An AI citation is a source reference or link exposed with an AI-generated answer. A brand can be mentioned without being cited, and a cited page can belong to a publisher, competitor, or other third party without mentioning the monitored brand.
In plain terms
A linked source in Perplexity, Gemini grounding, ChatGPT web search, Claude web search, or Google AI Overviews is a citation source.
A sentence that merely names a product without attributing it to a source is a brand mention, not a citation.
Citation data shows which URLs the platform exposed with the response; it should not be interpreted as proof that every sentence in the answer came from every listed URL.
Why it matters
Source links make part of an AI answer inspectable and can direct users to the cited page.
Tracking recurring sources helps distinguish brand visibility from source visibility and shows where monitored answers obtain their exposed references.