How does Gemini choose sources in Arabic and cite you?

Gemini is Google's chat app. Your customer opens it at gemini.google.com or on their phone, types a question and reads a written answer, sometimes with a Sources button at the end of it or inside it that opens the links it shows as the answer's sources. Those links are what we call a citation.

Gemini is not AI Overviews, and it is not AI Mode. They are three Google products that may write three different answers to the same question; how they differ is in is Gemini the same as AI Overviews? So do not judge where you stand in Gemini by what you read on Google's results page.

Many people who search for Gemini in Arabic ask which is better, Gemini or ChatGPT. That is a user choosing for themselves. A business owner's question is a different one: which of the two does my customer open when looking for my service? There is no way to know that in advance, so you measure both, each by name, as in what is the difference between ChatGPT and Gemini for my business?

This guide belongs to the AI engines we measure in Arabic, and each engine has its own guide: ChatGPT in how ChatGPT picks which businesses to recommend, Perplexity in how Perplexity chooses its sources in Arabic, and Microsoft's answer inside Bing search in how Copilot chooses its sources in Bing search.

When Gemini needs current information or a source, content from the Google Search index is put in front of the model at the moment of the question. Google calls this grounding, and its page on common crawlers says the aim is an answer that is more factual and more relevant.

Google does not spell out every step of this for the app's users, but it describes grounding with its search for developers, in a document called Grounding with Google Search, updated on 13 October 2026. The model reads the question and decides whether a search would improve the answer; if it would, it writes one or more search queries and runs them, reads the results, and writes its answer with its sources. Google says this works with all available languages.

Two consequences matter to a site owner. First, a page Google's index does not know is a page Gemini cannot find when it grounds on search, so getting your page indexed comes before everything else. Second, Gemini does not put links in every answer: Google says some responses carry no sources, and that a response without a Sources button is one Gemini gave no links for. Such an answer may mention your name, but it sends nobody to your site.

What the model writes without a source can be wrong. Google's Gemini help says it can hallucinate and present inaccurate information as factual, which is why you want the index to hold a page that states the facts about your business in plain text. What to do when an answer gets your details wrong is in how to make AI answers about your business accurate.

Google-Extended is not a crawler that visits your site. It is a name you write in robots.txt: Google says it sends no requests under a separate name, that crawling is done by its usual crawlers, and that the token is used for control only.

With it you decide whether what Google collects from your site may be used for two things: training future generations of Gemini models, and grounding the answers of the Gemini apps. On the same page, updated on 15 October 2026, Google says Google-Extended does not affect your site's inclusion in Google Search and is not used as a ranking signal.

So blocking it is one decision with two effects. Disallow Google-Extended and you keep your pages out of Gemini's training, and also out of what the Gemini app grounds its answers on, while they stay in Google Search as they were. AI Overviews and AI Mode are features inside Google Search, with controls of their own, covered in does blocking Google-Extended take me out of AI Overviews?

Google's Gemini help says Gemini uses public information from Google Maps to give the asker a place's address, description, website, ratings and opening hours, and directions to it. Much of that information comes from the business's Google Business Profile.

The same page says these features are being released gradually, and are available to people aged 18 or over, signed in with a personal Google Account, who ask about a place in English. It does not mention Arabic, so we cannot say that your customer asking in Arabic about a restaurant in Jeddah goes down the same route.

The work is the same either way: write on your Google Business Profile exactly what your site says, the name, the address, the hours and the link to the branch's page, as in what to write on your profile so it matches your site. If Gemini reads Maps, it finds what your site says; if it searches the web, it finds the same facts.

Five things. The first two are Gemini's own, because it draws on Google's index; the other three help you on every engine.

• A page in Google's index: check its URL in Google Search Console. If it is not indexed, Gemini cannot find it when it grounds on search. The usual reasons are a new page Googlebot has not crawled yet, a noindex tag left over from the design stage, or a robots.txt rule that blocks it from Googlebot.
• Google-Extended not blocked, if you want the Gemini app to ground on you. Open your robots.txt yourself: some hosting and protection services offer to add rules for AI crawlers on your behalf.
• A sentence that answers first: put your customer's question as a heading, and under it one or two sentences with the name, city, figure and date. How to write it is in how do you write a paragraph AI engines will quote?
• An Arabic page, not a translation: your customer asks in Arabic, and a page written in Arabic from the start answers in their words. Write your business name in Arabic and in Latin letters, the way people write it.
• Dated facts, as text: price, hours, branches and the date of the last update, written on the page rather than inside an image. What cannot be read as text may never be grounded on.

We do not publish a figure here on Gemini's sources for Arabic questions until we have read its latest measurements line by line: a figure that describes one engine needs a measurement of that engine alone, with its date and its number of questions.

Until we publish it, the quickest way to learn what Gemini cites in your field is to ask it your customers' questions and open its sources, as in the next section, then read the pages it cited instead of you and compare their order and how plainly they answer with your own page. If the difference lies there rather than in the size of the site, it is something you can change.

Ask it your customers' questions in their words, and open the Sources button on every answer. A link to your page among them is a citation; your name alone is a mention without a link. The method step by step, and what Google Search Console counts and what it does not, is in how can I tell if Gemini cites my site?

At Tasadr we measure Gemini alongside ChatGPT in the free trial, which lasts 7 days with no credit card.

On every paid plan we measure it apart from Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, record one of the four outcomes for every answer, and keep the excerpt of the answer that names you or your competitor, word for word as the engine wrote it, with its links and its date. So for every question you know who was cited instead of you. Plans and their limits are in Tasadr plans and prices.

Nobody can guarantee that Gemini cites you. On every question it decides whether to search and what to pick from what it found, Google does not document how it weighs the pages it reads, and nobody sells a place among the sources it cites.

Our Google-Extended figures cover 150 sites the engines cited in our measurements, checked on 14 October 2026, not the whole web. What we can do is measure Gemini regularly on your own questions, and show you on each one who was cited instead of you.