TL;DR — Being named by AI is reach; being cited with a link is authority, and the gap between the two reveals who actually controls the narrative about your brand. Go to Overview > Performance and compare the Brand Mention Visibility card against the Source Citation Visibility card side by side. Then open Visibility > Citation Sources to see which third-party domains AI cites instead of yours when talking about your brand. Pro tip: if your mention rate is 40% but your citation rate is near 0%, third-party sites like Reddit, G2, or competitor blogs are the ones AI trusts as the source of truth about you — target those domains for content partnerships or outrank them with authoritative pages on your own site.
The Question
“How often is my brand cited with a link versus just mentioned by name?”There are two fundamentally different ways your brand can appear in an AI-generated answer. The first is a name mention: the AI refers to your brand by name in the body of the response. The second is a source citation: the AI lists your URL as one of the sources it used to generate that response. The difference is enormous. A name mention means the AI knows you exist. A source citation means the AI trusts your content as authoritative enough to reference directly — which is much harder to achieve and much more valuable. You might also be wondering:
- “My brand mention rate is high but my source citation rate is 0% — what does that mean?”
- “Which of my pages does AI cite most often?”
- “Which third-party sites does AI cite when talking about my brand instead of citing me directly?”
Where to Go in Qwairy
Start here: Overview > Performance
Navigate to Overview > Performance.
At the top of the page, locate two cards side by side: Brand Mention Visibility and Source Citation Visibility.
The gap between these two numbers is the authority gap: how often you are talked about versus how often you are trusted as a source.
A large gap (e.g., 40% mentions vs 2% citations) signals that third-party sites are controlling the narrative about your brand even in responses where you are named.
Go deeper: Visibility > Citation Sources
Navigate to Visibility > Citation Sources.
This view shows two things: the source domains AI cites when your brand is mentioned, and the specific URLs cited. Both are broken down by provider and topic.
Focus on the domain list first: which sites are cited alongside your brand more often than your own domain? These are your content authority gap targets.
Switch to the URL view to see exactly which pages — on your site or others — appear most frequently as sources.
Go deeper still: Visibility > Prompts (citation column)
Navigate to Visibility > Prompts.
The prompts table includes a citation indicator column. For each prompt and provider combination, you can see whether a source citation was present.
Filter to prompts where your brand was mentioned but no citation to your domain was found — this is your highest-priority citation gap list.
Click any prompt to read the actual AI response and see which URLs were cited instead of yours.
Complete the picture: Looker Studio (source-domains, source-urls)
Connect the Looker Studio source-domains and source-urls data sources for:
- Time-series charts showing whether your domain’s citation rate is improving
- Cross-provider citation rate comparison in a live shareable dashboard
- Blending citation data with page performance from GSC or GA4 to prioritize which pages to optimize first
What to Look For
Brand Mention vs Source Citation Gap — Performance Dashboard
This is the single most important ratio in authority tracking. Read the two cards together, not in isolation.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Brand Mention Visibility | How often AI names your brand — a reach metric |
| Source Citation Visibility | How often AI links to your content — an authority metric |
| The gap between them | How much of your visibility relies on others’ content about you vs your own |
| Provider breakdown | Which AI models are citing your content vs only naming you |
Citation Sources Page — Domain and URL Analysis
The domain list answers: “Who is controlling the narrative about my brand?” If domains like Reddit, Trustpilot, or a competitor’s blog appear more frequently than your own domain when your brand is cited, those sites have more AI authority on your brand story than you do.| View | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Top source domains | Is your own domain in the top 5? If not, which third-party domains rank above it? |
| Source URLs | Are the specific pages being cited from your site the ones you want AI to reference? Are outdated or off-message pages being cited? |
| Provider filter | Does one provider systematically ignore your domain while another cites it? |
| Topic filter | For which topics does your domain get cited? For which does it not appear at all? |
Pro Tip: Combine the Prompts page citation filter with the Citation Sources domain view. Filter Prompts to your lowest-citation topic, then open Citation Sources filtered to the same topic to see exactly which third-party domains are filling the citation gap. These domains become your PR and content partnership targets.
Filters That Help
| Filter | How to use it for this question |
|---|---|
| Provider | Citation behavior varies significantly by provider — Perplexity cites more aggressively than Claude; filter to isolate each |
| Topic / Tag | Find topics where your domain is cited vs topics where it is entirely absent |
| Period | Track whether citation rate is improving over time after content optimization efforts |
How to Interpret the Results
Good result
Source Citation Visibility is above 15% and climbing. Your own domain appears in the top 3 source domains in the Citation Sources page for your core product topics. The specific URLs being cited are your best-performing, most current pages — not outdated or off-message content.Needs attention
Brand Mention Visibility above 30% but Source Citation Visibility at 0-5%. This means AI is aware of your brand through secondary sources (reviews, news, competitor comparisons) but has not found your own content trustworthy or accessible enough to cite directly. The fix involves both content quality and technical accessibility — structured, factual, authoritative content on pages that are crawlable by AI bots.Example
Scenario: A fintech company has 38% Brand Mention Visibility but a 1% Source Citation Visibility. The head of content wants to understand why AI knows the brand but does not trust its content.
- Open Overview > Performance — confirm the 38%/1% gap. The provider table shows the citation rate is 0% on GPT-4o and AI Overview, 3% on Perplexity.
- Navigate to Visibility > Citation Sources, filter to Perplexity (the only provider with any citations). The top cited domains for this brand on Perplexity are:
techcrunch.com(a 2023 funding announcement),g2.com(product reviews),reddit.com/r/fintech(user discussions). The brand’s own domain appears 11th. - Switch to the URL view in Citation Sources. The only company-owned URL being cited is a press release from 2022 — not the product pages, not the blog, not the help center.
- Navigate to Visibility > Prompts, filter to show prompts where the brand was mentioned but the company domain was not cited. Sort by topic: gaps are concentrated on “payment API security” and “PCI compliance” topics.
- Action: commission two long-form, factually dense articles on payment API security and PCI compliance, optimized for AI crawlers. Target publication on the company’s own domain plus guest posts on TechCrunch and G2.
Go Further
Export mention vs citation gap data
Export the breakdown of mentions vs citations by provider and topic for gap analysis
Track citation rate by URL
Monitor which of your URLs are being cited (not just mentioned) using the source-urls data source in Looker Studio
Understand the citations system
Read the Citation Sources documentation to understand how Qwairy tracks citations vs brand mentions
Related Questions
How visible is my brand in AI overall?
Start with the overall visibility picture before isolating the citation gap
Which websites influence AI about my brand?
Deep-dive into the domains controlling your AI narrative
Pages with most AI citations?
Find your top-performing pages and understand why AI trusts them
Backlink opportunities for AI?
Turn citation gap analysis into a structured backlink outreach plan