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Sources answers one question: when AI search engines write about your market, what websites do they read? When the AI engines selected for a prompt run cite web pages, Sources collects those citations, groups them by domain and individual URL, and shows which pages appear in answers about your brand, your competitors, and your category. A response can have no citations; the available data depends on the engines and prompts included in your runs. It’s one of the highest-leverage pages in Athena, because the sites that show up here are the sites you need to be present on. Yet many customers underuse it - they look at Olympus and stop. Sources is where you turn AI visibility insights into concrete content, outreach, and SEO actions. You’ll find Sources in the left sidebar.

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Why Sources matters

Three concrete things you can do with Sources that you can’t do anywhere else in Athena:
  1. Find where to publish or pitch. The third-party sites that show up at the top of your Sources list (Reddit threads, Forbes articles, Wikipedia pages, niche industry blogs, YouTube videos) are the sites AI is already trusting to answer questions about your market. Getting your brand mentioned in those places is one of the most direct ways to influence AI answers.
  2. Spot content gaps. If a domain drives a lot of competitor citations but rarely cites you, that’s a measurable, named gap to close - either by getting your own content mentioned there, or by publishing better content on a similar topic on your own site.
  3. Audit your own performance as a source. Switch the source type to Owned for your domain and you can see exactly which of your pages are being cited by AI, how often, and alongside which competitors. This is the closest thing Athena has to a direct AI-SEO performance report for your own content.

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What you can do here

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Two ways to look at the data

A toggle at the top of the page switches between:
  • Domain view - one row per website (e.g. reddit.com, forbes.com, yourcompany.com). Best for spotting which sites matter most.
  • Page view - one row per individual URL. Best for drilling into exactly which articles, threads, or videos are doing the work.
A second toggle splits the table into:
  • All - every domain or URL.
  • Social - social platforms only (YouTube, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, Quora, Substack, etc.). When you’re on the Social tab, platform chips appear so you can narrow to one platform at a time.

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Reading the columns

These columns describe citation performance:
  • Citation % - the share of AI responses (under your current filters) that include at least one citation to this domain or URL. Higher = more influential.
  • Responses Influenced - the raw count of distinct AI responses that cited this source.
  • Brand Mention % (Domain view) - of the responses that cite this source, how often your brand is also mentioned in the answer.
  • Competitor Mention % (Domain view) - the share of citing responses that also cite a tracked competitor.
  • Trend - a small sparkline showing how citation share has moved across your selected date range.
  • Type - the source-type tag (Owned / Competitor / Partner / Third-party). Color-coded throughout the product.
  • Monthly Impressions - an estimate based on citation percentage multiplied by estimated prompt volume. This is not measured website traffic.
Page view separates citations from what Athena found on the cited page:
  • Source Mentions Brand indicates whether the source page itself mentions your brand. It is hidden in Social mode because a page scan can miss mentions in comments.
  • Source Mentions Competitor lists competitors found on the source page.
  • First Seen shows when Athena first captured the URL in an AI response. Turn it on in Columns.
A source-page mention is different from a mention in the AI response. Rescanning a page refreshes its source-page checks; it does not rewrite historical AI responses.

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Drilling into a source

Click a domain or page to open its source drawer. Overview summarizes its citations and trend. The other available tabs depend on what you opened:
  • Pages: cited URLs within a domain.
  • Prompts: prompts whose responses actually cited the domain under your current filters.
  • Responses: the underlying AI responses that cited the source.
  • Parameters: captured URL variants, when available for a page.
  • Creators and Timestamps: YouTube-specific views of cited creators and video timestamps, with charts and tables.
Use the drawer’s breadcrumbs to move between a domain and its pages. Search within supported tabs and use their export control to download the breakdown. Date, model, schedule, and other active filters determine the citation data shown.

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Filtering and saved views

Above the table is a filter row with date range, models, prompts, competitors, personas, locations, prompt tags, prompt status, source type, “mentioned,” and a free-text search box. Any combination can be saved as a Saved View for one-click recall later. Saved views persist per website. If no date range is set, Sources defaults to the last 7 days. Use Source Tag to match any, all, or none of the selected tags. You can add multiple Prompt Tags conditions; each condition must match. For example, one condition can require a product tag while another excludes a campaign tag. Active filters are reflected in the page URL. Copy that URL to share the filtered view with someone who has access to the website. Saved views remain useful for named views you return to regularly.

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Tagging sources

Source categories are Owned, Competitor, Partner, and Third-party. Custom tags let you group sources by campaign, market, priority, or another label.
  1. Open a row’s tag editor, or select several rows in Page view and click Edit tags in the action bar.
  2. Review the category. A page-level category overrides the domain category for that page.
  3. Under Apply tags to, choose the matching rule and review its URL pattern. The rule determines which URLs receive the selected custom tags.
  4. Choose existing tags or create one, then save.
Check the scope before saving a broad rule: a domain or path rule can affect more pages than the row you opened.

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Rescanning brand and competitor mentions

For each URL that AI cites, Athena scans the page to see whether your brand and tracked competitors are mentioned in the surrounding content. This powers Source Mentions Brand and Source Mentions Competitor in Page view. The Domain view percentages describe AI responses instead. You can refresh that data:
  • One URL at a time: click the rescan icon on the row (Page view only).
  • In bulk: click the Rescan column header in Page view to open the bulk rescan dialog. Pick a scope (Never scanned, Not mentioned, No competitors, or All), choose how many URLs to scan (up to 10,000 per run), and start the job. Each batch consumes about 1 credit per 10 URLs scanned, and the dialog shows you both the cost and your remaining balance before you confirm.

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Exporting

Click the Download icon at the top right of the table to open the Export Sources dialog. You can export 1,000 / 5,000 / All rows, or any custom count. The CSV downloads automatically. Each drawer also has its own download button for exporting the URL breakdown for a single domain.

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Suggested workflows

Find the top sites AI cites about your market
  1. Open Sources (Domain view, All tab).
  2. Sort by Citation % descending.
  3. Skim the top 10-20 domains. Note which are owned, competitor, or third-party.
  4. Click the most influential third-party domain to see which prompts it’s appearing on.
Find content gaps (sites that talk about competitors but not you)
  1. Open Sources in Domain view.
  2. Sort by Competitor Mention % descending.
  3. Look for rows where Brand Mention % is low. Those are the highest-leverage domains to target.
Audit your own AI-SEO performance
  1. Filter Source Type to Owned.
  2. Switch to Page view.
  3. Sort by Responses Influenced.
  4. These are your top AI-SEO performers - the pages on your site that AI is actually citing.
Plan social outreach
  1. Click the Social tab.
  2. Pick a platform chip (Reddit, YouTube, etc.).
  3. Sort by Responses Influenced. The top rows are the specific threads and videos AI relies on most for your market.
  4. Click a row to read the underlying AI responses and decide where to engage.
Re-tag a partner or industry site
  1. Switch to Domain view.
  2. Search for the domain.
  3. Open Edit tags and choose Partner as the category.
  4. Save the change, then review the category badge and filtered results.

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Frequently asked questions

Where does the citation data come from? Athena captures responses from the prompts and AI engines selected for each scheduled or one-off run, then extracts their cited domains and URLs. Sources reports those captured citations; it does not infer them from keyword rankings or website traffic. What does “Citation %” actually count? It’s the share of all AI responses captured under your current filters that include at least one citation to this domain (or URL, in Page view). Why is a YouTube URL stripping the ?v=... part on other sites but keeping it on YouTube? For most domains, Athena normalizes URLs by stripping query parameters so duplicates collapse into one row. For social platforms (especially YouTube /watch and /shorts URLs), the query parameters are preserved so each video tracks separately. How do I see when a URL was first cited? Switch to Page view, click Columns, and turn on First Seen. It’s hidden by default. Why don’t I see the Domain / Page or All / Social toggles? They’re hidden on narrow screens (mobile or very small browser windows). Widen the window or use a desktop browser. I re-tagged a domain but other pages still show the old type. What happened? The badge updates immediately in Sources. Other reports run on a server-side recompute and may take a moment to reflect the change. If it still looks wrong after a full reload, contact support. Why is the bulk Rescan button disabled? Either another bulk rescan is already in progress for this website, or you don’t have enough credits. The dialog shows the credits needed (about 1 per 10 URLs) and your remaining balance. Can I export the full list? Yes - click the Download icon at the top right of the table and choose All in the Export Sources dialog. Drawers also have their own per-domain export. Do saved views sync across users? Saved views are saved per website, so any user with access to that website’s Sources page can load them. Sort order, column widths, and column order are stored in your browser’s local storage and stay on the device you set them on. How do I inspect query parameters or fragments on a cited URL? Open the base page’s source drawer and select Parameters. The table shows captured variants, their response counts, and citation share. Click a variant to open the responses that cited that specific URL; use the breadcrumbs to return to the base page. For the complete control reference, see Sources page reference.