AI metric
Citation Frequency
Also: AI citation frequency, citation rate, cite-through rate
Citation frequency replaces impression count in AI search. A traditional search impression meant the user saw the search result. An AI citation means the AI generated answer named the brand inside the response paragraph and provided a clickable source link. Citation frequency is the unambiguous count of those events.
KailxLabs measures citation frequency via a daily automated scrape of the agreed query set across all four AI engines. Raw response logs are stored in JSON. Citation frequency is calculated on the response logs not on user analytics because user analytics do not capture queries the user ran but did not click through.