> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://manual.botric.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Citations

> The sources AI answers actually pull from — and how often one of them is yours.

When an AI engine answers a question it cites sources. Citations shows you exactly which URLs and domains those were across your latest run. It's the clearest map of where authority sits in your category.

## Citation domains

Every domain the answers cited, ranked by frequency, and classified:

| Type                 | What it is                              |
| -------------------- | --------------------------------------- |
| **Owned**            | Your own domain                         |
| **Competitor-owned** | A benchmarked competitor's domain       |
| **Editorial**        | Publications and news sites             |
| **Community**        | Reddit, forums, Q\&A sites              |
| **Docs**             | Documentation and technical references  |
| **Publisher**        | Aggregators, listicles and review sites |
| **Other**            | Everything else                         |

<Tip>
  The mix tells you the strategy. Heavy community citation means you need presence in those threads. Heavy editorial citation means PR moves your GEO score more than blogging does.
</Tip>

## Top cited sources

The individual URLs cited most often, with the prompts and platforms that cited each one. **YouTube** and **Reddit** citations are broken out separately, since earning those is a different exercise from earning a link.

## Content types

Cited pages are also classified by format — **Homepage**, **Blog**, **Product**, **Guide**, **How-to**, **Comparison**, **Listicle**, **News**, **Docs**. If comparison pages dominate your category's citations and you don't have one, that's your next page.

## Using citations

<Steps>
  <Step title="Find your own citation share">
    How often is one of your URLs among the sources? That's the practical version of your GEO score.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Study what gets cited instead">
    Open the top competitor-owned URLs. Note their structure — how quickly they answer, how they format, what they state explicitly.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Target the intermediaries">
    Editorial, community and publisher domains that keep appearing are earnable. A mention on a source the models already trust is often faster than out-ranking a competitor's page.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Reinforce what already works">
    Your own pages that already earn citations are your strongest assets. Keep them current — [freshness risk](/search/geo-audit) is real.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Next steps

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Competitors" icon="swords" href="/discoverability/competitors">
    Which competitor owns which sources.
  </Card>

  <Card title="AI Traffic" icon="chart-line" href="/workspace/analytics">
    Whether citations actually send visitors.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>