Citation readiness audit
A citation readiness audit evaluates whether a page, corpus, entity or source is accessible, retrievable, extractable, citable and governable before or alongside AI citation tracking.
It is an upstream diagnostic. It identifies what prevents a source from being selected, displayed or used faithfully.
Short definition
A citation readiness audit tests the conditions that make citation possible and useful: access, fan-out retrieval, passage structure, claim support, citation role and source hierarchy.
What it is not
It is not citation tracking alone. Tracking observes what systems cite. Readiness auditing explains why the source can or cannot become a reliable citation candidate.
Governance implication
A readiness audit should lead to corrections on pages, internal links, definitions, source hierarchy and proof routes. It must not promise external citation by any system.