The Citation Score: a per-URL scoring methodology

Citation Score is a 0 to 100 score Lantern assigns to every individual URL that gets cited by an AI provider in a tracked answer. It is a per-URL number, not a brand-level rollup, and that granularity is the point.

The four inputs

• Provider count: how many of the five tracked consumer providers (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Amazon Rufus) have cited the URL in the last 30 days.
• Query count: how many distinct tracked prompts the URL has been cited in.
• Position in answer: where in the model's answer the URL appears. Citations in the first third of an answer contribute roughly 1.8× the weight of the same URL cited in the bottom third.
• Recency: how recently the URL was cited. URLs cited inside the trailing 7 days carry full weight; older citations decay with a 30-day half-life.

The formula

formula
Citation_Score(URL) = round(
    25 * provider_weight        // 0 .. 5 providers, scaled to 0..25
  + 25 * query_weight           // 0 .. tracked-prompt-set max, scaled to 0..25
  + 25 * position_weight        // 1.8x for top-third, 1.0x mid, 0.55x bottom
  + 25 * recency_weight         // 1.0 in last 7d, half-life 30d thereafter
)

provider_weight   = providers_citing_URL / 5
query_weight      = log(1 + queries_URL_appears_in)
                  / log(1 + max_queries_in_set)
position_weight   = sum_over_citations(position_multiplier) /
                    sum_over_citations(1.0)
recency_weight    = sum_over_citations(0.5 ^ (age_days / 30)) /
                    n_citations_30d

The Own / Earned / Competitor / Social classifier

Citation Score is computed independently of the citation-type classifier, but the two run together in the Citations surface because the same score means different things on different source types. Own is the brand's primary registered domain. Earned is a third-party site that is neither competitor nor social. Competitor is a tracked competitor's domain. Social is a maintained list of UGC and community-platform domains.