Gemini can answer from training data alone or with a live search step attached. That difference decides whether an answer carries source links at all — and this is the surface we track on every plan.
What this surface is
Gemini is Google's assistant family. It can answer from what the model learned during training, or it can be connected to live web content through a grounding step that runs searches before the answer is written.
The two modes look similar to a reader and are entirely different for a brand. An ungrounded answer carries no source URLs at all; a grounded one carries the searches the model ran and citations tying parts of the answer to the pages behind them.
How it differs from a results page
Google Search returns a list you scan. Gemini returns a written answer with citations attached to particular passages, so attribution is per sentence rather than per result.
Gemini is also not the same thing as an AI Overview, even though both are Google products drawing on Google Search. They are separate surfaces with separate behaviour, and we track them separately.
What the vendor documents
Each line below is read from the linked document. Nothing in this section comes from our own testing or from a third-party estimate.
Google documents a grounding mode that connects the model to real-time web content. A grounded response carries the search queries the model ran, search suggestions for the interface, and inline citations linking spans of the answer text to source URLs.
Source: Google — Grounding with Google Search (Gemini API) (opens the vendor's documentation in a new tab)Google documents grounding as something the caller enables, not something every Gemini answer does. Without it the answer draws on training data and there are no source URLs to read.
Source: Google — Grounding with Google Search (Gemini API) (opens the vendor's documentation in a new tab)Google documents Google-Extended as a standalone product token publishers use to manage whether content Google crawls from their sites may be used to train future generations of Gemini models — and states that it does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search, nor is it used as a ranking signal there.
Source: Google — List of Google's common crawlers (opens the vendor's documentation in a new tab)
What is not documented
These are open questions, not omissions. Anyone answering them with a precise number is guessing.
- Google does not publish how grounded search results are ranked, or which retrieved pages become citations. We report what appeared, not why it appeared.
- The consumer Gemini app and the Gemini API are not guaranteed to behave identically. We measure the API with search grounding enabled, and we say so rather than claiming to speak for the app.
- An answer with no citations is not proof that a brand is missing from anything. It can simply mean the model did not search for that question.
What GetCited.me measures here
Gemini is the surface every GetCited.me account tracks, including the free plan. We run your saved questions with Google Search grounding enabled, then record whether your brand was mentioned, which source URLs the grounded answer exposed, which competitors appeared, and the tone of the mention.
Because grounded answers expose their sources, this is where our citation reporting is richest: each cited link is resolved to the page it actually lands on, so you see the article rather than a redirect.
The headline figure is the organic mention rate — questions that never name your brand. Recognition and head-to-head comparisons are reported separately and never blended in.
Gemini is tracked on every plan. Launch (Free) includes 100 one-time answer credits on Gemini with weekly automatic tracking; Growth and Scale add daily tracking and the other four surfaces.
What you can actually do
Concrete steps, each one checkable with a free tool or explained in the glossary.
Free tools for this surface
No account, no card — results in the browser.