What is citation share?
Citation share is your portion of the sources AI answers cite for a defined prompt set. Divide citations that point to you, or to coverage you have agreed to count, by all citations recorded, and keep each engine separate. It is a share of sources, not a share of brand mentions.
Why it matters for AI visibility
A brand can be named often and still supply few of the links under the answer. Citation share shows whether your pages, or the third-party pages you count, are the evidence the engine displays. It matters when you are comparing rivals: two brands can have similar mention rates while one of them accounts for most of the cited URLs. The number is only meaningful if the rules stay fixed. Decide in advance whether a listicle that names you counts, whether a partner site counts, and whether several links to the same domain count once or each time. Then use the same prompts, engines, and sampling window. A higher share is a reason to inspect which URLs moved, not proof that revenue moved with them.
Example
Across one prompt, an answer cites four URLs. One is your docs page and three are other domains. If you count domain links once each, your citation share for that prompt is one of four. A different prompt with no cited sources is reported separately, not as zero divided by zero.
Related terms
Share of voice in AI search usually counts brand appearances, linked or not. An AI citation is a single source. A citation gap is a prompt where others are cited and you are not. Citation share summarizes the cited set; it does not replace the prompt-level log.