Citation vs mention

AI answers can surface your brand in two ways, and SEOAI tracks both separately because they mean different things for your business.

Citation

A citation is a link. The answer names a source and hands the user a clickable URL. Citations are extracted with their position in the answer, and citations pointing to your own domain are marked as Owned.

Citations drive traffic. When an AI assistant recommends you with a link, the user is one click from your site.

Mention

A mention is the name. The answer talks about your brand in the text without linking it. Mentions carry a sentiment value between minus one and plus one.

Mentions build recognition and shape perception. They matter most as a leading indicator: brands usually get mentioned before they get cited, so a rise in mentions with flat citations means the AI is discovering you but not yet trusting your pages as sources.

The gap between them

The most instructive signal is the mismatch:

1. Mentioned, not cited: the AI knows you but links other pages. Usually a citability problem of your content.
2. Cited, rarely mentioned: rare, but possible when your domain gets linked as a source without brand framing.

The gap diagnosis in the Gaps area classifies every prompt into these states and recommends the fix for each.