Citation

Citations come in two flavors: named (the AI mentions your brand name in the answer text) and linked (the AI provides a URL to your site as a source). Perplexity and Bing Copilot reliably link; ChatGPT and Claude name brands more than they link.

Earning citations requires three things: presence in the AI's training data, fresh signals via crawlable pages with schema, and topical authority on the specific query. VibecodeAEO tracks every citation, every prompt, every engine — so you know what content is earning your brand answer-engine real estate.

Related terms

• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) — The practice of optimizing content, schema, and brand signals so that AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini cite your brand accurately when answering user queries.
• Answer Engine — An AI system that responds to natural-language queries with a synthesized answer rather than a list of links — examples include ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Anthropic Claude.
• AI Visibility Score — A 0-100 metric measuring how often and how favorably your brand is mentioned across major AI answer engines for a tracked set of buyer-intent prompts.
• AI Share of Voice — Your brand's percentage of total citations across AI answer engines for a defined set of prompts in a category — the AEO equivalent of share of voice in advertising.