When you ask ChatGPT "which video doorbell should I buy in 2026," it doesn't answer from thin air — it cites a handful of sources it trusts, then assembles its answer from the brands those sources recommend.
So what really decides whether AI recommends you is rarely your own website. It's this chain:
Which sources AI trusts × which brands appear inside those sources = who AI ultimately recommends.
If AI keeps citing a media outlet whose reviews are full of your competitors and never mention you, then in AI's answers you are simply invisible. Breaking through doesn't start with writing more content — it starts with seeing clearly: in my category, who does AI actually trust?
That is exactly what our newly launched Source Citation Insight Page answers. It lays out any source's (website / domain) real standing in the AI world on a single page. Below, we walk through it screen by screen using a real sample — the tech media outlet Tom's Guide (tomsguide.com).
01 A Source's "AI Standing," at a Glance
At the top of the page, a source's weight in AI comes down to five numbers:
- AI DA 80.2 / 100 — GEOly's "AI Domain Authority," measuring how much AI trusts and how often it cites this source. 80.2 sits in the "core must-connect" tier, in the top 0.002% of cited sources.
- 59,127 citations, average position 3.0, spanning 419 categories and cited across 2,374 topics — a classic broad-reach flagship outlet.
- Key Readouts: profile "broad-reach," playbook "editorial-led — reviews and getting into its rankings are the key slots," frequent companions Google · Apple · Eufy.
- AI DA composition: 1.03% citation share, GEOly rank #4, 93.75% confidence — computed from the last 15 weeks, 43,302 AI citations and 4,998 topics, not guesswork.
Two points on rigor: (1) scores and citations are counted strictly per platform (ChatGPT here) and never mixed across platforms; (2) the score always uses a fixed 90-day window — toggling 30 / 90 days only changes the trend view, not the score.
02 Which Categories It "Owns"
The Category Footprint shows where a source is dug in deepest, and where it ranks within each category. For Tom's Guide: Video Doorbells #2 of 69 (1,377 citations), Electric Bikes #2 of 234, Ar Glasses #2 of 65, Smart Locks #2 of 91… near-total category coverage.
Open any tile and a full competitive view slides out on the right. In Video Doorbells it holds 20.3% category share — second only to reddit.com, leaving techradar, consumerreports and others behind; on topics like "smart video doorbells," it ranks near the top in 73%–86% of answers.
