What sources AI answers cite for local businesses

A mention and a citation are different results

A mention means the answer named your business. A citation means the answer's citation metadata or text included your supplied website domain. An answer can do either without the other: it can name you while citing a directory, or cite a page on your site while naming nobody. The audit counts the two separately and never treats a citation as proof of why a business was selected.

The free check records names only: whether you were mentioned in each answer and which other businesses came up. The audit adds the citation rate, the share of returned answers that cited your domain, and the retained source references behind every answer it keeps. If you do not supply a website, the audit cannot match citations to you at all, and it says so as a finding.

What the audit retains about a source

For each retained answer, the evidence appendix keeps the source domain and, where the engine returned it, the page path. Query strings and fragments are dropped, and some sources identify only a domain. The report labels those limits instead of filling them in.

The evidence appendix pairs selected questions with the engine that answered them, partial answer excerpts and the retained source references. Excerpts and selected sources are limited, and missing details are labeled, so you can trace a finding back to the answer it came from without pretending the sample is complete.

The domain summary groups the leading cited domains into one of three kinds: your site, a directory or review site, or another site. Each line carries the number of times that domain was cited. We do not open or verify the pages, inspect your website, or confirm that you hold a listing anywhere. A domain in the table is a record that the engine pointed at it, nothing more.

When the cited source is your own site

In BrightLocal's Local AI Visibility Study, published in September 2026, business websites were the main source behind local answers: 93 percent of all unique domains used as sources were business websites, and those sites made up 42 percent of all citations across the three platforms it tracked. A path on your own domain is the most useful kind of citation because it tells you which page the engine read for that question. The sample report shows the pattern: an answer about water heater replacement cites the fictional business's replacement page, and the matching check says to verify that the page is accurate and to keep the useful detail. Its fictional estimates page is cited for a branded question about written estimates, and the check there is to confirm what an estimate includes, not to add a price. A new page is not automatically needed.

When your domain is rarely cited or never cited, the finding tells you how many answers were returned and how many other domains were retained, and it asks you to check whether your site clearly answers the relevant customer questions before editing anything. Google's own guidance points the same way: useful original information for the people you serve, with no special markup or file required to appear in its generative search features, and no ideal page length.

When the cited source is a directory or review site

Directories and review sites appear often in local answers, and the audit lists up to six of them with the count of citations each received. The finding is deliberately narrow: review your presence on that domain. It records a citation, not verified membership and not the reason an engine selected a business. For scale, the same BrightLocal study put Google Business Profile at about 28.5 percent of all citations across the three platforms it tracked, with Yelp the second most cited domain, and its companion report found that specialist directories appear alongside them depending on the type of business.

The practical order is fixed. First check whether a relevant listing already exists. If it does, verify the business details on it against your real name, your location or service area, and your hours. If it does not, decide whether a listing fits your business before creating one. For Google Business Profile, Google's guidelines ask you to represent the business as it is consistently recognized in the real world, with an accurate name, location and service area and the fewest categories that fit.

Review sites deserve one extra note. A citation to a review page can carry the tone of the reviews into the answer. The audit flags answers whose tone about you reads negative or mixed, by question, with references to the retained evidence, and it asks you to check whether the statements are accurate rather than assume newer reviews will replace them.

When the cited source is another site

The third kind is everything else: a competitor's service page, a local news story, a neighborhood guide, a trade association. When one of these is cited repeatedly, the audit lists the domain and the count and asks you to inspect the retained identifiers, compare the useful information on that page with your own, and verify a real customer information gap before editing. The audit did not inspect those pages, and a domain alone does not identify the exact page.

Resist two inferences. A competitor's page being cited does not prove the competitor was chosen because of that page. And a page the engines might cite if it existed is not a page you need to build; the methodology says an omission does not prove that you need a new page. Google's spam policies name the opposite failure as well: substantially similar city pages that funnel visitors to one destination are doorway abuse, so a page per neighborhood is not the answer either.

Reading your own source list

Start with the questions that did not name you, read the sources those answers cited, and compare them with the page on your site that should have answered the question. Record the domain, the path, the question and the date. Then choose one page to improve for the customer's sake, assign an owner, and note what changed and when. The on-page worksheet in the free checklist has a line for each of those details. A later citation is a new observation, not proof of cause.

The free check does not retain sources, but it is the smaller first look: three local buyer questions about your category in your city, one available engine, the names in each answer on screen and by email. The full audit adds the citation rate, the domain summary and the evidence appendix, for one business in one US city.