Citation
A reference a system uses, and often shows, when answering.
Industry Term
Full explanation
A citation is a reference to a brand, source, or piece of information that an AI system or search engine uses, and often surfaces, when constructing an answer.
It is the most directly observable unit in this layer of the glossary: unlike consensus or corroboration, which describe patterns across many sources, a citation is a single, countable event, visible either as an inline reference or a link in a specific answer, that can be checked and logged.
This is what makes citation share measurable in the first place. Because a citation is a discrete, visible event rather than an inferred pattern, it can be counted directly across a set of runs, which is the basic unit citation share, answer share, and related measures are all built from.
Why this matters
Citations are the most visible evidence that a system considered a source credible enough to lean on, which makes them the closest observable proxy for recognition.
Example
An AI answer that includes the line "according to [source]" with a link is showing its work: that visible reference is a citation. Counting how often a brand's name appears in that specific, visible role, rather than just anywhere in an answer, is what citation share actually measures.
Where this sits
Citation belongs to Retrieval, Evidence & Consensus, one of the seven layers of the Aingworth Glossary. Information exists, then it is retrieved, then sources are selected, then they corroborate one another, then consensus emerges. This is where Aingworth's Consensus Over Rankings thesis lives.
Related terms
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