Citation Quality Score
CORE™ Module
SCAN™ + GEO
Evaluates the positional quality of your brand's citations in AI responses: whether you appear first, in positive context, as the main option or as a secondary alternative.
Citation Rate — the frequency with which AI mentions you — is a metric the GEO ecosystem has been using for some time. But frequency alone is misleading: a brand can appear in 50% of relevant responses and still lose to competitors cited in 30%, if those competitors always appear first and in the context of primary recommendation.
CQ™ resolves this problem by evaluating four quality vectors in each citation: position (first, second, third mention?), context (active recommendation, informative reference or warning mention?), intent (does the citation respond to the prompt's intent?) and completeness (does AI describe what you offer well or only mention the name?).
A strategy focused only on increasing Citation Rate can generate more citations without improving CQ™ — meaning more presence with less impact. FAIV™ works both dimensions in an integrated way.
Real example
A B2B software company is cited in 40% of relevant responses (good Citation Rate), but its CQ™ is 28/100 because it always appears in third or fourth position, introduced with phrases like 'you could also consider...' or 'as a more affordable alternative...'. High frequency, low positional quality: AI mentions it but does not recommend it.