MentionFlow AI
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DocsMetrics

Citation share

Of the answers that cite any source, the share that cite your own domain. A 0 to 1 measure of how often you are the receipt behind an AI answer.

Search-grounded engines back their answers with citations. Citation share measures how often you are one of those sources.

How it's calculated

Take the runs in the window that carried any citations. Citation share is the fraction of those that cite a domain you own:

citation_share = runs citing your domain / runs that had any citations

It is a fraction from 0 to 1.

  • The denominator is only runs with citations. Knowledge-only engines that never cite don't drag it down.
  • "Your domain" is the primary domain on your brand. We re-derive owned versus competitor from your current brand config, so fixing your domain fixes the metric retroactively.

Null handling

Citation share is null (em-dash) when no run in the window carried any citations. A 0 would claim engines cited others but not you. The em-dash says correctly that there was nothing to measure.

The colour bands, and where they come from

Citation share is one of the three metrics that carries a red, amber or green verdict. The Overview card paints its number and its top hairline in the band's colour, and names the band beneath it: "below par", "around par", "above par". The Briefing draws it as a banded meter. Here is the cutoff behind both. The card shows the fraction as a percentage, and so does everything below.

An answer that cites anything usually cites several sources. If a typical cited answer names eight domains, then one of them being yours is an even split. That is the bar worth banding against. We measured it rather than inventing it:

answers that carried a citation      7,800
distinct domains named, mean         7.67
distinct domains named, median       8
par = 100 / 7.67                     13.0%

Par is 13.0%. The bands sit at half of par and half again above it, the same shape Share of Voice uses:

BandCitation shareWhat it means
Redunder 6.5%Answers had room for several sources and you were rarely one of them.
Amber6.5% to 19.5%You get cited, around the rate an even split would give you.
Green19.5% and upEngines reach for you more often than an even split of the field would predict.

Two things this number is not:

  • It is not recalculated from your data. It is fixed at the measurement above: 7,800 answers, measured 2026-07-26. A threshold that moved with live data would turn a green card amber on a day nothing about your site changed, and no screenshot or emailed report would stay true. When we re-measure, the new figure and its date replace these here and on Methodology.
  • It is not a target. Par is what an even share of the field looks like, not what good looks like for your category. A niche where three sources get cited over and over has a much higher ceiling than a crowded one.

The colour never carries the reading on its own. The Overview card spells the band out in words under the number, and the briefing's meter length and its number come from the same figure.

Why it matters

  • It connects your content work to AI answers. To raise citation share you need pages engines want to cite. The Sources surface shows exactly which domains they cite instead of you.
  • With Google Search Console connected, the Pages view traces citation share down to individual URLs.

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