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Citation fidelity: when an AI assistant names you wrongly
Most AI visibility work counts appearances. For a clinic, a firm or anyone with a regulator, the more expensive number is what the engine says once it names you. That is citation fidelity, and almost nobody measures it.
Updated 19 October 2026
Why a wrong mention can cost more than no mention
A missing mention costs you an opportunity. A wrong one does active damage: the buyer arrives with a false expectation, and in a regulated sector the false claim may be one you are not allowed to make. The engine wrote it, but it is your name on it.
- Prices that are no longer true: an old figure in a directory can outweigh your own page, and the buyer arrives quoting a price you withdrew.
- Claims you may not make: paraphrasing a third-party page, an engine can attach an outcome claim, a guarantee or a superlative to you.
- Services and people you no longer have: a clinician who left, a treatment you stopped offering, a location you closed.
How we check it
In the full audit, and in the monthly plan that includes full-depth analysis, we take the third-party pages the engines cited when they answered questions about your category. We open them, extract the checkable claims made about you, and compare each one with what your own site says.
Every claim is typed — a service, a technology, a duration, an accreditation, a price or an outcome — and given one of three verdicts:
| Verdict | Meaning | What we record |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | Your own site says the same thing | The claim quoted verbatim, and the page it came from |
| Contradicted | Your own site says something different | The claim, the source, and what your site says, with the URL |
| Unverifiable | Your site is silent, so it cannot be checked | The claim and the source; often a sign of a missing page |
The claim text is quoted exactly as the source wrote it. We do not paraphrase what a third party said, because a paraphrase is where errors start.
Which contradictions matter most
A contradicted price, a contradicted regulatory or accreditation claim and a contradicted outcome claim are treated as more urgent than a missing mention, and appear first in the plan. Unverifiable claims come next: they are often not wrong, but your site gives an engine nothing to check them against.
What to do about a contradicted claim
- Correct the source. Where a directory or listing carries the wrong fact, the fix is at that source, in your name, with the true facts. It is slower than editing your own page and it lasts.
- Make your own site unambiguous. State the fact once, in a place a machine can read it, so the engine has a clear version to prefer when sources disagree.
- Recheck. A correction is only done when the next measurement no longer shows the contradiction.
What we do not do is buy links or write pages meant to be read only by machines. Neither survives, and in a regulated sector neither is something you want your name on.
What this measurement cannot see
It covers the third-party pages the engines cited in our runs. It does not see every page on the internet, and it does not see a consumer app’s private context. A clean result means no cited source contradicted you in that measurement; it is not a legal opinion, and it does not replace your own compliance review.
Questions
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