AI citations — why one source gets quoted
Also known as: source attribution, cited sources
The links an assistant shows beside its answer, chosen at answer time for how well a passage supports a specific claim — not for how good the site is overall.
Last revised 2026-09-07. Also available as markdown — request this URL with Accept: text/markdown.
In plain English
A citation is not a reward for authority in general. It is a decision about one sentence: the model has written a claim, and it needs a passage it can point at. The page that wins is the one that states that claim cleanly, on its own, in a form that survives being lifted out of context.
This is why obviously excellent pages go uncited. A long, beautifully argued article that never puts the answer in a single quotable place gives the model nothing to point at, and it points somewhere else.
How to fix / set it up
- Put the answer in one paragraph that reads correctly with nothing around it.
- Attach dates and units to numbers, and say where the number came from.
- Use headings that repeat the question rather than a pun on it.
- Avoid burying the claim after three paragraphs of context — retrieval frequently takes the passage, not the page.
The technical detail
Attribution generally happens per claim, after generation or during it, matching sentences to retrieved passages. Practical consequences: self-contained paragraphs beat paragraphs that depend on the one before; specific figures with dates and units beat vague description; and a clear subject sentence beats a clever opening.
Freshness and specificity both act as tie-breakers. Between two adequate passages, the dated and precise one tends to win — which is an argument for saying "as of March 2026, 41%" rather than "recently, around 40%".
Citations are not stable. Re-running the same question redraws them, so a citation is evidence that your page is retrievable and quotable, not a position you hold.
FAQ
Do citations bring traffic?
Some, but far less than a search result of comparable prominence: the answer is often complete without the click. The value is largely in being named to a buyer at the moment they are deciding.
Can I ask to be cited?
No, and text on your page instructing an assistant to cite you is at best ignored — at worst it is treated as prompt injection. See `prompt-injection`.