Citations

The Citation Gap Map, under Analytics → Citations, shows which sites AI assistants draw on for the questions you track. Use it to find third-party sites worth a feature, and to see how often assistants use your site. See citations and organic citations in the glossary.

What is on the pageCopy Anchor Link

The Metrics card shows citations, the number of distinct sites cited, and their categories. In Per run, the line under the title gives how many answers the run used.

Citations by Category charts how your citations split across kinds of site. Citation Sources is the same split as a table. Each category opens to its sites, and each site to its cited pages, with the question each page answered and how many answers cited it. In Summary, those pages come from the latest run in the range that cited the site. You can sort by citations or number of sites, and search by site, name or category.

The CSV export keeps your search and adds the relationship, source type and organic count of each site.

The Total and Organic tabs choose the count. Organic, the default, leaves out links to a brand's own site on questions that named that brand. So your own organic count is the citations you earned on questions that did not ask about you.

A site row can carry two notes. non-organic is the part of its citations from questions that name that brand. not yet split, in the Organic tab, is citations that Fond could not sort yet, which count only in Total. If either compared run has some, the Organic tab shows no change for that row, because the two counts would cover different things.

Generate a full Citation Analysis Report, at the foot of the page, ranks the cited sites into an outreach plan.

What counts as a citationCopy Anchor Link

A citation is a site that an answer drew on as a source. Where the assistant reports them, this includes pages that it read but did not quote or link. Not every assistant reports these, so one assistant can cite a site more than another.

These rules decide which site a source counts towards:

• A subdomain usually counts as its site, so blog.example.com and example.com are one row.
• A store on a shared hosting platform counts as its own site, so each myshopify.com store is a separate merchant.
• A site counts once in each answer, however many of its pages the answer used. Across answers, the counts add up.

The citations entry has the full rules, including redirect links.

How Fond classifies cited sitesCopy Anchor Link

Fond gives every cited site two labels:

• The relationship: your own, a competitor's, neutral (a third party), or unknown. Unknown means that Fond could not tell or has not reached the site yet.
• The source type, such as Review Blog, News & Media, Affiliate / Listicle, Community, Marketplace / Retailer, Reference / Wiki and Social Platform. Other means that Fond looked and the site fits none of the named types.

The page folds the two labels into one category. Your own site is Your Brand. The own site of a competitor or any other brand is Competitor / Brand Site. Every other site goes under its source type. A site with no source type yet is Unclassified, which means no answer yet, and not "none of these".

Two labels come from what you told Fond. Your website domain is Your Brand, and the website of a tracked competitor is a competitor. Fond classifies everything else automatically.

Correcting a classificationCopy Anchor Link

You cannot change the category of a site on the page. You can:

• Track the competitor. On the Competitors page, click Manage tracked competitors. The next classification files its website as a competitor.
• Ask your Fond contact to correct any other site. A site that the Fond team classified by hand carries a STAFF badge, and automatic classification does not overwrite it.

What to do with itCopy Anchor Link

1. Put your effort into the biggest third-party categories.
2. Read the pages of the most-cited sites to see what the assistant looked for. A listicle that ranks your rivals and not you is a specific pitch.
3. Check your own row in Organic. If Your Brand is low, look at what the cited pages offer that yours do not.
4. In Per run, compare runs before and after an outreach win or content change.
5. Fix misfiled sites, because categories decide which sites Fond suggests.

Summary or one runCopy Anchor Link

The Summary and Per run control, which the Visibility guide describes, carries over to Visibility, Results and Competitors. Per run opens on the latest run.

• In Summary, the page adds up citations across your date range. A Total Citations headline names what Fond measured it and its change on. When some runs have no citation data, the Metrics card shows Partial and how many runs contributed.
• In Per run, use Compare with to set a second run beside the first. The table then shows both counts and the change.

When categories are still being worked outCopy Anchor Link

A new run can show counts before categories, because classification starts after Fond collects its answers. Fond does not analyze a run in progress or a failed run.

Until classification is done, Per run says Citation classification is being generated and holds back the chart, the table and the category count. To start classification yourself, click Analyze Gap Map.

Summary holds them back only until Fond classifies a site in your range. A newly cited site stays Unclassified until Fond reaches it.

"Get cited on" suggestionsCopy Anchor Link

The Action Items tile on the overview can suggest Get cited on a site. If your latest completed Citation Analysis Report has an action shortlist, the tile shows that instead.

Otherwise, Fond picks up to three eligible sites from your latest completed run and links them to this page. A more cited site ranks higher on the tile.

A site is eligible when it has a source type and is not the own site of a brand, yours or another. A site with an unknown relationship stays eligible. An Unclassified site waits for a source type, because it can be a rival's site.

What citations do not measureCopy Anchor Link

• Whether a site already features you. A suggestion can name such a site.
• Clicks or traffic. A citation can count when the reader sees no link. AI Traffic shows traffic from AI assistants, through the GA4 integration and Cloudflare edge measurement. Edge measurement is not on every account yet.
• Backlinks.
• Questions that you do not track. A site cited only for other questions does not appear.
• Mentions. An answer can name you without citing your site, and the reverse. Mentions are AI visibility, on the Visibility page.