In counting citation impact, we are always looking at popularity. Many new ideas have little or no popularity at first and only later are seen to be valuable. Hedy Lamar's frequency experiments did not have any citation impact and still have no Nobel Award but they are one of the main principles of cell phone and WiFi.
Although citation impact is one way after the fact of telling what is important out there. It seems to suppress the free imaginative play of the mind. That kind of "play" is often where the great leaps come from.
A very unique question. Yes, citations seem to be measuring popularity to an extent. A study sparks someone's interest and they cite it in their work. Over time, others begin citing it because either the work itself or the topic become of interest. If it is only the topic, researchers may continue to cite the article because others do (it is accepted as providing something valuable about the topic). The article may be the first to discuss a new idea, it may be the first to take the concept in a new direction, it may quantify the concept in some different way, it may explain it better, or it may simply be in a more widely recognized journal or written by someone with a reputation in the field. There also may be others which do all of the above in a better way, but are largely ignored for some unknown reason. The number of citations is a way to state the "importance" of given research, though, at times, it may miss many very valuable contributions to the literature. This may particularly be the case if the article is of "practical" value that is used by those applying the research and not by researchers who build upon it and cite it frequently.
Number of citations is a poor measure of quality of work. A work cited by someone in the same field is probably meaningful. The person citing the work presumably understands its meaning. However, a citation by someone in a very different field should be given less weight. A count of citations is probably meaningless unless it is weighted for who is citing the work.
My work is in a frontier field and the negative effects of inappropriate citations are amplified because of the relatively small number of people in the field. Bad science that supports a popular view is often cited by people seeking to "prove" their point. The effect is that a well-established popular wisdom evolves out of bad science.
You can see this effect in action in Wikipedia. From personal experience, I know that, on average, Wikipedia editors are decidedly mainstream-conservative verging on scientism. Wiki rules are that statements must be supported by references. Three important arbitration cases assure that citations are weighted toward popular wisdom and away from frontier subjects. I have listed them with the necessary links at ethericstudies dot org/wikipedia-arbitration/.
Hedy Lamarr is an interesting example of how intuitive inventions probably should not be cited as science. Leonardo da Vinci's invention of the helicopter is another example. In both cases a seems right kind of suggestion lacked the necessary technology to implement the idea.
Scientific research is done in order to advance understanding and not to attract citations or prizes.
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