Question 1

How does AI Citation Checker work?

Accepted Answer

Enter a query and a domain. We send the query to Perplexity Sonar Pro (a live AI search engine) and check whether your domain appears in the citations Perplexity returns to its users. You see the position rank, full citation list, and which competing domains were cited instead.

Question 2

Is this free?

Accepted Answer

Yes — 5 queries per day per IP, no signup required. Heavy users can upgrade to STARTER, PRO, or AGENCY plans for higher monthly limits and historical tracking.

Question 3

What AI engines does this test?

Accepted Answer

Currently Perplexity Sonar Pro (the most widely-used live AI search engine for citation research). Sonar Pro draws from a curated index that overlaps heavily with what ChatGPT Search and Claude Search retrieve, making it a reliable proxy for the broader AI-search landscape.

Question 4

How is this different from Google search?

Accepted Answer

AI search engines do not rank pages by traditional SEO signals like backlinks or keyword density. They cite sources their model deems authoritative for the specific query, weighted by recency, structural clarity (H1, schema), direct-answer formatting, and brand mentions across the open web. Pages that rank #1 on Google often go uncited by AI; pages on page 3 of Google sometimes dominate AI citations.

Question 5

Why should I track AI citations?

Accepted Answer

AI search referral traffic is growing 30%+ month-over-month for sites that get cited. Unlike Google, AI citations directly attribute the answer to your domain — readers click through to the source. Tracking which queries cite you and which competitors get cited instead reveals exactly what content gaps to close.

Question 6

How often should I check?

Accepted Answer

AI citation results drift week-to-week as the underlying index updates. We recommend a baseline check every 2 weeks for your top 10 queries, plus immediate spot-checks after publishing new content. PRO and AGENCY plans run automatic weekly snapshots.

Question 7

What's the difference vs brand mention tracking?

Accepted Answer

Brand mention tracking (e.g., Profound, Otterly) polls AI engines for mentions of your brand name 24/7 across millions of queries. That measures unprompted visibility. Citation checking targets a specific query you choose — useful when you want to know 'do I appear for *this* exact question?' Both are complementary; we lead on citation depth because it's actionable for content strategy.

Free AI Citation Checker

Enter domain and query

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