---
title: "Citations"
description: "See what people are saying about your brand and market online. Track mentions, sentiment, and competitive positioning."
---

<Info>
  Citations are available to users on all plans. Head to the [plans page](/plans) to learn more.
</Info>

[Citations](https://trakkr.ai/citations) shows you what people are actually saying about your brand and market online. It finds real conversations, reviews, and discussions that mention your brand or industry—the kind of mentions you'd miss with basic keyword searches.

This isn't just a _nice-to-know_. AI models rely on citations to learn about your brand, and to inform the recommendations they give to potential customers. Trakkr's Citations feature gives you a comprehensive view of these citations, so you can start shifting the narrative in your brand's favour.

## What You're Looking At

You'll see two main views in your [Citations dashboard](https://trakkr.ai/citations):

### Market Analysis

This analyzes your entire industry landscape, not just your brand. The system generates multiple search queries about your market (like "best financial planning software for startups" or "top project management tools for remote teams") and finds all the discussions happening around those topics.

![Frame64(1) Pn](/images/Frame64\(1\).png)

**What you'll see:**

- **Top Domains**: The most authoritative, most commonly-cited domains within your market
- **Top Brands**: All competitors and players in your market, ranked by mention frequency
- **Most Valuable Citations**: The actual content where your industry is discussed, including mentions of your brand and competitors

This gives you a complete picture of your market's conversation landscape.

### Brand-Specific

This focuses on your particular brand. You'll see:

- Mentions of your brand specifically
- How you're being compared to competitors
- What people are saying about your products

![Frame65 Pn](/images/Frame65.png)

You can click on each citation for further details.

## How It Works

### Market Analysis Mode

The system generates multiple different search queries about your industry—the kind of questions your customers actually ask:

```text
"Best [industry] software for [specific audience]"
"Top [industry] alternatives for [use case]"
"How to choose [industry] solution for [problem]"
```

Then it searches the web to find authentic discussions and reviews that answer these questions. This gives you a complete view of your market's conversation landscape.

### Brand-Specific Mode

This focuses on your brand by asking questions like:

```text
"Is [Your Brand] worth it?"
"How does [Your Brand] compare to alternatives?"
"What's the real experience with [Your Brand]?"
```

### Behind the Scenes

Some important tips to know when using the Citations feature are:

**Frequency Filtering**\
Citations prioritizes mentions that appear multiple times across different searches. This helps surface the most important and relevant discussions while filtering out one-off mentions.

**AI-Powered Discovery**\
The system uses multiple AI models (including ChatGPT and Claude) to search the web and analyze content. You can see which AI models found each citation and how they're using that information in responses.

**Authority Scoring**\
Each website gets a domain authority score based on factors like traffic, backlinks, and overall credibility. This helps you understand which sources carry the most weight in your industry.

## What the Numbers Mean

### Domain Rating (DR) and Page Authority (PA)

These measure how trustworthy and influential a website is. Higher numbers mean the source carries more weight.

### Sentiment Score

This shows how positively or negatively your brand is discussed:

| Score Range | Sentiment          | What It Means                           |
| :---------- | :----------------- | :-------------------------------------- |
| 80-100      | Very positive      | Strong recommendations and praise       |
| 60-79       | Generally positive | Positive with some balanced perspective |
| 40-59       | Neutral            | Mixed or balanced sentiment             |
| 20-39       | Generally negative | Negative with criticism or concerns     |
| 0-19        | Very negative      | Strong criticism or negative discussion |

### Visibility

This shows how prominently your brand appears in the content:

<Steps>
  <Step title="High Visibility">
    Brand mentioned in titles, headers, or as main focus
  </Step>
  <Step title="Medium Visibility">
    Brand discussed significantly within content
  </Step>
  <Step title="Low Visibility">
    Brand mentioned briefly or in passing
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Using Your Citations

### Choose Your View

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Market Analysis" icon="globe">
    Use when you want to understand your broader industry landscape and competitive positioning
  </Card>
  <Card title="Brand-Specific" icon="magnifying-glass" color="#0e9373">
    Use when you're focused on your brand's reputation and positioning, and understand how models speak about you
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

### Look for Patterns

Don't focus on individual mentions. Look for trends in:

- Which sources mention you most
- How sentiment changes over time
- What topics come up repeatedly
- How you compare to competitors

### Take Action

Use what you find to:

- Address customer concerns
- Create content that answers real questions
- Identify partnership opportunities
- Adjust your messaging

## Common Questions

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Why do I see different numbers in Market vs Brand-Specific?">
    Market Analysis shows all mentions in your industry (including competitors), while Brand-Specific only shows mentions that specifically include your brand.
  </Accordion>
  <Accordion title="What makes a citation 'valuable'?">
    Citations are ranked by relevance, authority of the source, and how prominently your brand is mentioned. Mentions that appear multiple times across different searches are considered more valuable.
  </Accordion>
  <Accordion title="Why do some citations show AI model usage?">
    The system uses multiple AI models to search and analyze content. This shows you which models found each citation and how they're using that information in their responses.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

---

<Card title="Sentiment Tracking" icon="heart" href="/sentiment-analysis">
  See how AI conversations reflect your brand sentiment
</Card>

<Card title="The Intelligence Dashboard" icon="brain" href="/intelligence">
  Get deeper competitive insights and market positioning
</Card>