AI Citation Tracking

What Are AI Citations?

AI citations occur when AI search engines reference your website in their generated answers. These citations drive high-intent traffic. Visitors who click through from AI answers convert 4.4x better than organic search visitors.

Supported AI Engines

ReachSurge checks whether your site is cited across 7 AI answer engines:

1. ChatGPT (OpenAI)
2. Perplexity
3. Claude (Anthropic)
4. Google Gemini
5. Grok (xAI)
6. Google AI Overviews: whether an AI Overview on a real Google results page cites you
7. AI Mode: whether a real Google AI Mode answer cites you

The two Google search surfaces are measured from actual Google results pages (fixed to US Google, English, desktop), not by asking a model. They are not part of the 90-day guarantee basis; the guarantee stays on the five engines listed at /guarantee.

Google: the Gemini leg is counted once. Until 1 August 2026 this list named Google twice, as "Google Gemini" and "Google AI Search". Both names described a single call to Google's grounding system returning one set of results, so every Google citation was recorded twice. The second name never represented a second check. The two newer Google surfaces above are a separate, real measurement of Google's search panels, distinct from the Gemini grounded-retrieval call. In your traffic analytics, visits from the Gemini app (gemini.google.com) show as AI traffic. Clicks from Google's AI answers inside search (AI Overviews and AI Mode) are counted with your search traffic, because Google doesn't tell sites which part of its results page a click came from.

Microsoft Copilot: traffic signals only. Microsoft doesn't offer a public citation verification API, so Copilot is not included in direct citation checks and is excluded from the 90-day citation guarantee. When Copilot sends traffic to your site we still attribute it correctly in analytics.

How Citation Tracking Works

ReachSurge runs scheduled citation checks across all 7 verified AI engines for your tracked keywords: weekly on Starter and Growth plans, twice weekly on Enterprise. Results appear on your dashboard as soon as each scheduled check completes. The system:

1. Sends your keywords as queries to AI engines
2. Parses the responses for mentions of your domain
3. Records citation position, sentiment, and whether a link was included
4. Tracks trends over time and alerts you to new citations

What We Store From Each Check

Beyond the structured result (cited or not, position, sentiment), we keep the engine's full answer text for each checked keyword. Very long answers are stored with the middle removed and marked as partial, so a stored answer that says it is partial is partial.

Why we keep it: the verbatim register is the evidence a 90-day guarantee claim is decided on, and it is included in your data export (Settings → Privacy & Data) so you can read exactly what each engine said.

What is never in it:

• Google's surfaces (Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode) are never stored verbatim.
• Any engine whose provider terms do not permit verbatim storage is excluded.

Retention: 180 days, past the guarantee claim deadline (120 days after your citation baseline), so the evidence still exists while a claim can be made. If you file a claim, the relevant rows are copied to a legal-hold store that survives until the claim is decided (24 months at most), and account deletion waits while a claim is open. Full windows are in the privacy policy §8.

Understanding Your Citation Data

• Citation Count: Total times your site was mentioned across all engines
• Sentiment: Whether the mention was positive, neutral, or negative
• Position: Where your citation appeared in the AI response
• Linked: Whether the AI provided a clickable link to your site
• Engine Breakdown: Which AI engines cite you most

AI Shopping Citations

Product-citation checks for AI shopping surfaces (Perplexity Shopping, ChatGPT product recommendations) are available through the API only, at POST /api/citations/shopping. They are not run on a schedule and their results do not appear on the Citations dashboard yet. If this matters to your store, tell us, it moves up the list.

Improving Your Citation Rate

1. Add structured data (JSON-LD schema): Article, FAQPage, Organization
2. Write clear, factual content, and use a statistic only when you can link the page it comes from
3. Start each section with a direct answer in the first 40-60 words
4. Ensure your robots.txt allows the agents that decide citation (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot, Google-Extended). The training crawlers GPTBot and ClaudeBot are a separate choice and do not by themselves affect whether you are cited
5. Build entity authority through consistent, expert content
6. Use the GEO Audit tool to identify specific improvements

Plan Limits

• Free: daily checks on up to 3 keywords, up to 93 checks/month (1 engine)
• Starter: 500 citation checks/month (all engines)
• Growth: 2,000 citation checks/month (all engines)
• Enterprise: 10,000 citation checks/month (all engines)

Measurement location

By default we send no location, no user profile, no memory and no conversation history. You can optionally set a measurement location per website (Settings → your site). What each engine then receives:

The 90-day guarantee is always measured without a set location, so your guarantee numbers stay comparable to your day-0 baseline even if you set a location later. A run records the location it was measured with, so your dashboard can tell you when the basis changed mid-period.

FAQ

How often are citations checked? On a tier-based schedule: weekly on Starter and Growth, twice weekly on Enterprise, and daily on Free (Perplexity only, up to 3 keywords). Each paid customer is assigned a fixed weekday so checks land predictably.

Can I see which keywords triggered citations? Yes, the Citations dashboard shows the exact query, engine, sentiment, and position for each citation.

What are shopping citations? Product mentions in AI-powered shopping experiences. Available for e-commerce sites tracking specific products.