What cited and recommended mean
An answer cites you when it links to one of your pages as a source, and names you when it mentions you. Who AI recommends shows everyone else in the answers.
Written By Damian
Last updated About 2 hours ago
An AI answer cites you when one of the sources it links to is a page on your site, and names you when its text mentions your site. One answer can do both. A citation is what can send visitors; a mention only builds awareness. Who AI recommends shows who else the answers name and which sites they link to, with your competitors marked.
How a citation is counted
CitedSEO saves every source an answer links to. The answer cites you when one of them is on your site's address or one of its subdomains (a help or docs site, say). For Google AI, it counts as cited when either Google AI Mode or the Google AI Overview cites you.
Press a question on AI visibility to read its saved answers. Under each answer, Sources used lists every page it linked to, and yours are marked Your page. A question that cites you says which page on its row ("Cited from /blog/…"); one that cites others shows their icons, and pointing at them lists every site cited.
How a mention is counted
An answer names you when it uses your site's name, your domain's name, or one of the spellings in Settings › Brand, under Your name. Case doesn't matter, and a name of several words counts written with spaces, hyphens or run together ("Ultimate Social Proof", "ultimate-social-proof", "UltimateSocialProof"). Only whole words count: "nudges" doesn't name Nudge. Names shorter than three letters are left out, as they'd match too much.
Tip: If your site's name is an everyday word, it's counted wherever an answer uses that word. Your site's name and your domain's name always count, and Your name only adds spellings, so read the highlighted words in a saved answer before relying on the count.
In the saved answer, each place it names you is highlighted.
Who AI recommends
Who AI recommends adds up the latest answer to each of your questions. It has two views.
Brands named is the share of answers that name each brand: the eight named most, and you. A brand you've listed as a competitor is tagged Competitor, and you're tagged You. The brand named most is often a platform rather than a rival, so CitedSEO never adds a competitor on its own: the + beside a brand does it, when you choose. Pointing at it says which site it adds, and that CitedSEO will look for searches that site ranks for that you don't.
Sites cited is how many answers link to each site as a source: the eight cited most, and you. Each is tagged:
A site with no tag is one CitedSEO couldn't tell. The sites cited are mostly where assistants get their facts, so a review site or publisher there is a place worth being listed, not a rival.
Your competitors are one list, in Settings › Business, which every part of CitedSEO uses. Adding one with +, or taking one off there, changes the tags on every saved answer at once.
Your cited pages
Your cited pages lists the pages of yours that AI links to, and in how many answers in the latest check, with the question each was cited for ("+1 more" names the others when you point at it). A page CitedSEO wrote or changed is marked Written or Changed. Each page is counted once an answer, however the assistant linked it.
When CitedSEO writes or updates an article for one of your questions, it first reads the pages AI cites for that question, the way it reads the pages ranking for a search.
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