What do “Cited” and “Not cited” mean in my results?

Cited means the AI engine named or linked your brand in its answer to that prompt. Not cited means the answer came back without you, usually naming competitors or third-party sources instead.

Every tracked prompt produces one recorded answer per engine per scan, and each answer gets exactly one of these two labels for your brand. Citably checks the recorded response for your brand name and your domain; a match is Cited, no match is Not cited. Simple by design, and always verifiable, because the receipt behind every result shows the full answer the label was read from.

Context matters, which is why the receipts exist. A citation can be a glowing recommendation, a neutral listing among five brands, or a link supporting one sentence; opening the answer shows which one you got. The same goes for misses: a Not cited where the engine named three competitors is a different problem from a Not cited where it answered generically and named nobody.

Between scans, these labels become movement: a prompt that flips from Not cited to Cited registers as Won, the reverse as Lost, and steady citations as Held. That is where the labels earn their value, since the transitions tell you whether your visibility is building or eroding.

The working rule: Cited prompts are positions to defend, Not cited prompts are the to-do list, and the ones worth fixing first are the commercial-intent misses.

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