There is a difference between a brand name being mentioned and an official document’s URL appearing as a source link. AI citation is not a single score published by search engines, and the document diagnosis score cannot be interpreted as the actual citation probability.
Distinguish between mention, source, and visit.
| observation | checking |
|---|---|
| brand mention | Did the brand name appear in the answer? Did the answer describe the company and product accurately? |
| Document Citation | What URL is linked to as evidence, and does the document actually support the claim? |
| Site visit | Did the user arrive through a source link? What did the user do afterward? |
The three items can occur together or separately. A mention alongside a competitor's name does not establish a recommendation, and appearing as a source does not establish a contribution to sales.
Areas of the document that could be improved
We provide the facts, applicable conditions and grounds that customers need to check in a readable form. We check whether the product description and actual specifications are different, whether the context has been changed by quoting external data, and whether important content is only on a screen that is difficult to access. Paragraphs and comparative tables that directly answer questions are editing methods that help readers understand, but are not fixed rules for obtaining citations.
Guide to Google's AI features explains that to be a supporting link in AI Overviews and AI Mode, a page must be indexed and displayable in search snippets. A separate AI-specific file or special schema is not a prerequisite. This standard cannot be directly applied to other AI services.
How to observe citations
Record a list of questions, execution conditions, date, service, original answer text, and source URL. We do not treat results from a subset of questions as overall market share. We check whether repeated observations produce similar results.
Generative AI-specific performance report released by Google in 2026 lets you examine AI feature impressions by page, country, device, and date. A distinction must be made between these platform observations and our own prompt testing. Neither type of measurement establishes citation accuracy or actual purchases.