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What is a ghost citation in AI search?

By Ben Tabas, Intrica Research · Updated

Answer

A ghost citation is an AI answer that links your page as a source but does not say your brand name in the answer text. Growth Memo, Kevin Indig's newsletter, reported on Apr. 20, 2026 that 61.7% of citations in its dataset had no brand mention. The data covers 3,981 domain appearances across 115 prompts, 14 countries and 4 AI engines.

What the study found

  • Growth Memo's data comes from the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode.
  • 74.9% of domains were cited as a source and 38.3% were mentioned by name in the answer text.
  • 61.7% of citations had no brand mention. The article's headline rounds this to 62%.
  • Only 13.2% of appearances got both a citation and a mention.

Why the engines differ

  • ChatGPT cited sources 87.0% of the time and named brands in 20.7% of answers.
  • Gemini named brands in 83.7% of appearances and linked a source 21.4% of the time.
  • By query type, informational questions had the highest citation rate (89.3%) and the lowest mention rate (18%). Comparative questions had a 43.3% mention rate.
  • Engines disagreed on whether to name a brand in 22% of the 454 prompt and domain combinations tested, so one engine's data can hide a gap in another.

What to do about it

  1. Measure named and cited separately for each engine. Intrica's Answer Share report counts them as two numbers.
  2. Find the pages that earn links but no name. Growth Memo's cheapest suggested fix is a comparative layer on informational pages, such as a versus section or a ranked list.
  3. Repeat the same questions several times, since a single answer shows little.
  4. Recheck each month and compare the named share, not only the cited share.

See whether ChatGPT and Google AI name your company or only link your pages.

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Sources

  1. The ghost citation problem · Growth Memo (Kevin Indig), April 20, 2026Supports: Definition of a ghost citation and all figures on this page. Intrica read the full article PDF on Aug. 4, 2026; the page was not fetched live for this answer.
  2. Why 62% of AI citations don't lead to brand mentions [Study] · Semrush, June 9, 2026Supports: Co-produced with Growth Memo and Kevin Indig, with the same figures (61.7% ghost citations, 13.2% both, 74.9% cited, 38.3% mentioned; 3,981 domain appearances, 115 prompts, 14 countries, 4 engines). Checked against the article on Oct. 29, 2026.

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