The Sources & Citations workflow in your Visibility Audit (formerly known as a report) helps you understand exactly why AI models cited a specific page, which prompts and personas triggered the citation, and which brands the models named alongside yours in their answers. The "Source details" panel is your primary tool for this analysis.
Where do I start a Sources analysis?
There are two entry points to the Sources data in your Visibility Audit:
- From the Visibility Audit dashboard, scroll to the bottom and click "View all sources" on the "Top sources" card.
- From the left sidebar under "Monitor," click "Sources."
Either path opens the full Sources page, which lists every domain cited in the Visibility Audit. From there, click any domain to open its detail view.
What do I see when I click into a domain?
The domain detail view shows every URL on that domain that was cited in the Visibility Audit:
- The domain name and total citation count for the domain. Competitor domains are marked with a "Competitor" badge and include a 3-step plan: review the prompts driving competitor citations, generate targeted content that answers those prompts, and publish on your own domain to build authority.
- A list of every cited URL, with each URL's citation count on the right.
- Filters for "All Models," "All Personas," and "All Topics" to narrow the URL list to a specific model, persona, or topic.
To analyze any single URL in depth, click the arrow at the end of its row. This opens the "Source details" panel on the right side of the screen.
What's in the Source details panel?
The "Source details" panel is the clearest view you have of how a specific URL shapes AI answers. It shows:
- The source URL, with a favicon and an "Open source" link that opens the page in a new tab.
- "Citations": the total number of times this exact URL was cited across the Visibility Audit.
- "Mentions - in answers": the brands the AI models mentioned in their answers in conversations where this URL was cited as a source. These are the brands being recommended or referenced alongside yours, or instead of yours, when models reach for this URL to respond to a prompt. Brands flagged as competitors in this Visibility Audit are marked with a competitor icon next to their name.
- "Prompts that cited this URL": every prompt where an AI model cited this URL. Each entry shows the persona who asked, the exact question, and the AI model or models that cited the URL in their answer. Click on any prompt to open the conversation context and read the full AI answer.
The "Mentions - in answers" section gives you a fast read on who's being recommended in the same answers as you. If competitors are showing up here often and your brand isn't, that's a clear gap to investigate.
How can I use Sources data to improve my AI visibility?
A few starting moves:
- Benchmark against competitors. Look at the URLs being cited from competitor domains. What kinds of content are AI models pulling from? News pages, support docs, blog posts, comparison pages?
- Audit your own citations. Check whether your domain is cited at all, which prompts triggered the mentions you do have, and whether your brand appears in "Mentions-in-answers" on the URLs that are driving citations in your category.
- Spot gaps in authority. If high-authority domains in your category aren't referencing your brand, that's a signal to improve content discoverability, build relationships, or pitch the site directly.
- Prioritize by persona. See which personas trigger the strongest citations and focus your content efforts on the questions those personas are asking.
- Track by AI model. Different models pull from different domains. If your visibility is uneven across models, the "Source details" panel will show which URLs each model favors.
Once you've identified the gaps, common action steps include:
- Publish content on your own domain that answers the prompts personas are asking.
- Create content that resembles what competitors are getting cited for.
- Make sure your content is crawlable and uses structured data so AI models can find and parse it.
- Partner with or pitch the sites that drive the most citations in your category.