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Citation Monitor

Find out if external AI systems are actually recommending you.

Every other GEO report tells you what you should be cited for. Citation Monitor tells you whether you are cited — right now — by the AI systems your prospects are actively using.

The Problem It Solves​

You've run Q&A Analysis, fixed your content gaps, improved your Keyword Visibility scores. But is any of it actually working in the wild? When a prospect types "best [category] tool" into ChatGPT or Gemini, does your brand appear? Citation Monitor answers that question with a concrete, per-query citation rate — plus a diagnostic quadrant that tells you why you are or aren't being cited.

What It Does​

  • Runs your target queries through Azure OpenAI (closed-book — measures whether your brand is in the model's training data) and Gemini 2.5 Flash (web-grounded via Google Search — measures whether your live content is being crawled and cited today)
  • Detects brand citation three ways: brand name in the response text, brand domain in grounding source URLs, or not cited
  • Optionally checks your Google organic rank for each query — SEO position and LLM citation side by side
  • Identifies competitors named in LLM responses — so you know who's being cited instead of you
  • Classifies the sentiment of each citation as positive, neutral, negative, or mixed
  • Tracks a defined list of competitor brands and computes share of voice per competitor
  • Computes a diagnostic quadrant per query from LLM citation × Google rank

Starting with no query or competitor list? Use the Generate Queries and Generate Competitors buttons to let Claude suggest them based on your brand and market focus.

How to Generate a Report​

🛠️ Step 1: Navigate to Citation Monitor​

From the ai12z GEO portal, select Citation Monitor from the navigation menu.

🛠️ Step 2: Click + Generate Report​

Click the + Generate Report button in the top-right corner.

🛠️ Step 3: Configure Your Run​

FieldDescription
Brand NameYour primary brand name
Brand DomainYour website domain (e.g. ai12z.com)
Brand AliasesAlternative spellings or abbreviations
Target QueriesThe queries to test — one per line. Pre-filled from previous runs
Competitors[name, domain] pairs to track for share of voice
Include Google RankWhether to check Google organic position for each query

🛠️ Step 4: Submit and Wait​

Click Submit Job. The analysis runs asynchronously. Click Refresh to check for completion.

🛠️ Step 5: View Your Report​

Once complete, click View PDF for the full citation audit.

The Diagnostic Quadrant​

The quadrant is what makes Citation Monitor unique. Most tools tell you whether you're cited. This one tells you why — and that determines the right fix:

QuadrantLLM CitedGoogle RankedWhat It MeansWhat To Do
Winning✅✅Cited and rankedProtect; expand schema, entity density, syndication
Authority Gap✅❌Cited despite low/no rankPush for top-3 Google rank
Amplify❌✅Ranked + strong bot score; LLMs don't citeDistribution problem — syndication, schema, entity density
SEO/GEO Gap❌✅Ranked but not cited; low bot scoreFix content depth + GEO distribution
Training Data Only✅❌In LLM training data but not rankingBuild live web presence — publish current content
Content Gap❌❌No rank, no citation, low bot scoreCreate content first
Full Gap❌❌Neither Google nor LLMs surface youCreate and distribute content

Interpreting the Two LLM Signals​

SignalHighLow
Azure OpenAI (closed-book)Brand is established in AI training dataBrand lacks training data presence — publish more over time
Gemini (web-grounded)Current content is being crawled and citedLive content not reaching LLMs — check robots.txt, schema, entity density

A high Gemini rate + low Azure rate = your live content is being found but your brand isn't well-known in training data yet.

A high Azure rate + low Gemini rate = brand is known in training data but live pages aren't being cited in real-time grounded responses.

Key Outputs​

  • Citation Health Score (0–100) — Overall citation coverage, signal quality, and quadrant position
  • Verdict — emerging / present / strong / dominant
  • Executive Summary — 2–4 sentence narrative summarizing citation health
  • Per-query citation status — which LLMs cited you, by which method, with competitors detected
  • Google rank per query — your organic position and the page that ranked
  • Quadrant per query — precise diagnosis with different action prescription for each state
  • Overall citation rate — what % of target queries result in at least one LLM citation
  • Per-LLM breakdown — closed-book citation rate (training data) vs. web-grounded citation rate (live content)
  • Top competitors — ranked by how often they appear in LLM responses for your target queries
  • Citation Sentiment — per-query sentiment badge; Dominant Sentiment and Sentiment Split summary
  • Competitor Share of Voice — per-competitor cited count, share of voice, winning queries, and losing queries
  • PDF Report — Complete citation audit with metric cards, per-query table, and competitor SOV section

Perfect For​

  • Marketing teams measuring real-world impact of GEO content improvements
  • Content strategists who've acted on Q&A Analysis recommendations and want to know if it's working
  • SEO specialists who rank on Google but aren't appearing in AI overviews
  • Any team that needs to answer "Is ChatGPT/Gemini actually recommending us?"

Example Use Case​

An enterprise SaaS company runs Citation Monitor on 10 target queries after publishing new HIPAA compliance content. They discover: (1) Gemini cites them for 7/10 queries but Azure only cites them for 2/10 — their new content is being crawled but isn't yet well-represented in training data. (2) For 3 queries they're in Google top 3 but still not cited by Gemini (SEO/GEO Gap — entity density fix needed). (3) Intercom appears in 6/10 queries as a recommended alternative. They prioritize improving schema markup on the HIPAA pages and creating an Intercom comparison page.