What is a citation in AI answers?
A citation in an AI answer is a source the assistant links to or draws from when it makes a claim, such as a review site, a Reddit thread or a company page.
AI assistants increasingly show the sources behind their answers. Being one of those cited sources is how your content reaches the buyer, so citations are a core GEO goal.
Most citations for category questions come from third-party sources, not your own site, which is why off-site presence matters so much in GEO.
The citation gap is the set of sources that cite your competitors but never cite you. Closing it is one of the most direct ways to raise visibility.