishers are driving citations on that platform right now — then select those sources to create a precisely targeted PR project.
Taking Action
To Increase Your Citation Rate
- Create citable content: Research reports, original data, comprehensive guides
- Add structured data: Help AI understand your content type
- Build authority signals: Backlinks, mentions, social proof
- Update regularly: Fresh content is more likely to be cited
- Cover topics comprehensively: Thin content rarely gets cited
To Appear in More Citation Contexts
- Review which third-party sources get cited
- Create content covering similar topics
- Ensure your content is at least as comprehensive
- Target the specific grounding searches that trigger citations
- Monitor citation trends after publishing
Best Practices
Track Citation Patterns, Not Just Counts
Raw citation counts fluctuate. Focus on:
- Are you being cited for the right topics?
- Are citation contexts positive or neutral?
- Are you gaining share vs. third parties?
Invest in Citable Content Types
Based on media type distribution, prioritize creating content types that get cited. If research reports get cited frequently, invest in original research.
Build Relationships with High-Citation Sources
The top third-party sources are influential in your space. Building relationships can lead to mentions, links, and referral traffic beyond AI citations.
Monitor Competitor Citations
If a competitor suddenly appears in top citations, investigate what content drove this. You may need to respond with your own authoritative content.
Related
- AI Visibility Reports — Run reports to generate citation data
- AI Traffic Analytics — Track when users click through from AI citations
- Projects — Create PR projects from top citation sources and track campaign goals
- Getting Started — Install the tracking plugin