# Citations > What counts as a citation in Ranqo, how % Answers differs from % Citations, what one cited page is, and which sites count as your own. Source: https://ranqo.ai/docs/methodology/citations A citation is a link an AI engine attaches to its answer to show where the answer came from. Citations show which pages AI reads in your category, and whether any of them are yours. ## What counts as a citation Ranqo records the links each engine returns with its answer: - **ChatGPT and Claude:** the sources from their web search. When Claude returns none, full web addresses written in its answer are used instead. - **Gemini:** the sources from its Google Search grounding, plus any web address written in the answer that the grounding left out. - **Perplexity:** the search results its answer actually cites. - **Google AI Overviews:** the references shown with the overview. - **Grok:** only links written into the answer text. Grok answers without live web search, so it returns no citations of its own. A few kinds of link are not counted: - **A bare homepage** such as `https://example.com/`. A link to a site's front page is a brand mention, not a cited page. - **A forum, video or social site with no real path.** A link to Reddit, Quora, YouTube, Stack Overflow, Medium, TikTok or X whose path is empty or only a bare section such as `/r/` is dropped, and so is a Reddit thread link whose thread ID is malformed. - **A search engine's redirect link** that hides the real page (see Gemini below). The same link cited twice in one answer counts once. Two different pages from one site in the same answer are two citations. ## Citations, % Answers and % Citations The Domains tab on the Sources page reports three numbers for each site, and the URLs tab reports **% Answers** for each page: - **Total Citations:** how many times AI cited it in the date range, counting every citation in every answer. - **% Answers:** the share of all AI answers in the range that cite it. - **% Citations:** its share of every citation AI made in the range. **% Answers does not add up to 100%.** One answer usually cites several sites, so a single answer counts toward several rows. The denominator is every answer in the range, including answers that cite nothing at all. A site with 30% in this column appears in almost a third of answers. **% Citations adds up to 100%** across all cited sites. It tells you how much of AI's reading in your category comes from each one. The Top Citation Sources card on the Visibility page lists only the top sites, so its column shows part of the whole. ## One cited page Engines often cite the same page with different tracking codes attached. Ranqo treats two links as one page when they differ only in: - tracking parameters such as `utm_source`, `utm_campaign`, `fbclid`, `gclid` or `ref` - a `#` fragment - a trailing slash - the order of the remaining parameters Parameters that identify the content are kept. `youtube.com/watch?v=abc` and `youtube.com/watch?v=xyz` are two different videos, and a product link that carries a product ID stays a separate page. The page count in the Sources summary, the Content Types breakdown and the URLs tab all use this one definition, so they agree. ## Sites A site is the address without `www.`. Reddit's mobile and old-style addresses and its short links count as `reddit.com`, and YouTube's mobile address and short links count as `youtube.com`, so one site does not split into several rows. Reddit's own company sites, such as its business, developer and help sites, stay separate from its discussions. ## Gemini's links Gemini returns every source as a Google redirect link rather than the publisher's address. Ranqo follows each redirect to the real page and records that page. When a redirect cannot be followed, Ranqo can at best work out the publisher's site from the link's title, which gives a front page rather than a cited page, so the link is not counted. A Google redirect address never appears as a source in your data. ## Your own site A citation counts as yours, labelled **You**, when it is on: - your brand's domain, - any subdomain of it, such as `blog.` or `docs.`, or - another domain your brand owns that has been added to the brand, such as a country site or a former domain. Other domains are never treated as yours by guesswork. Two sites with the same name on different country endings are sometimes the same company and sometimes unrelated, and guessing wrong would hide a real third-party source. Extra domains cannot be added from the dashboard; [contact us](https://ranqo.ai/contact) to add one. ## Citations and mentions are different An answer can cite your site without naming your brand, and name your brand without citing your site. [Visibility](https://ranqo.ai/docs/methodology/visibility) counts mentions. Citations count links. Where a table shows how many of a source's citations sit in answers that also name you, that tells you which sources already work in your favour. ## Where you see them - **Sources page:** the Domains, URLs and Citation Pool tabs. See [Sources](https://ranqo.ai/docs/guides/sources). - **Visibility page:** the Top Citation Sources card. - **Answers:** the links under each answer when you open it. Each cited site and page is also given a source type and a content type. See [Source and article types](https://ranqo.ai/docs/methodology/source-and-article-types).