A backlink tells you who mentioned a brand online. We document who showed up in the physical world.

A physical citation is a verified, ledger-backed record that a brand appeared in public at a specific time and place. It can be a storefront, a wrapped vehicle, a billboard, a sponsored venue sign, a concession display, or another visible brand mention. StreetProof makes that offline signal citable by people, search systems, and AI.

The backlink comparison is an analogy, not a technical claim. A physical citation is not an HTML link and does not promise higher search rankings. It fills the same evidence gap: someone looking at a brand can see independent references beyond what the brand says about itself.

Three kinds of physical citation

What gets written into the record

Each accepted citation records the matched entity, citation type, observed time, privacy-reduced location cell, source, verification state, and ledger hash. The evidence image is privacy-scrubbed before publication. New citation classifications are included in the immutable ledger-hash payload.

Repeated independent citations build history: first seen, last seen, geographic spread, asset diversity, and recency. Duplicate imagery is rejected, and repeated views from one scout are capped so one person cannot manufacture public rank.

Why the distinction matters

What a physical citation does not mean

It is not a review, endorsement, impression estimate, or proof of quality. A host venue displaying a brand does not necessarily own, recommend, or operate that brand. StreetProof publishes what was observed and keeps those larger inferences out of the record.

Use the citations

Presence Records expose citation counts and types on the public page, in evidence packets, and through the REST API. Start with the global index, read the full methodology, or use the API documentation.