Definition
An LLM citation is a URL that a generative answer engine (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude) references inside a response, treated in 2026 as the primary visibility metric for brands whose users increasingly ask LLMs before they ask Google.
In Depth
LLM citations differ from backlinks in two ways: they are computed per-query by the engine rather than by the author of the citing content, and they rotate as the engine updates its retrieval pipeline. Tracking citations requires running a prompt set against each engine and parsing the citation list. Scavio's ask endpoint exists specifically for this, returning a normalized list of cited URLs per engine per prompt.
Example Usage
The content team watched their LLM citation count climb from three to forty-one across a quarter of AEO work.
Platforms
LLM Citation is relevant across the following platforms, all accessible through Scavio's unified API:
Related Terms
Citation Rank
Citation rank is the ordinal position of a URL inside the citation list an LLM engine returns with its answer, used as t...
Answer Engine Citation Share
Answer engine citation share is the percentage of responses to a defined prompt set, run against answer engines like Cha...
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the 2026 discipline of optimizing content, mentions, and structured data so that LLM...