How do you track which sources AI engines cite about your brand?

What is AI citation tracking?

It is recording which web pages an AI answer links to as its sources, across a fixed set of questions, over time.

When an assistant searches the web before answering, it often shows the pages it used. Those links are citations. Tracking them across many questions tells you which domains the engines lean on in your category: review sites, comparison lists, documentation, forum threads or your own pages.

A mention is different. Your brand can be named in an answer that cites no pages at all, and a page of yours can be cited in an answer that recommends a competitor. You need both numbers to understand your position.

Why do many AI answers cite no sources?

Because the model often answers from what it learned in training rather than from a live web search.

For a question like 'what is the best feature flag tool', an assistant may reply from memory with no links. In MarketHQ's weekly sampling many answers come back this way, which is why an answer with no sources is labelled as such rather than counted as a failure.

This shapes strategy. Citations show you which pages are influencing answers right now. Answers from memory reflect what the web said about you over a longer period, including community threads, documentation and comparison pages, so the work to influence them is slower and broader.

How does MarketHQ show AI citations?

Each answer on the AI Visibility page lists the links it cited, next to whether it named you.

On paid plans MarketHQ asks your tracked questions in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek every week, plus Perplexity, whose answers appear on the Web Search tab. For every answer, a 'Cites' column shows the sites it linked to, and the detail view lists each link. You can sort by how many sources an answer cited.

MarketHQ does not currently give you a single ranked report of the domains cited across all answers. To find the sites that matter, sort by the Cites column and note which domains repeat across questions and engines.

How do you find the sites that influence AI answers about your brand?

Look for domains that are cited repeatedly across questions and engines, then work on being present there.

Once you have a few weeks of answers, patterns show up quickly. The same comparison list, the same Reddit thread or the same documentation page tends to recur. Those are the pages worth getting listed on, corrected or answered.

• List the domains cited in answers that named a competitor but not you.
• Open each page and check whether you are listed and described correctly.
• For lists and reviews, ask to be included, with evidence.
• For forum threads, add a useful, disclosed answer where the question is still active.
• For your own pages, make the answer to the tracked question explicit near the top.

Can you track citations in Google AI Overviews?

Not with MarketHQ; it does not cover Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode or Microsoft Copilot.

If most of your traffic questions trigger Google AI Overviews, you need a tool that tracks that surface specifically. Otterly.AI, for example, includes Google AI Overviews in every plan as of September 2026. MarketHQ focuses on the assistants people ask directly: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek.

What does a citation pattern look like in practice?

Illustrative example: one listicle keeps appearing where a competitor wins.

Illustrative example: a secrets-management company sees the same 'top tools' article cited in several answers that recommend two competitors and not it. The article lists eight tools and omits the company. The team contacts the author with a short, factual pitch and a customer example, and keeps watching whether that domain keeps appearing in the Cites column.

What are the limits of citation tracking?

Citations show only what an answer chose to link, and only for answers that link at all.

Links in AI answers are sometimes broken or point to pages that do not support the claim. MarketHQ reads the links that appear in the answer text; it does not check whether each page backs the statement. Treat citations as a lead to investigate.