> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.surfais.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Citations & Source Opportunities > See which sources AI cites — and which domains to earn placement on. Citations & Source Opportunities is where you see which URLs AI platforms actually pulled from when answering your prompts, and where Surfais turns that into a ranked list of domains worth pursuing next. It's split into two halves: **Citations**, what's already happened, and **Source Opportunities**, what to do about it. ## Citations Every citation is a source URL an AI platform used or linked to in a response where your brand was mentioned. Like the [Mentions feed](/analysis/mentions-feed), citations are grouped by prompt and organised into recency sections — **Last 30 days**, **Previous 30 days**, and **Older** — with four summary cards up top: total citations for the last 30 days, unique domains cited, platforms involved, and the number of unique prompts that produced a citation. Expand a prompt to see every domain cited for it, broken down by country. Expand a specific source to open the response drawer with the citation highlighted in the AI's actual text, so you can see exactly where and how it was used. A citation is a URL an AI used as a source — it doesn't have to be your domain. See [Mentions vs citations](/analysis/mentions-vs-citations) for how a citation differs from a mention. The Branded / Non-branded filter from [Prompts](/setup/prompts) is also available here, narrowing the citation list and summary cards to prompts matching that slice. ## Own vs competitor vs third-party sources Every cited domain is classified by what kind of source it is, shown as a coloured pill next to the domain name: A domain you control — your own site, blog, or documentation. Independent publishers and news sites — the kind of earned coverage that carries weight with AI platforms because it's third-party validation, not marketing copy. User-generated content — review sites, forums, and community platforms where real customers are the ones talking. General knowledge sources — encyclopaedic and standards-body sites that AI platforms treat as neutral ground truth. A fifth category, **Other**, catches domains that don't cleanly fit the four above. Each type implies a different way to earn a citation there: owned means better content on your own pages, editorial means PR coverage, UGC means genuine reviews, reference means accurate entity data on the sites AI treats as authoritative. ## Source Opportunities Below the citations list sits a second, distinct table: **Source Opportunities**. This isn't about citations you've already earned — it's a ranked list of domains AI platforms are *already* pulling from when answering questions in your category, where you don't yet have a foothold. Each row is a domain, its source type, and an **opportunity score** shown as one to three stars: * **★★★ High priority** — pulled from often, with a large gap between your presence there and your competitors'. The highest-impact places to focus first. * **★★☆ Medium priority** — a real opportunity, with either lower retrieval frequency or a smaller competitive gap than the tier above. * **★☆☆ Low priority** — worth knowing about, but a smaller incremental gain. Each row also shows an **Own / Competitor** count — how many times your content versus your tracked competitors' content has been retrieved from that domain — so you can see whether you're already present there or starting from zero. Use the type filter to focus on one kind of opportunity at a time, and the three priority tiles above the table to see the overall shape of your opportunity list first. ## Acting on an opportunity Acting on a source opportunity means earning a presence on a domain AI platforms already trust for your category, so the next scan has a better chance of citing you there too. Start with the ★★★ tier, then match the action to the type: Owned means publishing content that better answers the prompts surfacing that domain; Editorial means pitching press coverage; UGC means encouraging genuine reviews; Reference means correcting your entity's listing on that source. Once you've earned a presence, watch the Own / Competitor count on subsequent scans — a domain moving from zero own retrievals to some is the signal it worked. Source Opportunities is a snapshot from your most recent scan batch, not a live feed — it refreshes each time your prompts run. Earning a placement doesn't guarantee an immediate citation; it improves the odds on future scans. ## Related pages The concept distinction this page builds on. The metric that measures how often your own domain is the cited source. The companion view for brand mentions, not sources. Whether AI crawlers can access and read your content in the first place.