Citation
A link or reference that points to the source behind a specific claim in an answer.
What it means
A citation ties a claim to a place you can read. In an AI search answer, a citation may be a link at the end of a sentence, a numbered reference, or a quoted passage. The quality of a citation depends on whether the linked page actually supports the claim. A link that looks official but does not contain the fact is a citation in name only.
The 2025 Tow Center study found that AI search tools often failed to identify the right article behind an excerpt, and that many of their answers were not supported by the pages they named. Ask whether a citation is specific, whether it points to the exact page, and whether the page is dated. Hyperresearch Answers matches each quote word for word to its page, which makes a citation easier to check. Related terms are grounding and retrieval.
Continue this reading path
Cite this entry
https://bestaisearchengine.com/glossary/citation/