An AI citation is a reference to your content inside a generated answer, usually as a link, a numbered source or a named mention. It is the closest thing AI search has to a click-worthy ranking.
Citations are not guaranteed to be accurate. A tool can cite a page that does not fully support the claim, or paraphrase it loosely, so it is worth reading how you are being represented. They are also not stable: the same question can cite different sources on different days.
What tends to earn citations is content that answers the question directly, states facts clearly with their own sources, is fresh where freshness matters, and sits on a site that can be fetched without barriers (AI crawler, robots.txt). Track them as part of AI visibility.
Related: AI Search, Generative Engine Optimization, AI-Readable Content.