Google AI Mode citation pills schema

This section documents the citationPills data returned by the Google AI Mode endpoint. Citation pills are part of the AI Mode response — no separate API call is needed. For use cases, pricing context, and copy-paste examples, see the AI Mode citations API page on the product site.

Example request

{
  "prompt": "best laptops for programming",
  "country": "US"
}

This produces a response containing the citationPills array documented below.

Overview

Google renders inline pill chips (e.g. [Reddit +3]) next to AI Mode text to attribute each claim to one or more sources. The result.citationPills array exposes those pills denormalized: each entry is one (pill, source) pair carrying a per-source label (the source’s own page title), a citationPillId that groups entries from the same chip, and the per-source url/domain/description/position. When a pill cites N sources, the array contains N entries sharing the same citationPillId but carrying different per-source label, url, and domain. Group by citationPillId to recover the pill-level structure. The field is omitted from result when the answer has no pills.

Citation pill structure

Field	Type	Description
`label`	string	Per-source title from the sources rail (e.g. `"Best laptops for programmers in 2026"`). Always present; may be an empty string when the rail has no title for this source — read `domain` / `url` for source identity in that case.
`citationPillId`	integer	Stable identifier shared by all entries from the same visible chip. 1-based ordinal assigned in document order.
`url`	string	Direct URL of the cited source.
`domain`	string	Host extracted from `url`, for grouping and display.
`description`	string	Source snippet from the sources rail when Google ships one. Omitted when absent.
`position`	integer	1-based position of this source in the sibling `result.sources` array.

Response example

{
  "success": true,
  "result": {
    "text": "Here are several laptops for programming...",
    "sources": [
      {
        "position": 1,
        "url": "https://example.com/best-laptops-2026",
        "label": "Best laptops for programmers in 2026",
        "description": "A guide to the top laptops for software development this year."
      },
      {
        "position": 2,
        "url": "https://example.com/dev-laptops-review",
        "label": "Developer laptop reviews",
        "description": "Reviews of laptops aimed at software developers."
      },
      {
        "position": 3,
        "url": "https://example.com/macbook-pro-review",
        "label": "MacBook Pro for developers",
        "description": "Why the MacBook Pro is a popular pick for developers."
      }
    ],
    "citationPills": [
      {
        "label": "Best laptops for programmers in 2026",
        "citationPillId": 1,
        "url": "https://example.com/best-laptops-2026",
        "domain": "example.com",
        "description": "A guide to the top laptops for software development this year.",
        "position": 1
      },
      {
        "label": "MacBook Pro for developers",
        "citationPillId": 1,
        "url": "https://example.com/macbook-pro-review",
        "domain": "example.com",
        "description": "Why the MacBook Pro is a popular pick for developers.",
        "position": 3
      }
    ]
  }
}

Overview

ChatGPT

Google

Perplexity

Copilot

AI Mode

Grok

Gemini

Google News

Utilities

Google AI Mode citation pills schema

Example request

Overview

Citation pill structure

Response example

​Example request

​Overview

​Citation pill structure

​Response example

Example request

Overview

Citation pill structure

Response example