What is AI citation?
Also called: Source citation
The short answer
An AI citation is a link or reference an AI answer gives to the page it drew information from, the visible credit that sends traffic and trust to the source.
AI citation, explained
Pages get cited when they state the fact clearly, are reachable by AI crawlers and come from sources the system trusts.
Questions people ask about AI citation
What is AI citation?
An AI citation is a link or reference an AI answer gives to the page it drew information from, the visible credit that sends traffic and trust to the source.
Related terms
AEO, answer engine optimisation, is structuring a website so AI assistants and search features quote it as the answer, not just list it as a link.
E-E-A-TE-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, the qualities Google's quality guidelines use to judge whether content deserves trust.
AI crawlersAI crawlers are bots run by AI companies that fetch web pages to train models or to answer questions live; robots.txt can allow or block each one.
GEOGEO, generative engine optimisation, is optimising content to be included and cited in answers written by generative AI systems.
Part of the Web Encyclopedia by Apex Flow Digital. Definitions are general knowledge, kept current, with no invented statistics.