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Citation Sources

Find the sources AI cites in your category, ranked by influence

AI citations do not come from everywhere. They come from a small, category-specific set of trusted third-party sites. Whaily finds them, scores them by Neural Cluster Influence, and tells you exactly where to invest.

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The problem

Outreach is guesswork without a citation map.

Every day your team runs across a directory, a review site, a top-list, a forum — and every day the question is the same: is this worth our time? Without data on which sources actually drive AI citations in your category, effort gets spread thin and nothing compounds. A year later you have 40 listings and no measurable visibility change.

How it works

From sign-up to signal in minutes.

1

Whaily maps every source AI cites in your prompts

Every AI response Whaily captures is parsed for citations. Across thousands of responses and dozens of models, we assemble the full set of third-party domains AI draws on to answer questions in your category.

2

Each source gets a Neural Cluster Influence score

NCI measures how much weight a source carries when AI forms recommendations in your specific category. It is a composite of citation frequency, citation position, model diversity and semantic relevance — not just volume.

3

See the gap and prioritise outreach

Filter by source type (top-list, forum, review platform, publication), by NCI score, by competitor presence. Spot the high-NCI sources your competitors are on that you are missing from, and work them first.

What you get

Everything you need, in one place.

NCI score per source

Every cited domain gets a score from 0 to 100, updated as new responses come in. Sort, filter and act on it.

Source type classification

Top-lists, forums, review platforms, industry publications, official directories. Filter to the types your team can realistically work.

Competitor overlap

See which sources your competitors appear on. The ones they have and you do not are the highest-leverage targets.

Prompt-level attribution

Click any source to see which of your prompts it influenced. Directly connect a listing to the citations it moves.

Tracking & outreach status

Mark sources as partners, log outreach, track listing status. Close the loop from discovery to citation.

Markets-aware ranking

Sources ranked by NCI for your specific country and language. Global averages are misleading — Whaily localises.

A ranked citation map, not a flat list.

Every source you could possibly care about, scored by NCI and ordered by what moves your visibility. Competitor presence is shown inline so the gap is obvious.

Screenshot slot

Sources page — ranked list of cited domains with NCI score, citation count, source type and competitor-presence dots.

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Why it matters

Domain authority was for pages. NCI is for answers.

When a buyer asks ChatGPT "what is the best CRM for a 20-person team," the answer is built from a handful of trusted sources. A top-list on a respected SaaS publication. A G2 shortlist. A Reddit thread with enough engagement to carry weight. A comparison post on a category-specific blog. If you are on those sources, you are in the answer. If you are not, you are nowhere — no matter how good your own website is.

Neural Cluster Influence is a measure of how much weight AI places on a given source when answering in a given category. It is not link authority. It is not Domain Rating. It is a per-category signal that reflects how LLMs actually retrieve and cite. A site with a modest DR but a specialist audience often has a much higher NCI than a generic high-DR publisher.

Whaily calculates NCI continuously from your actual prompt runs. That means your map is specific to your category, your markets and your language. It is not a generic "top sites" list. It is a live, personalised map of the sources shaping the answers your buyers already get.

Filter to what your team can actually work.

Top-list only. High NCI only. Competitor-covered only. A few filter toggles turn the map into a prioritised outreach backlog.

Screenshot slot

Sources page with filters applied (top-list, NCI > 50, competitor-present) and the resulting filtered backlog.

/app/sources (filtered)

Questions

The short answers.

What is NCI and how is it calculated?+
Neural Cluster Influence (NCI) scores a source by how much it shapes AI recommendations in your specific category. It is a composite of citation frequency, citation position, the diversity of models citing it, and its semantic fit to your prompt set. Scores are recalculated as new responses come in.
How is this different from regular SEO domain authority?+
Domain authority is a general-purpose score based on backlink profile. NCI is a category-specific score based on how an AI model actually uses a source to answer questions in your space. A site can have low DA and high NCI, or the reverse.
Where do the sources come from?+
Every AI response Whaily captures is parsed for outbound citations. Over time, across models and prompts, we build the complete set of sources AI references for your category. No manual list-building required.
Can I see which competitors are listed on each source?+
Yes. Every source shows which of your tracked competitors appear on it, which lets you prioritise sources where competitors already have the advantage.
Does NCI update automatically?+
Yes. NCI is recalculated as your prompts re-run. New citations move it up, disappearing citations move it down, and changes are versioned so you can see the trend.
Can I act on a source directly from this view?+
Yes. Any source can become an action item with one click — assigned to a teammate, linked back to the prompts it influences, and tracked from outreach to listing live.

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