GEO Glossary
Citation
A citation is a source that an AI answer links to or explicitly names as evidence.
At a glance
AI ANSWER "The .com share among startups is falling sharply [1]" │ └─ SOURCE [1] ├─ direct your own page is linked └─ indirect another page that names you is linked
Example
Someone asks Perplexity which domain extensions startups use today. The answer gives numbers and links your study below. That is a direct citation.
> Which domain extensions do startups use today? Almost half of young startups still use .com,a good quarter already .ai [1]. [1] bernard.digital/en/startup-domains-study ◀ citation
Why it matters for GEO
Citations bring visits from AI answers and show that the AI trusts your page. They only happen when the AI searches the web for its answer. Without that search there is at most a mention.
In practice
What gets counted is how often your domain appears in the answers’ sources, as a citation rate per Prompt set. Plus the referral traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and co. in your analytics.
How it fits together
Citations happen when an AI system uses RAG to retrieve sources and bases its answer on them through Grounding . Which sources get retrieved at all depends on the searches from Query Fan-Out . Without a link it remains a Mention.