Owned vs earned citations

Owned vs earned citations

When AI answers about your category, it cites sources. Some are your own pages; the rest are third-party (earned): reviews, roundups, forums, press. That split says a lot about how durable your visibility is.

How to read it

A healthy mix has plenty of earned citations. If AI cites you almost entirely from your own site, that's fragile: your visibility rests on a few of your own pages ranking well, and one ranking shift can make you disappear from the answer. Third parties vouching for you are much harder for a competitor, or an algorithm change, to take away.

What to do

• Earn third-party coverage so others speak for you, not just your own pages: reviews, industry roundups, press, and genuine community mentions. See where to get mentioned.
• If you run a blog, help center or docs on a different domain, add it under "Other owned domains" in your company or project settings. That way we count its citations as yours, not a competitor's, and the split stays accurate.

Earned citations are harder to win, but they are what makes your AI visibility last.