AI Agency Code Ownership: Hire Without Lock-In
AI agencies that retain your IP cost you 5x more over 3 years. Contract clauses, red flags, and the Build + Platform + Performance model that ends vendor lock-in. 2026 guide.
May 27, 2026•26 min read
3 free audits left today
Do AI Search Engines Cite Your Brand?
Check whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini mention your brand in their responses. Test brand recognition, competitive visibility, and citation quality.
AI citation tracking measures whether AI search engines mention or link to your brand when users ask relevant questions. Unlike traditional SEO rankings, AI citations are dynamic: the same query can produce different results each time, and each AI provider (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) uses different training data and retrieval methods. Tracking citations across all four providers reveals where your brand has recognition, where competitors are being cited instead, and whether AI engines link to your actual URLs or just mention your name. This distinction matters because URL citations drive direct traffic while brand mentions build awareness.
What we check
4 AI Providers
ChatGPT (GPT-4o-mini), Perplexity (Sonar), Claude (Haiku), and Gemini (Flash) tested simultaneously.
8 Query Types
Brand awareness, 5 competitive queries, and reputation analysis tailored to your business category.
URL Citations
Perplexity is the only provider that returns source URLs. We check if your domain appears in its citations.
Sentiment & Prominence
Not just mentioned/not mentioned. We analyze how prominently and positively your brand appears.
How We Score (And Why It Matters)
Most citation trackers are paid SaaS tools starting at $50-500/month. We built this free version because AI citation visibility is the next frontier of search, and every brand should be able to check their baseline.
Brand Recognition
25 ptsDo AI systems actually know your brand? We ask about your company and filter out shallow name-echoes. Only substantive, detailed responses count as real recognition.
Competitive Visibility
35 ptsThe highest-weighted category with 5 different competitive queries. When someone asks for recommendations in your category, does your brand appear organically? Weighted by prominence (primary > mentioned > listed).
URL Citations
20 ptsPerplexity is the only AI that returns source URLs via API. We check if your domain appears in its citation list. This is the strongest signal of real AI discoverability.
Sentiment & Consistency
20 ptsAre mentions positive or neutral? And are you cited consistently across providers, or only by one? Multi-provider consistency signals genuine authority.
Built on our own research
This tool reflects what we learned tracking our own AI citation presence across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. The scoring criteria come from real optimization experiments.
