How to calculate an AI citation rate

The formula

Citation rate = cited checks / completed checks.

A check is the smallest unit that can produce a citation: one question, sent to one service, on one date. Fifteen questions across five services is seventy-five checks, not fifteen.

Why failed checks must not count as zero

There are three possible outcomes for a check, not two: cited, not cited, and not measured. Folding the third into the second understates visibility by an amount that depends on provider reliability on the day, which means the metric moves when nothing about your site moved.

It also makes the number dishonest in a specific direction. Outages always push a rate down, never up, so a pipeline that counts failures as misses reports a worse result the less reliable it is.

• Cited. The audited hostname appeared in a returned source URL. Counts in the numerator and the denominator.
• Not cited. The check completed with a usable source list and the hostname was absent. Counts in the denominator only.
• Not measured. The check failed, timed out, or returned no usable source list. Counts in neither.

What the rate does not tell you

A citation rate is a property of a question panel, a service list and a date. It is not a property of your website. Changing any of the three changes the number without anything about your site changing, which is why a rate should never be quoted without them.

What this page does not establish

• A rate from a single pass has a wide confidence interval. Repeats are what make two readings comparable.
• Rates from different question panels are not comparable to each other, even for the same domain.

Sources

• GetSounding measurement methodology
• SoundingScore reliability gates

Run a free audit to see this measurement format applied to your own domain, or read the full measurement method.