Citation Share
The share of AI answers that link to a page on your own domain as a source.
Citation share is the share of AI answers that link to a page on your own domain as a source. Ask a model 20 buyer questions with web search on, and if 5 of the answers cite one of your pages, your citation share for that set is 25 percent.
The same words are also used for a different ratio: of every citation in your category, the share that point at your domain. One answer that cites ten pages counts ten times there and once in the first ratio, so the two numbers move apart whenever answers grow longer source lists. When two reports disagree, ask what each one divides by.
Neither is a mention. A citation is a page the answer linked to; a mention is your name in the prose a reader sees. The case worth watching is a high citation share with a low mention rate: the model read your page, built its answer on it, and named someone else. That is a page doing work for you without credit, and it is usually the cheapest gap to close.
Whaily keeps the two apart everywhere. It shows which of your own pages the tracked answers cite, how often, and on which models, and it counts separately the answers that cited your page without saying your name. The free check reports both from one sample: how many answers named you, and how many cited your site.
Frequently asked questions
- Is citation share the same as share of voice?
- No. Share of voice counts namings in the prose: of every time a tracked brand is named, how many are yours. Citation share counts links to your pages as sources. A brand can lead one and trail the other.
- Why can my citation share be high while my visibility is low?
- Because a model can cite your page and still name your competitors in the answer. Visibility only counts your name in the text, so a cited page without your name raises citation share and leaves visibility where it was.
- How do I raise citation share?
- Answer the buyer questions in your category directly on your own pages, keep them crawlable by the AI search bots, and earn a place on the third-party pages the models already cite. Then check which cited pages fail to name you, and fix those first.
Related terms
Whaily turns this from theory into measurement: which brands AI names in your category, and which sources shape those answers, tracked across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.