From Citation Selection to Citation Absorption: A Measurement Framework for Generative Engine Optimization Across AI Search Platforms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a two-stage measurement framework for evaluating how generative search engines select and absorb citations, analyzing a large dataset across multiple platforms to understand citation influence and absorption.

Contribution

It proposes a novel framework for measuring citation selection and absorption in generative engines, supported by extensive dataset analysis and insights into citation influence.

Findings

Perplexity and Google cite more sources on average.

ChatGPT cites fewer sources but has higher citation influence.

High-influence pages are longer, structured, and contain richer evidence.

Abstract

Generative search engines increasingly determine whether online information is merely discoverable, cited as a source, or actually absorbed into generated answers. This paper proposes a two-stage measurement framework for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): citation selection, where a platform triggers search and chooses sources, and citation absorption, where a cited page contributes language, evidence, structure, or factual support to the final answer. We analyze the public geo-citation-lab dataset covering 602 controlled prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overview/Gemini, and Perplexity; 21,143 valid search-layer citations; 23,745 citation-level feature records; 18,151 successfully fetched pages; and 72 extracted features. The central descriptive finding is that citation breadth and citation depth diverge. Perplexity and Google cite more sources on average, while ChatGPT cites fewer sources but shows substantially higher average citation influence among fetched pages. High-influence pages tend to be longer, more structured, semantically aligned, and richer in extractable evidence such as definitions, numerical facts, comparisons, and procedural steps. The results suggest that GEO should be measured beyond citation counts, with answer-level absorption treated as a separate outcome.