# Citation share: the AI visibility metric for sources

What citation share means in AI search, how it is calculated, how Bing reports it and how it differs from Share of Voice and brand mentions.

**Citation share is the percentage of all source citations in a set of AI answers that point to one website or page. It shows how much of the evidence behind the answers comes from that source, which is different from how often a brand is named.**

AI assistants such as Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews often list the sources an answer draws on. Citation share counts those links. If the answers to your questions cite 40 sources in total and 6 of them are your pages, your citation share is 15 percent. The metric tells you how much of the visible evidence comes from you. It says nothing about whether the answer names or recommends your brand.

## The formula

> Citation share = citations to the selected source ÷ all citations in the comparison set × 100

The comparison set has to be stated: which questions, which assistants, which market, language and period. A citation share without that context cannot be reproduced.

A related figure counts answers rather than links:

> Citation rate = answers citing the selected source ÷ all relevant answers × 100

Both are useful. Citation share shows your slice of all cited sources. Citation rate shows how often you appear as a source at all.

## Citation share, Share of Voice and mentions

These three are often mixed up, but they measure different things:

| Metric         | What is counted                                             | Question it answers                                 |
| -------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- |
| Mentions       | Answers whose text names the brand                          | Does the assistant talk about us?                   |
| Share of Voice | The brand's share of all brand mentions in a competitor set | How much of the conversation is ours?               |
| Citation share | The source's share of all cited links                       | How much of the evidence behind the answer is ours? |

The gap between them is often the interesting part. A brand can be named without its website being cited. The answer then relies on, say, a trade article or a comparison site. A brand's page can also be cited without the brand being named. The answer then uses a fact from it and credits nobody. In the first case, the brand depends on what others write about it. In the second, it feeds answers without getting credit.

[Share of Voice in PR](/en/blog/share-of-voice-pr) explains the brand-mention side in detail.

## Why citation share matters for PR

Citation share is usually reported for a domain, often your own. For communications teams that view is too narrow. An example: an answer cites a trade magazine article about your company. Your own citation share does not move. Yet earned coverage has just shaped the answer. A PR view of citation share therefore asks two questions:

1. How often are your own pages cited?
2. How often is coverage about you or your competitors cited?

The second question shows which outlets the assistants rely on for your topics. That is a practical input for media relations.

## Where citation share shows up

Bing Webmaster Tools added a Citation Share column to its AI Performance report in June 2026. According to [Bing's documentation](https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/ai-performance-9f8e7d6c), it shows the percentage of citations attributed to your site out of all citations shown for a specific grounding query. A grounding query is the search phrase the assistant generates to fetch sources, not necessarily what a person typed. Bing does not reveal which other sites hold the remaining share. It also states plainly: Citation Share is not a ranking, traffic figure or quality score.

Other assistants do not publish this metric for site owners. To compare across providers, teams run a fixed set of questions themselves and count the cited sources. The [AMEC measurement guide](https://amecorg.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/26-05-15-A-Practitioners-Guide-to-GEO-Measurement.pdf) treats that kind of tracking as directional evidence, not proof of impact.

For the full set of AI visibility metrics, see [What is AI visibility?](/en/blog/ai-visibility-explained)

## How aclipp helps

aclipp records the sources cited in each tracked AI answer, for your brand and your competitors. Its Cited metric is the citation rate described above. It shows the share of answers that cite one of a brand's domains. That holds even when the answer does not name the brand. Cited sits next to visibility. So you see whether your brand is named but not cited, or cited but not named. Domain and URL views list the most cited sources. They also show which outlets the assistants cite for your topics. The definitions are in the Help Center under [AI Visibility metrics](/en/help/ai-visibility/metrics).

## Frequently asked questions

### Is citation share the same as Share of Voice?

No. Share of Voice compares how often brands are named in the answer text. Citation share compares how often sources are linked. A brand can have a high Share of Voice and a low citation share, or the other way round.

### What is a good citation share?

There is no general benchmark. Some questions draw on many sources. Citations then spread thin, and even a strong source holds only a small share. Compare your share for the same questions over time, and look at which sources hold the rest.

### Does a citation prove the source influenced the answer?

No. A citation is an observed link. It can support one small fact or the whole answer, and it does not prove the answer is accurate. Read the cited passages before drawing conclusions.