← All postsNote2026-06-24 · 1 min read

The one number we now report first

Rankings still matter, but the metric we lead every report with has changed. Here's why citation share sits at the top now.

By Vera Tan · Founder & Growth Strategist

For years, the first slide of a marketing report was a ranking chart. Ours has changed. The number we lead with now is AI citation share — how often a brand is named, quoted or linked when AI systems answer questions in its category.

Why the move? Because rankings measure position in a list that fewer people scroll, while citation share measures whether you're in the answer — the surface where more and more decisions now start.

It's a harder number to move and a harder number to fake, which is exactly why we like it. You can't buy your way into an AI's recommendation the way you can buy an ad slot. You earn it with entity clarity, consistent facts and authoritative content — and then you watch it, on a recurring prompt panel, as a trend.

Rankings and traffic still sit in the report. But leadership in the AI era shows up first in whether the machine reaches for you. So that's the number we put first.