Why it matters
Being cited puts your name inside the moment of decision, with borrowed authority: the assistant is effectively vouching for you. Competitors who are cited on your category's questions are quietly collecting the trust and the follow-up visits that used to come from ranking first.
How it works
Engines prefer to cite sources that made the claim cleanly: specific numbers over adjectives, named authors over anonymous pages, and claims other sources corroborate. A page can inform an answer without being cited: the citation goes to whoever said it most quotably.
In local SEO the same word means something older: a listing of your name, address and phone details on a directory or platform. Different mechanism, same principle. Both kinds of citation reward consistent, verifiable facts about you across the web.
What to do about it
Build a question panel for your category and track citation share monthly: of the questions that matter, in how many are you a named source? That number, moving up, is AEO working.
