Troubleshooting

Citations Troubleshooting Guide

This guide explains what to do if citation data looks missing, incomplete, or incorrect, and when action is required.

What should I do if I don’t have any AI citations?

First, don’t panic! This is common, especially for newer, local, or niche businesses.

Why this happens:

• Your brand has limited third-party mentions
• External coverage exists, but not on authoritative or crawlable sources
• Your site content lacks strong topical signals for AI to associate externally

What to do:

• Confirm your core topics
• Ensure your primary services and offerings are clearly defined on your site
• Build external authority
• Prioritize Digital PR, Earned Media, and Exclusive News placements
• Strengthen trust signals
• Use Review & Reputation Management to reinforce consistent brand mentions
• Be patient
• Citation signals accumulate over time; they do not appear instantly

No citations does not mean your site is broken; it means AI systems don’t yet have enough external confirmation to reference you.

What should I do if no data is showing up at all in the NextNet AI App?

This usually indicates a data or onboarding issue, not a performance problem.

Common causes:

• Domain was recently added
• Analysis is still in progress
• Domain verification or access is incomplete
• Domain is blocked from robots.txt

What to do:

• Confirm the correct domain is selected (not filtered out)
• Allow processing time
  • Some domains can take up to 48 hours to populate
• New domains will take time to populate citation data
• Ensure your domain was successfully onboarded and validated
• Refresh and revisit
• Data may appear after the next analysis cycle
• If no data appears after sufficient time, contact support with:
  • Your account email
  • Domain name
  • Screenshot of the Citations view

What does it mean if I only see “example.com” as a topic?

This indicates that topic extraction has not finalized yet.

Why this happens:

• The system hasn’t identified dominant topics on the domain
• Content is too broad, thin, or inconsistent
• Topic analysis is still processing

What to do:

• Wait for topic extraction
• Topic labels populate after sufficient analysis
• Improve topical clarity
• Ensure your pages clearly focus on defined services or subjects
• Reduce semantic noise
• Remove conflicting or unfocused content where possible
• Recheck after updates
• Topics will replace “example.com” once confidence is established

This is a temporary placeholder, not an error

When should I contact support?

Contact support if:

• No data appears after full processing
• Topics remain stuck on “example.com” long term
• Citations data and Air Score disappear unexpectedly across all domains
• Include:
  • Domain name
  • Approximate onboarding date
  • Screenshot of the issue

Key takeaway

Missing or limited citation data usually means AI systems don’t yet have enough external trust signals, not that something is broken.

Missing Air Score usually means there is an issue connecting the domain itself or a robots.txt blocking issues of our system crawl.