The short answer
AI citation tracking is the practice of measuring how often AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews mention or cite your brand when people ask questions in your category. It works by running a defined set of category prompts against each engine on a regular schedule, then recording who gets named, which sources get linked, and how your brand compares to competitors. The core numbers are citation rate (how often you appear), share of model (your slice of answers versus rivals), and sentiment (how you are described).
How it works
Instead of guessing whether AI engines know about you, citation tracking turns the question into a repeatable measurement. You define the prompts a real buyer would ask, the tool sends them to each engine, and it parses every answer to see whether your brand is named, whether a page of yours is cited as a source, and which competitors show up alongside you. Running the same prompts on a schedule turns one snapshot into a trend, so you can see whether a content change, a new page, or a fix to AI-crawler access moved the numbers.
What the numbers tell you
- Citation rate. The share of answers in your prompt set where an engine mentions or cites you. This is your presence signal.
- Share of model. Your portion of those answers compared with competitors, per engine, so you can see who owns the category in each one.
- Sentiment. How the engine describes you when it does mention you, which can differ from one engine to the next.
Read the full AI citation tracking methodology for how the measurement is built, or see the product overview for what you get. To see where your own site stands today, run the free AI visibility scan.