A ghost citation is when an AI engine draws a fact from your page and links it as a source, but never names your brand in the answer. The reader gets the claim and maybe a link icon, not who said it. The term was coined by Kevin Indig in a study Semrush published in June 2026, which found roughly 61.7% of brand appearances across four engines were ghost citations: cited, not named.
It matters because a citation is widely assumed to build brand awareness, and a ghost citation doesn't. In a zero-click answer most readers never open the link, so an unnamed source leaves no memory of you. You supplied the answer and stayed anonymous. The same study found the citation rate (~74.9%) far outran the mention rate (~38.3%), and the two barely travel together: Gemini names brands more than it links them, ChatGPT the reverse.
A ghost citation is distinct from a citation gap, which is being absent from the sources entirely. Here you are the source. Your name just isn't. The fix is an entity job, not a content one: bind your brand name to your facts on the page and build the entity authority that makes engines attribute claims to you. Track your mention rate separately from your citation rate, per engine, to see the gap close.