What counts as a citation

This article explains when KI Score counts a website as cited, how a citation differs from a mention, and what role citations play in your KI Score.

Mentions vs. citations

A mention means your brand name or one of your aliases appears in the text of an AI answer. A citation means a URL appears in the answer’s source list. KI Score measures the two separately. The glossary in the dashboard puts it this way: a brand mention on its own is not yet a source citation.

In practice:

• If the AI names your brand but doesn’t link to any page on your website, the answer counts as a mention, not as a citation of your domain.
• If the AI lists a page from your website as a source without naming your brand in the text, the answer counts as a citation of your domain, not as a mention.

When you open an answer’s details under Responses, you see both side by side: Erwähnt (Mentioned), Quellen zitiert (Sources cited, meaning the answer lists any source at all), and Eigene Domain zitiert (Own domain cited). The individual sources appear in the Zitierte Quellen (Cited sources) section.

Which links count as a source

KI Score queries the AI providers through their APIs with web search turned on. With each answer, the provider returns a list of the web search sources it used, and KI Score stores that list. Google AI Overview and Gemini often list only a Google redirect link as the source. KI Score resolves it and stores the page it leads to.

• In monitoring, a URL counts as cited when it appears in that stored source list. Links that only show up in the answer text don’t count as citations on the Sources page.
• In the market sources on the KI Score page, links in the answer text count as well as the returned source URLs. A domain name that is merely mentioned, without a link, doesn’t count as evidence there.

On the Sources page, the Zitationsrate (Citation rate) column shows the share of answers in the selected time period that list a domain as a source. The Typ (Type) column classifies each source, for example as Eigene Domain (Own domain), Wettbewerber-Domain (Competitor domain), or Drittquelle (Third-party source). By default, the table shows all sources, including your own domain and your competitors’ domains. Use + Filter → Quellen (Sources) → Nur Drittquellen (Third-party sources only) to hide those two groups.

Your own domain’s citation rate

The Zitation % (Citation %) column in the prompts table shows the share of answers that cite your own domain as a source. The dashboard glossary lists this metric under Zitationsrate (Citation rate).

A source counts as your own domain when it has the same host as your website’s address or is a subdomain of it. A leading “www.” makes no difference. For example, if your website is set up as beispiel.de, sources from shop.beispiel.de count too. If your website itself sits on a subdomain, such as jobs.beispiel.de, the main domain beispiel.de and its other subdomains count as well. Shops on a shared platform domain such as myshopify.com stay separate. The domains stored for the brand assigned to your website count too.

Note: Monitoring metrics are always calculated with your current settings. If you change your website’s address, the values for answers already stored change as well.

Competitor citations

The Meistzitierter Wettbewerber % (Most-cited competitor %) column shows, for each prompt, the tracked competitor whose domain is cited most often, with its share of answers. The Wettbewerber zitiert % (Competitor cited %) column, which you can show when needed, gives the share of answers that cite at least one competitor domain. Both only show a value once you’ve added domains to your competitors. Without competitor domains, these metrics can’t be determined.

The Zitationslücke (Citation gap) column subtracts the most-cited competitor’s rate from your citation rate. This shows you at a glance for which prompts a competitor serves as a source more often than you do.

The same applies here: if you add a competitor domain later, it retroactively affects the values for past answers.

Why citations don’t count toward the score

The KI Score reflects whether AI answers name your brand and where they place it. It is made up of the mention rate and position coverage. Citations are not part of it. On the KI Score page, the info for Quellen in deinem Markt (Sources in your market) also points out that a placement in a source doesn’t automatically raise the KI Score.

Citations are a diagnostic: they show which websites AI systems rely on and whether your own content is among them. The citation rate is a monitoring metric. Your monitoring prompts don’t change the KI Score anyway, since the score comes from the market measurement of your market.