Measure
Sources
The sites and pages AI engines rely on when they answer your prompts, which of them carry you, and where one site decides a whole topic.
When an engine searches the web before answering, it cites the pages it used. Most of those citations go to third-party sites — reviews, news, forums, directories — not to your own site. The Sources tab collects every citation from your measured answers so you can see which sites feed the answers in your category, which of them mention you, and which ones are worth working on.
Where to find it
In the sidebar, open AEO Insights and choose the Sources tab (https://app.rixe.ai/insights?tab=sources). The filter strip sets the window (Last 7 / 30 / 90 days) and the market; Download saves the source table as CSV.
Inside the tab there are five sub-tabs:
| Sub-tab | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Domains | Every cited site, with usage, citations, access and trend. The default. |
| URLs | The individual pages that were cited. |
| Communities | Subreddits, forum threads and Q&A sites the answers cite. |
| Local map | The local sources engines lean on in this market. |
| Podcasts | Shows and episodes the answers cite. See Podcasts. |
Only some engines cite sources
Sources come from engines that search the web before answering, such as Perplexity, ChatGPT (Search), Google AI Overviews and Copilot. If every engine you measure answers without citing, the tab says "Your measured engines return no sources" and links to the workspace settings where you can change engines. See Engines and markets.
The usage chart and content types
At the top, Source usage by domain (or Source usage by URL on the URLs sub-tab) draws how often the top 5 domains or pages were used in answers, day by day. Use the type filter to narrow it to one kind of source (news, forum, marketplace…) and switch View between Chart and Table.
Beside it, Content types shows what kinds of content get cited — comparisons, listicles, reviews, how-tos, product pages and so on — and whether each is social or content. A shape with many citations and none of yours tells you what to write next.
Domains
The domain table lists every source cited in your answers.
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Source | The domain. Click it to open its detail page. |
| Type | The kind of site (News, Forum / thread, Marketplace, Official, Reviews, Video…). Sources that already mention you are marked You. |
| Access | How you can get onto this source: Registration, Application, Editorial, Sponsored or Closed. |
| Used | Share of your prompts in which this source appeared. |
| Citations | Total citations to this source. |
| Named | In how many of those citations the engine wrote the source's name in the answer itself, with the percentage. A source that is cited but never named sends nobody there. |
| Trend | How citations moved against their peak over the last 30 days: Rising, Stable or Fading. A trend needs at least 14 days of data and a peak of at least 3 citations; otherwise it reads "insufficient sample". |
The button at the end of each row opens an outreach task for that source under Automation › Tasks. See Sources, outreach and PR.
Table empty but the chart is not?
The chart is drawn from raw citations; the domain table comes from a roll-up that runs every night. If the table is still empty, click Rebuild source table — the table fills when the job finishes.
Citation concentration
Next to the domain table, Citation concentration asks: are a topic's answers propped up by one site, and does that site carry you?
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| First column | The topic (questions with no topic are grouped as "Questions with no topic"). |
| Status | Concentrated, Moderate or Spread. |
| Concentration | The sum of the squared domain shares. Near 1, one site decides the topic; near 0, many do. |
| Biggest domain | The site with the largest share, and whether it Carries you. |
| Citations | Citations in the topic. |
| Domains to half | How many domains it takes to reach half the citations. |
Two situations are called out on the row:
- One site decides this topic and you are not on it — the highest-leverage single job there is.
- This topic rests on one site and that site carries you — a single point of failure.
A source's detail page
Click a domain to open https://app.rixe.ai/sources/<id>. It shows where that source is used:
- Usage share: the share of all answers in the period that cited at least one page on this domain, for example "52 / 410 answers".
- Prompts and Pages counts, and the line "This content influenced N answers".
- Daily usage: the share of each day's answers that used this source, with its peak and half-life ("Half-life: 9 days", or "not faded yet").
- Prompt citations: the prompts that cited it, in how many answers, on which engines, and whether you and your rivals were named. A rival named where you are not is where the work is.
- Cited pages: which pages on the domain were used, their type, answers and citations.
URLs
The URLs sub-tab lists individual pages. You can Search URLs…, Sort by usage, growth or most recent, and Group by domain.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Page | The cited page and its title. |
| Source type / Content type | The kind of site and the shape of the page (comparison, listicle, how-to…). |
| Used % | Share of answers that used the page. |
| Growth | Change against the previous period, or new. |
| Brand / Competitors | Share of answers using the page that named you, and the rivals named in them. |
Communities
The Communities sub-tab reads subreddits, forum topics and Q&A sites out of the cited links. The Community leaderboard ranks communities by Citations, Answers and Threads, with whether the answers named your Brand and which Competitors they named. The Thread leaderboard goes one level down to individual threads.
A community cited often with no answer naming you is where you need to be present. The system can draft a reply; you post it from your own account.
Local map
The Local map sub-tab lists the complaint sites, forums, marketplaces and news sites engines lean on in the current market, with who appears on them across the answers measured in the last 90 days. Each source shows a status — Rival there, you are not, Carries you, Cited, nobody named or Not cited yet — and the rivals named there. Places where a rival is and you are not come first.
To work several at once, select sources and click Start a campaign for N selected sources. Each source gets a task explaining how to get onto it; sources that already have an open task are skipped. The tasks are under Automation › Tasks.
Limits and availability
The source map, communities, local map and podcasts are included in every plan. They are built from the citations in your daily measurement, so the more prompts and citing engines you measure, the richer they get. See Plans and limits.
Common questions
My own site is not in the list. It is listed only if an answer cited it. Engines cite third-party pages far more often than brand sites, which is why this tab matters.
Why does a source say "insufficient sample" under Trend? A trend needs at least 14 days of data and a peak of at least 3 citations. Newly seen or rarely cited sources stay in that state until they have enough history.
What is the difference between cited and named? Cited means the engine used the page and listed it as a source. Named means it also wrote the site's name in the answer text. Only the second sends readers there.
Related pages
- Competitors — sources that lift a rival
- Podcasts
- Sources, outreach and PR
- Engines and markets
- Alerts and inbox — new source and lost citation alerts
Still stuck? Write to [email protected] and a person will answer.