These are the questions marketing leaders send us before a first call about off-site work, answered here so you do not have to ask them. Where the honest answer is that on-page is your real gap, that is the answer we have given.
What Is an LLM Citation?+
An LLM citation is a reference an AI engine makes to a specific source when it generates an answer. It can be a footnote, a linked domain, or simply a brand named in the text.
Engines cite sources they retrieved while assembling the answer. Being cited means being in that retrieved set.
A brand can be cited without a link, which is why link tools miss most of it.
How Is Citation Acquisition Different From Link Building?+
Link building earns followed links anywhere it can, scored by domain authority. Citation acquisition earns your name on the specific domains an engine already cites for your prompts.
The target list is different. Link building uses a vendor list. This uses your retrieval-set map.
The outcome is different too. One is measured in referring domains, the other in citation share.
Do Brand Mentions Without Links Count?+
Yes, and they may count more than links. In Ahrefs’ study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions correlated with AI Overview brand mentions about three times as strongly as backlink count.
Ahrefs notes this is correlational, not causal, and we repeat that caveat every time we cite it.
A linkless mention is invisible to a backlink tool, which is why link-led reports miss the gap.
Which Sources Do AI Engines Cite Most?+
It depends on the engine and the category, which is why we map yours rather than quote a generic list.
Across the categories we work in, roundups and listicles, review platforms, community threads and established editorial dominate. Vendor sites appear, but rarely as the quoted source.
Your map will differ from that pattern in ways that decide where the budget goes.
Can You Get Us Cited on Reddit?+
Sometimes. Reddit is heavily cited by Perplexity and Google surfaces, and it punishes marketing harder than any platform.
We do not astroturf. Genuine participation comes from your team or from practitioners we brief, on threads your prompts already surface.
If your category has no active threads, we say so and spend the budget elsewhere.
Do You Pay for Placements?+
We do not buy links or run private networks. Editorial mentions are earned.
Some review platforms and roundups run paid listing tiers. Where a paid tier puts you on a page an engine already cites, we flag it as paid and leave the decision to you.
It goes in the report as a paid placement, never dressed up as earned.
How Long Does LLM Citation Acquisition Take?+
Longer than on-page work, because it depends on third parties publishing. Roundup inclusion can move in weeks. Editorial coverage takes months.
Community presence is the slowest and the least predictable.
We tell you which source types dominate your map, and therefore which timeline you are on, before you commit.
How Do You Measure Whether It Worked?+
Citation share per engine on a frozen prompt set, against three competitors you name, on the same scoring version every month.
A placement that did not change a citation is reported as exactly that.
If everyone in the category rose together, we report it as a model update rather than as our result.
Do We Still Need On-Page Work as Well?+
Usually, yes. A mention gets you into the retrieval set. An extractable page is what the engine quotes once you are there.
If your pages cannot be cleanly lifted, the citation goes to whoever wrote about you rather than to you.
The baseline shows which gap is bigger, and we sequence the work accordingly.