Citation
In AI search, a source an assistant links or references in support of its answer. Being cited puts your page in front of the user at the moment of decision. In local SEO the word also means any listing of a business’s name, address, and phone; both senses matter here.
Assistants that show their sources, Perplexity most visibly, turn every answer into a short reading list. Content gets cited when it is specific, verifiable, and shaped so a fragment of it answers the question outright. Vague content does not get cited; it gets summarized anonymously, which earns you nothing.
The local-SEO sense of citation, a directory listing of your business details, feeds NAP consistency. The two senses meet in the same place: machines deciding how much to trust the record about you.