How to use citations in Search AI

Search AI is Birdeye’s AI-powered search optimization platform designed to help multi-location businesses stay visible in the age of AI-driven discovery. As engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity reshape how consumers find and choose brands, traditional SEO alone is no longer enough. With Search AI, businesses can discover how they appear in AI-generated answers, track brand mentions and rankings across platforms, and gain actionable insights to enhance their visibility.

The Citations section in Search AI helps you understand where these AI platforms are sourcing their answers from and how often your brand is being referenced. With enhanced reporting, citation share metrics, theme-level and prompt-level insights, and source-type trends, you can now go beyond basic visibility to evaluate competitiveness, content effectiveness, and citation quality across multiple LLMs.

Navigate to ‘Search AI’ in the left navigation rail. Expand the ‘Reports’ tab and click ‘Citations.’

The Citation share section provides a high-level snapshot of how frequently your brand is cited in AI-generated responses.

Citation share represents the percentage of total citations that come from your brand’s website, helping you understand your brand’s overall presence in AI answers.

At the top of the Citations report, you’ll find a summary showing:

You can use the month selector to view citation share for a specific month.

This section shows how frequently AI platforms cite your brand over time. It helps track citation trends and understand how your content visibility changes across different AI engines.

The chart displays citation trends across the selected time period for: Overall ChatGPT Gemini, and Perplexity.

Hover over any point on the chart to view detailed citation values for that time period. The tooltip displays citation data for each AI platform along with the overall citation percentage.

Click the All themes dropdown at the top of the chart and select a theme to view citation trends related to that topic.

You can use the Share/Count toggle to change how citation data is displayed:

Use the time range dropdown to select a reporting period to analyze citation trends over different time frames.

Click the Generate summary icon to create an AI-generated overview of citation trends and key insights.

The summary is generated based on the selected theme, time range, and filters.

This section compares how frequently your business and other domains are cited in AI-generated answers for the same themes. It helps you understand how your brand’s citation share compares to other sources referenced by AI platforms.

This comparison helps identify which domains are most frequently referenced by AI platforms and how your brand’s citation share changes over time.

Use the All themes dropdown to filter citation share comparison by a specific theme. Select a theme from the list to analyze how frequently your business and other domains are cited in AI answers for that topic.

Use the chart view toggle to switch how the comparison data is displayed. Select the Vertical bar chart to change the visualization from a line chart to a bar chart.

Here’s how the vertical bar chart is displayed.

Scroll down to view a detailed table listing the domains, their citation rank, and average citation share for the selected themes.

The citation sources by themes report shows which websites are most frequently used as sources by AI platforms for each theme.

This view helps you understand where AI engines source information when answering questions on topics relevant to your business.

For each theme, the report displays:

A source may be included if it provides authoritative or frequently cited information on that theme, regardless of whether it is a competitor.

Click the expand icon next to a theme to view prompt-level citation data and understand how individual prompts perform across AI platforms.

This drill-down helps you see which prompts influence AI responses and how different sources rank for each prompt.

By default, the report shows citation data across all locations, but you can narrow the view to one or more locations to understand how AI platforms reference sources at a location(s) level.

Click the ‘All locations’ dropdown at the top of the section. Use the search bar to find a specific location, or select one or more locations from the list. Click ‘Apply’ to update the report.

This section shows which types of sources AI platforms most frequently use when generating answers related to your business. It helps you understand how different source types contribute to AI citations across your locations.

The chart categorizes citations into the following source types:

Your Website – Citations coming directly from your brand’s website.

Listing Site – Citations from business listing platforms.

Social – Citations from social channel sources.

Competitor – Citations referencing competing businesses.

Other – Citations from other external sources.

Hover over any point on the chart to view the citation share for each source type during the selected time period.

Use the Share/Count toggle to switch between viewing the percentage contribution of each source type and the total number of citations.

Click the All locations dropdown to filter the report by specific locations. Select one or more locations from the list, then click Apply to update the chart based on your selection.

Use the chart view toggle to change how the data is displayed.

Click the chart icon and select Pie chart to switch from the line chart view to a pie chart

Pie chart showing the distribution of citation share across different source types.

Scroll down to view a table chart that provides a detailed breakdown of citation share by source type across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

This report shows the top sources AI engines reference most when answering prompts related to your themes.

Here’s what you’ll find in this view:

Top sources – Websites most frequently referenced by AI platforms when generating answers.

Source type – Whether it’s your website, a listing site, or other source.

Unique citations – The number of unique pages from the selected site that appear across all tracked responses for this theme.

Citation share – The percentage of total citations contributed by the source, indicating its relative influence compared to others.

You can switch between ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or All to compare how different AI platforms source their answers.

Click the ‘all themes’ dropdown at the top of the section to switch between themes. Select a specific theme from the list, or keep all themes selected for a combined view.

You can drill down into a specific citation source to understand how and where it contributes to AI-generated answers.

Hover over the citation source and click 'View details.'

At the top of the source details page, you’ll see a summary of citation share for the selected source, including:

This provides a quick snapshot of the source's influence across AI engines.

How Often Your Website Is Cited by AI Sites shows how often your website is cited by AI platforms across the selected themes, helping you track your website’s citation share and visibility in AI-generated answers over time.

Citation share broken down by theme.

What you can see

You can:

This view helps identify which topics the source dominates and where its influence is limited.

Scroll further to explore the most frequently cited pages from the selected source.

What this section shows

Count - Total number of citations per page.

It shows which web pages are most frequently cited by AI platforms when generating answers related to your tracked themes. It helps you understand which pages AI engines rely on the most.

You can switch between ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or All to analyze citations across different AI platforms.

The table displays the following details for each cited page:

Cited Pages – The URL of the webpage referenced in AI-generated answers.

Rank – Indicates how frequently AI platforms cite the page compared to other pages.

Mentions – Shows whether the cited page directly mentions your business.

Citation Share – Represents how often AI uses this page compared to all cited pages.

Source Type – Classifies the page by ownership and relevance to your business (e.g., your website or external sources).

Click the All themes dropdown to filter the data by a specific theme or view citation data across all themes. This allows you to analyze which pages are most commonly cited by AI for a particular topic or across all tracked themes.

Hover over the cited page and click the three-dot menu icon on the right to access additional actions for that page.

From this menu, you can choose the following options:

Add to watchlist – Adds the selected page to the Watched pages section so you can easily monitor its citation performance over time. (The Watched pages section will appear below.)

View details – Opens detailed insights about how the page is cited across AI platforms.

Visit page – Opens the original webpage in a new tab for direct access to the cited content.

The Watched pages section displays the pages you have added to your watchlist for closer monitoring. This helps you track specific URLs that AI platforms frequently reference when generating answers.

For each watched page, the table shows:

You can switch between ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and All.

​Click the three-dot menu icon in the Watched pages section to access additional actions for managing your watchlist.

The menu includes the following options:

Add Page – Add a new webpage URL that you want to monitor. This allows you to track citation performance for a specific page even if it has not yet appeared in the cited pages list.

Remove all pages – Clears all pages currently added to the watchlist.

Download – Export the watched pages data for offline analysis or reporting.

Email – Send the watched pages report directly via email.

Schedule – Set up automated delivery of the watched pages report at regular intervals.