AI citation
An AI citation is a link or named source that an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews shows alongside its answer.
Updated · Citable
What AI citation means
When an AI assistant searches the web to answer a question, it usually shows where the information came from: numbered footnotes in Perplexity, source chips in ChatGPT search, link cards in Google's AI Overviews. Each of those is a citation. Being cited means your page was one of the sources the answer was built from.
Citations matter because they are the clickable part of an AI answer, and because the brands named in the sources tend to be the brands named in the answer. Getting cited depends on being indexed, being relevant to the question, and being trusted, the same foundations as search, plus content that states facts clearly enough to quote.
Questions people ask
Is an AI citation the same as a backlink?
No. A citation is shown in an AI answer and may send visitors, but it is not a link on a web page that search engines count.