Sources & Citations

Learn where AI models get their information when they answer your prompts — and how to turn those sources into visibility for your brand.

Sources are the foundation of AI visibility. When an assistant answers a prompt about your category, it pulls from a set of web pages and cites some of them in its answer. The Sources tab shows you exactly which domains and URLs those are. If the sources AI trusts don't mention your brand, you won't appear in the answer — no matter how good your product is.

Why sources matter

Everything else in AI Visibility flows from sources. A brand shows up in an answer because the pages the model retrieved happened to mention it. So the Sources tab is where you go to answer the most important question:

• Where is AI getting its information for the prompts your buyers ask?
• Which of those sources mention you — and which mention your competitors instead?
• Where are the gaps — high-influence sources that shape answers but leave your brand out?

Sources vs citations

These two words sound the same but mean different things, and the gap between them is where the insight lives:

• Retrieved — the model pulled the page into its working context while forming an answer.
• Cited — the model actually referenced that page in the answer it gave the user.

A source can be retrieved often but rarely cited. A high retrieval, low citation rate means AI keeps looking at a page but doesn't trust it enough to quote it — a very different signal from a page it cites every time. Watch the citation rate over time to see which sources are gaining or losing the model's trust.

Corporate vs Editorial

Sona groups every cited source into one of two types so you can see what kind of evidence AI leans on:

• Corporate — vendor-owned pages (your site, a competitor's site, product and pricing pages).
• Editorial — third-party pages: review sites, analyst write-ups, press, and community discussion.

If answers in your category lean Editorial, winning a mention on your own site won't move the needle much — you need to earn coverage on the sources AI actually trusts. If they lean Corporate, your own pages are in play and worth optimizing directly.

How to use Source insights

Work the tab from highest influence to lowest:

• Start with the most-cited domains. These shape the most answers, so a gap here costs you the most visibility.
• Find the gaps. Look for sources that are cited often but where your brand is not mentioned. Each one is a concrete place to earn a mention.
• Match your play to the source type. Pitch Editorial sources for coverage; optimize Corporate pages you control.
• Track movement, not just snapshots. Rising citation rates tell you where AI's trust is shifting — get in early.

tip

The fastest win is a frequently-cited source where your brand is missing. Earning a single mention on a high-citation page can put you into AI answers you're currently absent from.

info

AI models can only cite content they can read. Pages that hide their main content behind scripts, logins, or heavy rendering may never be retrieved — so source coverage reflects what's crawlable, not everything that exists.