Citation Share

Also called: Share of Citation

Common prompts: "what is citation share," "how is citation share measured," "citation share vs share of voice"

Definition

Citation Share is the percentage of AI engine answers across a defined prompt set that name, recommend, or source a brand. It is the cleanest available measure of brand presence inside the AI answer layer — and the AI-era analog of share-of-voice, calibrated to retrieval rather than mention volume.

Why it matters

As consumer and B2B research migrates inside AI engines, brand market share increasingly tracks brand Citation Share. The brands the engines name enter consideration. The brands they don't are screened out before the buyer engages a search bar or a store. Citation Share converts AI visibility from gut feeling into a measurable operating metric — trackable per category, per engine, per prompt, and movable through the structural inputs that feed retrieval.

Example

A regional bank tests 30 prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — "best small business banking," "best mortgage lender in [city]," "what bank has the best CDs." It surfaces in 12% of returned answers. Its largest competitor surfaces in 31%. That gap is the Citation Share deficit and the brief for the next 12 months.