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04 Read · 8 min

Reading the citations

The list of sources an engine cited is the most actionable artefact you have, because it names exactly which pages you would need to be on.

Citations are a map of what to influence

When an engine composes an answer about your category, it draws on specific URLs. That list is not trivia. It is a directory of the pages that currently shape what buyers are told, and therefore the concrete targets for any off-domain work.

Read them as a set, not individually. Look for the pages that recur across many prompts — those are the load-bearing sources in your category, and presence on one of them is worth more than presence on a dozen one-off mentions.

Cited does not mean the page mentions you

A subtle and important distinction: an engine can cite a page that has nothing to say about your brand. The citation tells you the engine used that page to answer the question, not that the page endorsed you.

So a page cited on a prompt you lose is a target — being covered there could change the answer. A page cited on a prompt you win, which does mention you, is an asset — worth protecting and worth understanding, because whatever it says about you is currently working.

Where this lives in SolCrys

  • The citations surface lists source URLs from your responses, filterable by whether the response mentioned your brand.
  • The mentions-you filter is the fast way to separate assets from targets.
  • Sources are classified by type, which the next lesson uses.

Lab: Separate assets from targets

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  1. List the ten most frequently cited URLs across your responses.
  2. Mark each as an asset (mentions you favourably), a target (does not mention you but shapes a prompt you lose), or neutral.
  3. Note which single target appears across the most prompts. That is your highest-leverage off-domain opportunity.

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Check yourself

  • Which single source URL appears across the most of your prompts?
  • Do you have any assets — cited pages that already describe you well?
  • Why does a citation not imply the cited page mentions your brand?

Go deeper

This lesson is the spine. These guides are the depth.

Citation & Source Influence

How AI Answer Engines Choose Sources: The 7 Signals We've Mapped

AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Claude choose sources using overlapping but distinct signals. This guide maps the 7 signals that drive citation eligibility and the engine-specific weighting differences.

Citation & Source Influence

Citation Gap Audit

A 5-step framework to identify which sources AI engines cite for your competitors but not for your brand, and the recovery actions for each gap type.

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