How likely an AI answer engine is to quote your page as a source — the AEO/GEO equivalent of rankability, earned through real sources, concrete specifics, and machine-liftable structure.
Citability is whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews will cite your page when they answer a question, rather than summarising a competitor. It's becoming its own goal: research from Brandlight found the overlap between top Google results and the sources AI actually cites has fallen from about 70% to under 20%, so ranking well no longer guarantees you get quoted.
It is measurable, not a vibe. A peer-reviewed study from Princeton and Georgia Tech (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024) showed that adding cited sources, statistics, and quotations can raise a page's visibility in AI answers by up to 40%, with those three moves driving the biggest gains. CommandSEO scores content for citability across six dimensions (worth citing, backed by sources, human-not-slop, concrete and specific, fair and fact-correct, answer-ready) and shows the exact reason behind each number.
What to do about it
Back every claim with a real, named, linked source; replace vague generalities with concrete numbers, names, and dates; and lead with a direct answer an engine can lift.
Cut the AI tells that erode trust (stock openers, reflexive comparisons, em-dashes, unsourced stats). CommandSEO's enrichment editor scores and fixes exactly these.