Citations
How many AI answers drew on a site as a source. A site counts once in an answer, however many of its pages the answer used. Your own site and the sites that a query named are included.
The citations of a site are the number of AI answers that drew on the site as a source.
What counts as a source
The sources of an answer are every page that Fond can tie to it:
- the links written into the answer
- the pages that the assistant gives as the source of a claim
- for assistants that report them, the pages that the assistant retrieved but did not quote
So a site can get a citation from an answer that shows the reader no link to it.
How Fond computes it
Fond puts each source on a site. A subdomain usually counts as part of its site, so shop.example.com and example.com are one site. A store or page on a shared platform, such as myshopify.com or github.io, counts as its own site and not as the platform.
A redirect link counts as the site that it leads to. If Fond cannot follow it, Fond counts the site that the link points at. It does not count a link to a known redirect service.
In one answer, a site counts once, however many of its pages the answer drew on. So if 12 answers drew on reddit.com, and three of them used two threads, reddit.com has 12 citations, not 15.
Your own site, your competitors' sites and the sites that a query named all count. Citations are a count, not a rate.
Where you see it
The Top Citations tile on the overview lists the sites with the most citations in your most recent completed run. It also shows which assistants cited each one.
How it differs from related terms
- Organic citations are the same count without self-citations.
- AI visibility counts answers that mention your brand by name, whatever their sources. An answer can mention you without using your site, or use your site without naming you.
Related terms
Average search position
Where your pages rank in the Google results, as Search Console reports it. Fond averages it over the range and weights it by impressions. 1 is the top result, so lower is better.
Organic citations
Citations without self-citations. When a query names a brand, Fond does not count a link to that brand's own site in the answer. It still counts every other source in the same answer.