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Two things can happen to you in an AI answer:
  • A mention: your brand is named in the text.
  • A citation: the answer links to, or lists as a source, a page on your domain.
They are independent. AI often names brands it already knows without linking anywhere, and it often cites a page without naming the company behind it.

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The metrics

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Why the separation matters

  • A high mention rate with few citations is normal for a well-known brand and tells you AI is drawing on general knowledge rather than your pages. Your pages are not yet a source.
  • Citations without mentions mean a page of yours is useful to the AI but is not carrying your brand into the answer. Entity clarity on that page fixes it.
  • Only tracking one of the two would hide both patterns.

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Citation types

Every cited domain is classified by type, the same eight types you see on Sources: Corporate (brand and company sites), Editorial (blogs, news, press, video and podcasts), Review (review and comparison sites), Directories & Listings, Institutional (government, academic, Wikipedia and industry bodies), Social, Community (Reddit and forums) and Other. Each type implies a different outreach play. The Action Centre turns them into actions; choose Off-site in its Filter dropdown to see only those.

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Cited or Not cited

On the Sources page, the column headed with your brand name shows Cited or Not cited for each source: whether your brand is referenced on that source, as the platform returned it. It is separate from Mentioned, which says whether your brand was named in the AI answer that cited the source.