> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getcited.in/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Average Position

> The mean rank at which a brand appears in AI citation lists — lower is better.

**Average position** is the mean rank at which a brand appears in the citation or mention list of AI responses that include the brand. Position 1 means the brand was mentioned or cited first; position 10 means it appeared near the end. Lower numbers are better because first-mentioned brands receive disproportionate reader attention.

## Why it matters

Not all mentions are equal. When an AI lists ten brands, readers pay the most attention to the first three — in chat interfaces where scrolling is limited and in citation panels where top results get most clicks. A brand consistently appearing in positions 1-3 has materially better visibility than one consistently appearing in positions 7-10, even if both have the same [mention rate](/glossary/mention-rate).

## How Cited uses it

Average position is computed from the [mention extraction pipeline](/methodology/mention-extraction), which records the ordinal position of each brand in each response. The [Cited Index](https://www.getcited.in/cited-index) shows a median average position of 5.6 across all brand-category observations. See [Average position](/concepts/metrics/average-position) for per-category benchmarks and optimization guidance.

## Related concepts

* [Average position (full page)](/concepts/metrics/average-position) — benchmarks and per-category data
* [Position bias](/glossary/position-bias) — why position matters for reader attention
* [How Perplexity ranks sources](/concepts/platforms/how-perplexity-ranks-sources) — the platform with the most explicit position signal