September 1, 2026
A Complete Guide to the AEOTrack Sources Page: Understand Where AI Gets Its Answers
Introduction
AI models don't invent their answers out of thin air — when they respond to a question, many of them draw on a set of web sources they've read, retrieved, or been trained on. Some of those sources get directly cited in the final answer; others are simply absorbed into the response without a visible reference.
The AEOTrack Sources page is where you can see exactly which websites AI engines are actually pulling from when they answer questions in your category — and, critically, whether your own site is one of them. This page answers a different question than the main dashboard or the Prompts page: instead of "am I mentioned?", it asks "where is AI getting its information, and am I one of its sources?"
This guide walks through every card, tab, table, and chart on the Sources page, using a fictional example company — Acme Analytics — so you understand exactly what you're looking at before opening your own account.
What Is the AEOTrack Sources Page?
The Sources page (found in the sidebar under Sources) catalogs every website AI engines have read or cited while answering your tracked questions. It's split into two tabs:
- All Sources — every domain AI engines have pulled information from across your category, whether or not it mentions you.
- Your Citations — a focused view specifically on the pages from your own site that AI has actually cited.
Together, these views help you answer questions like:
- How many sources has AI read while answering questions in my category?
- What kind of sites does AI lean on most — blogs, review sites, community forums, official brand pages?
- Is my own site among the sources AI trusts?
- Which specific pages of mine have been cited, and how often?
- Where are the clearest, highest-value gaps I could fill?
The All Sources Tab: Summary Metrics
At the top of the All Sources tab, a row of four cards summarizes source activity across your selected time range (7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or all time).
Sources Read
What it means: The total number of distinct web sources AI engines have read while answering questions in your tracked category.
Example: Acme Analytics shows 311 sources read.
Why it matters: This tells you the overall size of the "information landscape" AI is drawing from for your category — the bigger this number, the more competition there is for AI's attention.
Total Retrievals
What it means: The total number of times any source was accessed across all checks — a single popular source can be retrieved many times.
Example: Acme Analytics shows 1,488 total retrievals.
Why it matters: This shows overall research volume, distinct from the count of unique sources — a few dominant sites can account for a large share of retrievals.
From Your Site
What it means: How many of those total retrievals came specifically from pages on your own website.
Example: Acme Analytics shows 45 retrievals from its own site.
Why it matters: This is your current, direct share of the research AI is doing in your category. Comparing this to "Sources Read" or "Total Retrievals" gives you a rough sense of your relative presence.
What you should do: If this number is small relative to total retrievals, that's a strong signal your content isn't yet a go-to reference for AI systems researching your category.
Gaps to Close
What it means: A count of specific opportunities where AI cited other sources on a topic relevant to your tracked prompts, but did not cite you.
Example: Acme Analytics shows 143 gaps to close.
Why it matters: This is a direct, ready-made list of content opportunities — each "gap" represents a case where AI was actively looking for information you could have provided.
What you should do: Treat this number as a backlog. Even closing a handful of the highest-impact gaps can measurably shift your citation share over time.
The Biggest Opportunity Callout
Just below the summary cards, AEOTrack surfaces a single, specific, high-priority opportunity in plain language.
Example (fictional): "stackmatix.com was read 67 times while AI recommended NovaCRM, BrightCloud, PixelFlow +1 more — and never mentioned you. It's your single biggest opening."
What it is: A direct callout of the single source, read most frequently, where competitors are being recommended and you are not.
Why it matters: Rather than making you dig through a full table to find your best opportunity, AEOTrack does that prioritization for you.
What you should do: Click through ("See the page") to review the exact source page, understand what it says about your competitors, and identify what kind of outreach, content, or data you could offer that would give it a reason to mention you too.
The AEOTrack All Sources tab, showing summary metrics, the biggest opportunity callout, and your evidence share trend.
Your Share of the Evidence
Beneath the biggest opportunity callout, a chart tracks "Your share of the evidence" — the percentage of every source cited across your category that belongs to you, plotted over time.
What the chart shows
- X-axis: Dates across your selected time range.
- Y-axis: Percentage share, from 0% to 80%+.
- Line: Your share of all cited evidence in your category, tracked day by day.
Example (fictional): Acme Analytics currently holds a 57% share of the evidence, with the line gradually trending downward over the period shown.
How to interpret it
A high, stable, or rising percentage means your own content makes up a growing share of what AI engines are citing as evidence in your category — a strong sign of AEO health. A declining line, even from a high starting point, suggests competitors or third-party sources are gaining ground relative to you.
What action to take
If the trend is declining, cross-reference it with the "Gaps to Close" count and the domains table below to identify exactly which sources are pulling share away from you.
The Domains Tab: What Kind of Sources AI Trusts
Clicking into the detailed source list reveals three sub-tabs: Domains, Gaps, and Query fan-outs. The Domains view breaks down every source by type and shows exactly how much weight each one carries.
Source Type Breakdown
What it is: A summary bar showing the proportion of all retrievals attributed to each source category — for example, Editorial, Your Site, Competitor, Community, Review Site, Reference, and Institutional.
Example (fictional): Acme Analytics might see Editorial sources accounting for 92.1% of retrievals, with Your Site at 3%, Competitor sites at 2.3%, Community sources at 2%, Review sites at 0.3%, and Reference/Institutional sources rounding out the rest.
Why it matters: This tells you where to actually spend your effort. As AEOTrack itself notes in this section, community threads and review sites are typically far easier to get coverage on than a competitor's own owned marketing pages — so a heavy skew toward editorial or community sources can represent a more attainable opportunity than trying to out-market a direct competitor.
What you should do: If independent editorial or community sources dominate, prioritize outreach and content contributions to those sites over trying to compete directly with rival companies' own marketing pages.
The Domains Table
Below the breakdown, a detailed table lists each individual source domain with the following columns:
- Source — the domain name and a short note on how to approach it (for example, a prompt like "Pitch the writer: offer data, a quote, or a product teardown").
- Type — the source category (Editorial, Your Site, Competitor, Community, Review Site, etc.).
- Retrievals — how many times this specific domain was retrieved.
- Share — this domain's percentage share of total retrievals, shown with a small bar.
- Engines — icons showing which AI platforms retrieved from this domain.
- Mentions You — whether AI's answer, when citing this source, also named your brand, and if so, how many times.
Example (fictional): A source like airanklab.com, with 69 retrievals, might show "Yes · 5" under Mentions You — meaning that even though it's a third-party editorial site, its content has helped drive 5 mentions of your brand. A source like conductor.com, by contrast, might show "No" — meaning it's frequently retrieved but has never once led to a mention of your brand.
What action to take: Sort mentally (or visually) between sources marked "No" with high retrieval counts — these are your highest-leverage targets, since they're already trusted and frequently read, but currently give you zero credit.
The AEOTrack domains table, showing source types, retrievals, and which sources mention your brand.
The Your Citations Tab
Switching to the Your Citations tab narrows the entire view down to only the moments when AI actually referenced one of your own pages.
Your Citations Over Time
What it is: A cumulative line chart showing the running total of times an AI answer has linked to one of your own pages.
Example (fictional): Acme Analytics' citation count climbs gradually from around 45 to a little higher over a two-week window.
How to interpret it: Because this is a cumulative count, the line should never go down — a flat, unmoving line simply means no new citations occurred during that period, while a rising slope shows active citation growth.
Why it matters: This is the clearest long-term measure of whether your content strategy is successfully earning AI's trust as a source over time.
The Biggest Opportunity (Citations View)
Just below the chart, AEOTrack again highlights a specific, prioritized opportunity — this time focused on citation coverage across your tracked questions.
Example (fictional): "You're cited on 6 of 19 questions. The pattern worth copying is your own: look at what the answers citing you have in common, and give the questions that don't cite you the same treatment. The hosts they lean on instead are stackmatix.com, airanklab.com, aiclicks.io."
What it means: This tells you not just how many questions you're cited on, but explicitly points you toward the pattern behind your existing wins — and names the competing sources currently filling the gap where you're absent.
What action to take: Study the pages that already earn you citations for common structural or content traits (specific data, direct answers, clear formatting), then apply that same pattern to the topics tied to your uncited questions.
The AEOTrack Your Citations tab, showing cumulative citation growth and your biggest citation opportunity.
The Citations Table
Below the chart and callout, a detailed table lists every individual page or article AI has retrieved in relation to your tracked prompts, regardless of whether it belongs to you or a competitor.
Table Columns
- URL — the specific page title and full link that was retrieved.
- Brand Mentioned — a "Yes" or "No" indicator showing whether this specific page's citation was accompanied by your brand being named in the AI's answer.
- Competitors — icons showing which competitor brands appear alongside this source.
- Domain — the parent domain the page belongs to, along with its category label (Blog, Other, Brand, etc.).
- Cited — the number of times this specific URL has been cited across all checks.
Example (fictional): A page like "Best AEO Tracking Tools" on a third-party blog might show 43 citations and "No" under Brand Mentioned — meaning it's a heavily-cited resource that currently never credits Acme Analytics. By contrast, Acme's own page (labeled with a "Brand" domain category) might show 29 citations and "Yes" under Brand Mentioned, confirming that when AI does use Acme's own content, it reliably names the brand too.
What action to take: Click into any high-citation, "No" row to see the surrounding context and understand exactly why that page is being trusted — then evaluate whether a similar, more detailed piece of your own content could compete for the same citations.
The AEOTrack citations table, listing individual cited URLs, brand mentions, and citation counts.
How to Read the Sources Page: Step-by-Step
- Check your summary metrics (sources read, total retrievals, from your site, gaps to close) to understand the overall size of the opportunity.
- Review the "Biggest Opportunity" callout for the single highest-priority action.
- Check "Your share of the evidence" to see whether your citation share is growing or shrinking over time.
- Review the source-type breakdown to understand which kind of sites (editorial, community, review) are easiest to target.
- Scan the domains table for high-retrieval sources currently marked "No" under Mentions You.
- Switch to Your Citations to review your own cumulative citation growth.
- Study your own best-performing cited pages for patterns you can repeat elsewhere.
- Use the citations table to identify specific competitor-favored URLs worth targeting with better content.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between "All Sources" and "Your Citations"?
"All Sources" shows every domain AI has read across your entire category, whether or not it mentions you. "Your Citations" narrows that down to only the pages AI has actually cited that belong to your own site.
What does "Gaps to Close" mean?
It's the number of identified cases where AI cited other sources in answering a relevant question but did not cite you — effectively a ready-made content opportunity list.
What is "Share of the evidence"?
It's the percentage of all cited sources in your tracked category that come from your own website, tracked over time.
Why does a source show "Mentions You: No" even though it's frequently retrieved?
It means AI reads and relies on that source often, but its content doesn't currently give AI a reason to name your brand — often the clearest sign of a content or outreach opportunity.
What source types are easiest to get cited on?
According to the page's own guidance, community threads and review sites are typically easier to get into than a competitor's own owned marketing pages.
Why is my own citation count cumulative and not going down?
Because "Your citations over time" tracks a running total — it will only stay flat or increase, never decrease, since it reflects everything earned so far.
What should I do with the "Biggest Opportunity" citation callout?
Review what your currently-cited pages have in common, then apply the same content pattern to the topics where you're not yet cited.
Conclusion
The Sources page shifts the focus from "am I being mentioned?" to a more foundational question: "is my content actually part of what AI trusts and reads in the first place?" Citations are often the groundwork that mentions are built on — a page that's frequently retrieved but never credited is usually the clearest, most actionable opportunity on your entire account. Make it a habit to check your share of the evidence, review your biggest opportunity callouts, and study your own best-cited pages for patterns worth repeating.