AI citations

AI citations are moments when an AI assistant names your business in an answer. Citations are the AEO equivalent of a first-page ranking: they cannot be bought, only earned through content machines trust. Herald tracks yours and logs every one.

Why a citation is worth more than a click

A citation arrives at the moment of the question, inside the answer, with the assistant’s implied endorsement. The person asking has not scrolled a list and chosen you; they have been told about you.

The trade-off is that citations are harder to count than clicks. Assistants do not publish rankings, answers vary between sessions, and the same question can return different sources on different days.

How tracking works in practice

Citation tracking means asking assistants the questions your customers ask, on a schedule, and recording which businesses get named. It is sampling, not measurement: a citation logged on Tuesday may not repeat on Thursday.

That is worth being plain about. What the tracking gives you is a trend and a list of the questions where you are absent, which is the part you can act on.

Related terms

AEO answer engine optimisation

AEO is making your business the answer AI assistants give. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI a question in your market, AEO work decides whether you are mentioned in the reply. It rewards clear, factual, well-structured content that machines can quote confidently.

GEO generative engine optimisation

GEO is the practice of earning citations from generative AI systems: chat assistants, AI overviews, and answer engines. GEO overlaps heavily with AEO and the terms are often used interchangeably. Both come down to being the source machines trust enough to quote.

LLM SEO

LLM SEO is optimising content so large language models can find, understand and cite it. In practice: direct answers near the top of the page, consistent facts about your business across the web, and structured data machines can parse. The newest branch of search work, and the fastest growing.