Methodology.
AuditAE measures whether AI engines cite or mention your brand for prompts you supply. This page documents how each engine is queried, what counts as a citation versus a mention, and what we deliberately don’t claim to measure.
How each engine is queried
ChatGPT.We call OpenAI’s Responses API with the web_searchtool enabled. The model decides when to invoke web search based on the prompt. ChatGPT’s consumer product uses a related retrieval layer, but the surfaces are distinct and OpenAI doesn’t guarantee parity between them. We capture the model’s text response plus every URL it cites.
Perplexity. We call the Perplexity Sonar API. Sonar always retrieves live web sources before generating the answer. We capture the answer text plus the full source list Perplexity returns.
Gemini. We call Google’s @google/genai SDK with googleSearch grounding enabled. Gemini retrieves live sources and grounds the answer in them. We capture the response text plus the grounding sources.
Google AI Overviews.Google does not expose AI Overviews via an official API. We use SerpAPI to capture the AIO block whenever it renders for the queried prompt. AIO renders inconsistently (the same query may render an AIO for one capture and skip it for another) and SerpAPI’s parsing is best-effort. This is the same mechanism every credible AIO tracker uses, including the $99 to $499/month subscription tools.
Citation versus mention
We distinguish two outcomes per (prompt × engine) check.
Citation. The engine linked to a URL on your domain in its source list. This is the strongest visibility signal because it can drive a click and registers as an attribution to your site.
Mention. The engine named your brand in the answer body without linking to your domain. Mentions are the higher-volume impression for most brands (especially in ChatGPT, where roughly 8 of 10 brand references in responses are unlinked). Mentions do not appear in Google Search Console, GA4, or any traditional analytics tool.
Most teams undercount AI visibility by parsing citations only. AuditAE parses both — more on the distinction in what counts as a citation.
What “position” means
The position field on each result is the character index of the first occurrence of your brand string in the response text. It is not a rank, not a SERP position, and not a percentile. A position of 200 means the first mention appears around the 200th character of the response. Earlier mentions are read by more users than later ones, which is why we surface this.
What we don’t claim
AuditAE does not claim to:
- Guarantee that any change to your site will produce a citation. AI engines weight thousands of signals and re-train on their own cadences. We measure the outcome, we don’t predict it.
- Replicate the exact behavior of a logged-in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini user. Consumer products run on related but distinct surfaces, with personalization layers we can’t reproduce.
- Cover every AI search surface. We cover the four highest-traffic answer surfaces today. Newer surfaces (AI Mode, Copilot, Claude.ai) are on the roadmap but not yet in the audit pipeline.
- Provide statistically significant correlations between specific on-page changes and citation rates. Our audits measure citation state for prompts you supply, not regression-grade causal evidence. When the marketing site uses phrases like “appears to” or “is correlated with,” that is a deliberate hedge.
Volatility and cadence
AI engines return non-deterministic responses. The same prompt run twice against the same engine often returns different cited sources, sometimes different brand mentions, occasionally different recommendations. This is expected. AuditAE handles it by:
- Running every check live against the provider (no cached scoreboards).
- Surfacing diffs against your previous audit so movement is visible.
- Recommending a weekly or biweekly audit cadence for most teams. Daily monitoring chases noise; monthly misses real shifts.
AI Overviews is the most volatile of the four engines. ChatGPT (especially without web search) is the slowest to change, because it leans on training-data recall.
How a check is billed
A check is one (prompt × engine) call. Billing is pay-per-use: each check debits from your credit balance, regardless of whether the response came from a fresh provider call or our short-lived cache. The cache exists so that re-loading a report or sharing a public link doesn’t re-burn provider credits. Audit re-runs always hit the provider live. New accounts get $5 of free credit on signup, no card required.
Run your first audit. See where you land.
One prompt. Four engines. About 30 seconds. No card required.
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