What is citation share? Definition, formula and example

Citation share is the percentage of sources cited in AI answers that point to your domain. Formula, worked example and how it differs from share of voice.

  • Alvaro Peña de Luna Alvaro Peña de Luna
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    Wednesday, Sep 30, 2026

Citation share is the percentage of all the sources cited in a set of AI-generated answers that point to your domain: your citations divided by the total citations across those answers, multiplied by 100.

Where mention rate tells you how often AI engines name your brand, citation share tells you how much of the evidence behind their answers comes from your site, compared with competitors, publishers, review sites and every other domain.

Citation share formula

Citation share = citations of your domain ÷ all citations in the answers analysed × 100

Worked example. You run 40 prompts on Perplexity and the answers cite 200 sources in total. 16 of them point to your domain or its subdomains, so your citation share is 16 ÷ 200 × 100 = 8%. A competitor with 24 citations has 12%, and a review site cited 30 times has 15%.

A narrower, competitive version only counts you and the competitors you track, leaving publishers and other third parties out:

Competitive citation share = your citations ÷ (your citations + tracked competitors’ citations) × 100

With the same numbers and one more competitor at 10 citations, that gives 16 ÷ (16 + 24 + 10) × 100 = 32%. Always say which version you report: 8% and 32% describe the same answers.

How citation share works

Every AI answer that searches the web can list several sources. Pooling the sources of many answers gives you a leaderboard of the domains an engine relies on for your topic. Your citation share is your slice of that leaderboard.

Two counting choices change the result, so fix them before you compare periods:

  • Unit. Count by domain once per answer (did the answer cite you?) or by URL (how many of your pages did it cite?).
  • Scope. Include every cited domain (market citation share) or only you and your competitors (competitive citation share).

Citation share vs other metrics

  • Citation rate: the share of answers that cite you at least once. It ignores how many other sources were cited.
  • Citation share: your part of all the citations. It shows who owns the source list.
  • Share of voice: your part of the brand conversation against competitors, mostly driven by brands named in the text.

Why citation share matters

Citations are how engines justify what they say. A domain with a large citation share shapes the answers for a whole topic. If that domain is a competitor, the engine is learning about your category from them. If it is a third party, such as a review site, directory or publication, it is a place where your brand should be present and accurately described. And every citation of your domain is a link a reader can click.

How to increase citation share

  • Make sure AI crawlers can fetch your pages (check with the AI crawler checker).
  • Publish pages that answer the exact questions behind your prompts, with the answer first.
  • Add original data, specifications and prices that other sources do not have.
  • Get included on the third-party pages that already take a large share of citations.

Common mistakes

  • Pooling engines together. Engines list different numbers of sources, so one engine can dominate the total. Calculate per engine.
  • Counting the same page twice when it is cited twice in one answer, without deciding to.
  • Forgetting subdomains (blog, help centre, shop) when counting your domain.
  • Comparing periods measured with different prompt sets.
  • Reporting market and competitive citation share without saying which one it is.

How Mencoro relates to citation share

Mencoro records the sources of every answer from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview and Google AI Mode, and marks a link as yours when it points to one of your domains or their subdomains, even when the answer does not name your brand. The citation metrics it documents are Link position (where your first link appears among the sources) and Share of voice, which already counts each link to your domain as a direct, neutral reference with a weight of 0.14 next to your weighted mentions. Only you and your tracked competitors count in Share of voice, which makes it the closest figure to a competitive citation share combined with mentions. The formulas are on How Mencoro works, and the competitor analysis feature puts them side by side for each tracked brand.

Which domains do the engines actually cite? Our study of the websites AI cites in Spain ranks them across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and Perplexity.

  • AI citations: the sources an AI engine links in its answer.
  • Share of voice: your part of the conversation against competitors.
  • Mention rate: how often AI answers name your brand.
  • Share of model: how much of a model’s answers in a category are about your brand.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Citation share looks only at the sources an answer links to. Share of voice looks at the brand conversation, mainly the brands named in the text, and compares you with your competitors. A brand can own many citations and still be rarely recommended, or the reverse.
Both are valid, but choose one and keep it. Counting by domain, once per answer, stops a single answer that cites five of your pages from inflating the figure. Counting by URL is useful when you want to know which of your pages earn citations.
Engines often name brands based on third-party pages such as reviews, comparisons and forums, and cite those pages instead of yours. That means others are telling your story. Check which domains are cited for your prompts and whether your own pages answer the same questions.

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