Citability is a leading A–E grade on a single piece of content that estimates whether AI will cite it. It weights Information Gain 40%, Narrative Originality 25%, Credibility 20% and Structure/Extractability 15%, with bands A ≥ 85, B ≥ 70, C ≥ 55, D ≥ 40 and E below 40. It is reported beside CiteRank and is never summed into it.

Postability is the craft companion to Citability: a leading 0–100 grade judged against the author's Voice DNA that asks whether a draft is ready to publish. It weights Hook 35%, Voice 40% and Format 25%. It is advisory only and never blocks publishing — a 0–100 ring, not an A–E letter, so it reads as complementary to Citability.

What is Share of Voice?

Of all the names AI gives when asked about a topic, the share that goes to a single voice. It is a property of a voice within a topic, not of a narrative. Measured only on questions that don't mention anyone by name, so it reflects who AI reaches for on its own. Also reported separately from CiteRank.

Can I see the actual answers behind my score?

Yes. Your report includes per-prompt evidence: the questions we sampled, which sources each engine fetched, who was cited, and who was named in the answer.

What does CiteRank deliberately ignore?

Follower counts, keyword stuffing and paid placement. Social reach is not citation, gaming phrasing doesn't move the signals, and a subscription unlocks diagnostics and actions but cannot buy a position — the citation graph alone decides rank.

How is CiteRank computed?

We query the six major engines with real questions, detect who gets quoted or named, weigh primary sources above aggregators, score the four signals into one 0–100 rank, and refresh on a fixed weekly snapshot window with the same setup every run so week-over-week changes reflect real shifts in AI behavior, not measurement noise. Every value shown is measured — we never fabricate a number.

CITEGIST

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HOW IT WORKS

How CiteRank measures AI citation authority

CITERANK v6.2 · Last updated: July 30, 2026

ENGINES WE MONITOR

CChatGPTCClaudePPerplexityGGeminiGGoogle AI ModeMMicrosoft Copilot

Engine coverage scales by plan. Public leaderboard scores are estimated from a single engine (Perplexity, retrieval-based — the truest open-web citation signal); a free account widens coverage to three engines; paid plans cover all six.

THE FOUR METRICS

Four metrics, one system

CiteGist reports four distinct numbers. Two are leading grades on a single piece of content; two are outcomes measured across the web. Each answers a different question — none is folded into another.

Metric	Range	Answers
CiteRank	0–100	Are you cited by AI?
Citability	A–E grade	Will AI cite this piece of content?
Postability	0–100	Is this draft ready to publish?
Share of Voice	% per topic	Whose name does AI reach for?

The funnel: Raise Citability → earn citations (CiteRank) → become one of the names AI reaches for (Share of Voice). Postability keeps every draft publish-ready along the way.

WHAT COUNTS

Citations, mentions, and what we exclude

Two units, defined precisely — and the rule that keeps our measurement honest.

CITATION

Your page appears as a source behind an AI answer.

MENTION

Your name appears in the answer text itself.

Mentions are the win; citations are support.

WHAT WE EXCLUDE

Negative references
Passing name-drops
Answers outside your tracked topics

Organic recall rule. Our prompts never contain anyone's name. AI surfaces voices entirely on its own — we measure organic preference, not prompted recall.

THE PIPELINE

From a live answer to a number

Query

Real questions, every major engine.

→

Detect

Who gets quoted, named or linked.

→

Weigh

Primary sources beat aggregators.

→

Score

Four signals → one 0–100 rank.

→

Refresh

Fixed prompt set, fixed weekly snapshot window, same setup every run — so week-over-week changes reflect real shifts in AI behavior, not measurement noise.

WHAT GOES INTO CITERANK

Four signals, transparently weighted

CiteRank is a single 0–100 score built from four weighted signals. The weights sum to exactly 100 — nothing else is added in.

#	Signal	Weight	What it measures
01	Citation Rate	40%	Named LLM citations of the Voice's controlled domains across the four engines. The direct outcome signal. Illustration: cited in 12 of 40 sampled answers in your topics → a strong Citation Rate contribution.
02	Domain Reach	20%	Tier-weighted distribution breadth across AI-indexed surfaces the Voice controls. Primary sources count far more than aggregators. Illustration: citations spread across 5 tier-1/2 surfaces (e.g. LinkedIn, YouTube, Substack) outweigh 20 citations on tier-4 sites.
03	Topical Authority	30%	Topic association in LLM answers — named or paraphrased, with or without a URL — and across how many of the standard question types. The upstream signal that produces citations. In v6.2 this absorbed the old Query Coverage signal: the two fired on the same measured event, and folding them preserved rank correlation far better than dropping the dimension would have. Illustration: named in 7 of 20 'who are the leading voices on X?' answers, across 4 of 6 question types → strong Topical Authority contribution.
04	Score Velocity	10%	The rate of change in Citation Rate over the trailing 30 days — which direction the trend is heading. Illustration: Citation Rate moved from 22% → 31% over 30 days → positive Score Velocity.

Inside Domain Reach — the platform-tier model

Domain Reach is tier-weighted. Where a citation lives changes how much it counts — a Wikipedia or LinkedIn citation carries far more than one on an audio-only podcast feed.

Tier	Weight	Platforms
TIER 1	1.0×	LinkedIn, YouTube (with indexed transcript), Reddit, Wikipedia
TIER 2	0.75×	Medium, Quora, Substack, editorial publications, podcast (with transcript page)
TIER 3	0.5×	Personal website, Forbes/HBR contributor profiles, GitHub
TIER 4	0.1×	Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, audio-only podcast, generic low-DR sites

LEADING GRADE · CONTENT

Citability — will AI cite this piece of content?

Citability is a leading A–E grade on a single piece of content: a forward-looking read of whether AI will cite it. It is reported beside your CiteRank and is deliberately never summed into it.

How the grade is weighted

Component	Weight	What it measures
Information Gain	40%	How much genuinely new signal the piece adds beyond what engines already have.
Narrative Originality	25%	A distinct framing or claim engines can attribute to you, not a restatement of consensus.
Credibility	20%	Verifiable sourcing, controlled domains, and a track record engines can trust.
Structure / Extractability	15%	Clean structure engines can lift cleanly — headings, direct claims, quotable lines.

The bands

≥ 85

Primed to be cited. Strong original signal, clearly attributable, cleanly extractable.

≥ 70

Highly citable. Most ingredients are in place; small gaps in originality or structure.

≥ 55

Citable with work. The signal exists but is thin or hard for an engine to lift.

≥ 40

Hard to cite. Little new information gain or weak sourcing.

< 40

Not yet citable. Little for an engine to reach, attribute, or extract.

LEADING GRADE · DRAFT

Postability — is this draft ready to publish?

Postability is the craft companion to Citability. Citability asks 'will AI cite this?'; Postability asks 'is this ready to publish?' A leading 0–100 grade judged against the author's Voice DNA — deliberately a 0–100 ring, not an A–E letter, so the two read as complementary. Advisory only; it never blocks publishing.

How the grade is weighted

Component	Weight	What it measures
Hook	35%	Does the opener stop the scroll?
Voice	40%	Does it sound like you, measured against your Voice DNA?
Format	25%	Platform-fit and scannability — does the close land?

Postability is an explanation of the craft grade. It appears in the composer as advice on a live draft — never as a standalone number on this page.

VOICE METRIC

Share of Voice — your share of names AI gives for a topic

Of all the names AI names when asked about a topic, the share that goes to you. Measured only on questions that don't mention anyone by name, so it reflects who AI reaches for on its own.

For every topic we sample questions across engines and record which people the answers name. Share of Voice is your fraction of those names — for example, "you were 23% of the names AI gave for AI infrastructure & GPUs, #1 of 18 people named." Order (your position among the named) is reported alongside the percentage.

HOW SCORES READ

Four bands of citation visibility

◆ AUTHORITY

80–100

Cited consistently and across multiple topics. The engines reach for you by default.

◆ ESTABLISHED

60–79

Cited regularly across your topics.

◆ EMERGING

40–59

AI sees you; presence is real but thin.

◆ UNDER THE RADAR

0–39

You may be an authority to people — AI barely registers you yet.

Bands are guidelines. Interpret your score relative to your topic's competition, not as an absolute.

HONEST LIMITS

What we don't claim

AI answers vary

AI answers vary by account, region, and model version — we fix our measurement setup so changes are comparable week to week.

A sample is a sample

Single-week wiggles are weather; multi-week trends are climate.

The plumbing changes

AI retrieval plumbing changes frequently — which is why every number on CiteGist carries the date it was computed.

ANTI-GAMING

What CiteRank deliberately ignores

We don't count follower counts

Reach on a social platform is not citation. A 500-follower researcher can outrank a million-follower account.

We don't reward keyword stuffing

Engines cite substance. Gaming phrasing doesn't move Domain Reach or Topical Authority.

We don't sell rank

A subscription unlocks your own diagnostics and actions. It cannot buy a position — the citation graph decides that.

REFERENCES

The evidence this rests on

CiteRank's weights and tier model are grounded in external, verifiable research — not house opinion. These are the studies behind the methodology.

GEO: Generative Engine OptimizationAggarwal et al., KDD 2024 (Princeton)

The foundational framework for optimizing content toward generative-engine citation.

AI-visibility & citation correlation study (75K brands)Linehan & Guan, Ahrefs, Dec 2025

Branded mentions correlate with AI citation at Spearman 0.664; domain-rating correlation is weak (0.27–0.33).

AI-visibility studySparkToro, Jan 2026

How audiences actually discover and trust sources inside AI answers.

Citation analysis (1.4M citations)Profound

Which platforms LLMs cite most, by engine, at scale.

AI-prompts study (325K prompts)Semrush

Prompt-level analysis of which sources surface across generative engines.

Citation-lift dataStacker / Scrunch AI

Measured lift in AI citations following structural and distribution changes.

QUESTIONS

The details

CiteRank is a single 0–100 score measuring how often AI engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Microsoft Copilot — actually cite a Voice when answering questions in their topics. It is built from four weighted signals that sum to exactly 100: Citation Rate 40, Topical Authority 30, Domain Reach 20 and Score Velocity 10. Query Coverage is still measured, but as of v6.2 it is folded into Topical Authority rather than summed separately. It is a lagging outcome — the result of being cited.

See whether AI is citing you.

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