Google AI Mode citation pills schema

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

Example request

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

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

Citation pill structure

Response example

​Example request

​Citation pill structure

​Response example

Example request

Citation pill structure

Response example