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Citation Research answers a question the Dashboard can’t: where are AI citations actually coming from? Not just whether your brand is cited, but which types of sources the AI is drawing on, which specific URLs carry the most authority, and how your citation source mix compares to competitors.

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Source type breakdown

AI engines don’t cite all content equally. Citation Research categorizes your brand’s citations (and your competitors’) by source type:
  • Corporate — your own website and owned properties
  • Videos — YouTube and other video platforms where spoken content is transcribed and cited
  • Media — news publications, industry press, and high-authority editorial outlets
  • Community — Reddit threads, forum discussions, Hacker News posts
  • Partner/Affiliate — third-party review sites, partner blogs, and co-marketing content
  • All Types — the combined view across every category
Each category shows citation count and share, both for your brand and side-by-side with tracked competitors.

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Why source mix matters

AI engines weight citation sources differently based on query type:
  • Purchase-intent queries favor high-authority media and established review sites
  • Technical or how-to queries favor documentation, community discussions, and detailed guides
  • Category-awareness queries draw heavily from video content and editorial comparisons
If a competitor has four YouTube citations and you have zero, you’re not losing on content quality — you’re losing on format coverage. Citation Research makes these structural gaps visible.

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Drilling into specific sources

Click any source type to see the individual URLs driving citations in that category. For each URL you can see:
  • The specific page that was cited
  • How many times it was cited across tracked prompts
  • Which competitor (if any) the citation favors
This level of detail is useful for identifying a single high-authority page that’s driving outsized competitor advantage — and deciding whether to create a competing piece, earn a mention on the same domain, or build authority in a different channel.

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Connecting to action

Citation Research is a diagnostic tool. Once you identify the gap:
  • Video gap → create YouTube content or transcribed audio covering your target prompts
  • Media gap → use Media Press Placement to book placements on relevant publications
  • Community gap → use Social Listening to find and respond to active threads
  • Owned content gap → use Brand Studio to create the missing piece