AI citations
See the sources behind every AI answer.
When an assistant answers a question, it leans on a handful of pages. Citations shows you exactly which ones, for every prompt you track: your pages, your competitors’ pages and the third-party articles that shape what assistants say about your market.
Ask Brigham.aiWhich pages do ChatGPT and Perplexity cite when people ask about small business loans, and why isn’t ZEO.co’s SBA guide one of them?- 5
- Assistants checked
- URL
- Level citation detail
- Top 100
- Page scan depth
- ~967
- On-page factors
Why citations matter
Assistants repeat what their sources say.
- Covers
- ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, AI Overviews
- Detail
- Domain and exact URL
- Includes
- Yours, competitors, third parties
An AI answer is built from pages. Perplexity and Google AI Overviews show those sources openly, and ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude often link them too. The brands those pages describe clearly are the brands that end up in the answer.
That makes citations the most practical lever in AI search. You can't edit a model, but you can see which pages it trusts for a topic, compare them with yours and close the gap. Citations also send visitors: a cited link is often the next click after someone reads an answer.
Search.co records every source for every tracked prompt, groups them by domain and URL, and tells you which of your pages are being used, which are being passed over and which outside articles you should be listed in.
Cited pages
Every cited URL, ranked by how often it’s used.
The citations table lists the pages assistants rely on across all your tracked prompts. Your pages are highlighted, so you can see in one view whether your best content is actually being used.
| Page | Owner | Prompts | Assistants |
|---|---|---|---|
| /business-loan-rates | Competitor A | 14 | 4 |
| /best-small-business-loans | Comparison blog | 11 | 5 |
| /sba-loan-guide | ZEO.co | 7 | 2 |
| /loan-requirements-faq | Competitor B | 6 | 3 |
| /equipment-financing | ZEO.co | 4 | 2 |
| /forum/sba-experiences | Industry forum | 3 | 1 |
01
Your pages
Which of your URLs are cited, for which prompts, and in which assistants.
02
Competitor pages
The rival pages that win citations you want, with the prompts they win.
03
Third-party pages
Reviews, comparisons and forums that assistants trust. Getting listed there is often the fastest route in.
Citation share
Who owns the sources for your topic?
Citation share is the portion of all citations, across your prompts, that point to each domain. It shows who assistants treat as the reference for a topic, which is often a different list from who ranks first on Google.
Filter by assistant to spot the differences. You might own a healthy share in Perplexity and almost nothing in AI Overviews, which points to a classic ranking problem rather than a content one.
Why they’re cited
Compare your page with the pages that get cited.
Once you know which pages win citations for a prompt, search.co scans them alongside yours. The page scan measures about 967 on-page factors and highlights the ones where cited pages differ from yours: direct answers, data tables, freshness, structure and depth.
The pattern is usually clear. Cited pages answer the question in the first lines, show specific numbers and are easy to quote.
Side-by-side scan
Your page against the cited set, factor by factor.
Quotable content
See whether your page has short, factual statements an assistant can lift.
What you get
Citation data you can act on.
URL-level sources
Every link an answer used, stored with the prompt, assistant and date.
Competitor citations
Which rival pages win the sources you want, and for which questions.
Third-party map
The review sites, comparisons and forums assistants lean on in your space.
Lost-citation alerts
Email or Slack when one of your pages stops being cited for a tracked prompt.
Page scan
Compare your page with cited pages across about 967 factors and get a roadmap.
Citation trend
Watch your citation rate rise or fall after each content change.
Becoming a cited source
A repeatable path from passed over to cited.
No one can promise a citation. What works is a loop: find the sources, match what they do well, then measure.
- 01
Find who gets cited
Pull the cited URLs for a prompt group and sort by how often each is used.
- 02
Scan the gap
Run a page scan on your page against the cited pages and see what they share.
- 03
Update and pitch
Fix your page with the editor, and approach the third-party pages that list competitors but not you.
- 04
Measure the result
Tracked prompts re-run on schedule, so you see whether citations follow.
What cited pages tend to have
Habits of pages assistants like to quote.
Content
4 checks- The answer in the first two sentences
- Specific numbers, ranges and dates
- A short FAQ that matches real prompts
- Clear definitions of key terms
Structure
4 checks- Descriptive headings
- Tables for comparisons and prices
- Lists for steps and options
- A visible last-updated date
Reputation
3 checks- Listed on relevant comparison pages
- Consistent details across directories
- Recent reviews on third-party sites
Ask Brigham
Find the one change that wins the citation.
Brigham.ai reads the cited pages, your page and the scan results, then ranks the fixes.
Competitor A’s page opens with a dated table of current rate ranges by loan type. Your guide is longer and better on process, but the rates are in paragraph eight and the page shows no update date. Perplexity cites the page that answers the exact question fastest.
Recommended fixes
Sorted by impact
- 1
Move rates to the top
30 minAdd a short rate table under the first heading with ranges by loan type.
- 2
Show a last-updated date
10 minAll three cited pages display one. Yours doesn’t.
- 3
Add a rates FAQ
1 hrAnswer “what affects my rate” and “fixed or variable” in two sentences each.
- 4
Get onto the comparison blog
OngoingIt is cited in 11 of your prompts and lists two competitors but not ZEO.co.
Definitions
Citation metrics, explained.
- Citation rate
- The share of tracked prompts in which at least one of your pages is cited.
- Citation share
- Your domain’s citations as a share of all citations across your prompts.
- Cited URL
- A specific page an answer linked to as a source.
- Third-party source
- A cited page owned by neither you nor a tracked competitor, such as a review or comparison site.
- Lost citation
- A page of yours that was cited in the previous run of a prompt and is not cited now.
Do all assistants show citations?
Perplexity and Google AI Overviews show sources on almost every answer. ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude include links on many answers, especially when they browse. We record whatever sources each answer provides.
Can I see competitors’ cited pages?
Yes. Every cited URL is stored, whoever owns it, so you can see exactly which competitor pages win citations and for which prompts.
Does a citation mean I’m recommended?
Not always. You can be cited as a source without being named as a recommendation, and the reverse. We track both separately so you know which you have.
How do I improve my chances of being cited?
Compare your page with the cited pages using the page scan, make your answer direct and specific, and get listed on the third-party pages assistants trust. Then watch the tracked prompts to see what changed.
Find out which pages AI trusts in your market.
Start a 7-day trial, add a few prompts and see every cited source after the first run.
Show me the pages AI assistants cite most for my top prompts, which of mine are cited, and the fastest way to get my best page cited.