Citable Local

What makes local information retrievable, trustworthy and citable by AI?

Citability is a property of the information itself, not only of the publisher.

Hypothesis — not a conclusion

If AI systems increasingly answer instead of link, being citable may matter more than ranking.

1. Fact
   ↓
2. Structure
   ↓
3. Source authority
   ↓
4. Freshness
   ↓
5. Citation

• CitableEngine.com ↗
• CitationNamespace.com ↗
• CitationSurfaces.com ↗

• —That identical facts are cited differently in structured and unstructured form
• —That freshness signals affect citation
• —That provenance can be expressed in a way retrieval systems use

Structure, source authority and freshness keep appearing together in the local sources that do get cited.

Testing has not yet produced documented results.

• Citation behaviour is dominated by domain reputation alone
• Structure produces no observable difference
• Citation is too unstable across models to design for

• Can citability be described well enough to be designed for?
• Who is the cited party — the record, the publisher or the business?

Publish identical facts in structured and unstructured form and observe retrieval behaviour.