How do I find out if AI agents are citing my content?
How to find out if AI agents are citing your content: manual checks, analytics referrals, server logs, and the tools that track citations across ChatGPT and Perplexity.
There are four ways to find out whether AI agents cite your content, and they answer slightly different questions. A manual check tells you what one engine said once. Analytics tells you who clicked. Server logs tell you which bots fetched your pages. A tracking tool tells you what is cited across hundreds of prompts over time. Use them in that order, and know what each cannot see.
Method 1: ask the engines yourself
Open ChatGPT with search, Perplexity and Google, and ask the questions your content is meant to answer. Look at the sources shown. This is free and fast, and it is a sample of one. The same prompt can return different sources tomorrow, so never treat a single check as a finding.
Promptwatch's free GEO Inspector Chrome extension makes this more useful. It shows ChatGPT's query fan-outs and the difference between fetched and cited sources, and runs locally. Its free AI Visibility Report also scans a brand without a login.
Method 2: look for referral traffic
In Google Analytics, filter sessions by referrer domain for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini and see which landing pages receive them. Pages that get AI-referred visits are being cited and clicked. The limits are that some apps strip the referrer, so some traffic shows as direct, and a citation nobody clicks leaves no trace.
Method 3: read your server logs
AI systems fetch pages with named bots: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User and others. If you can read raw logs you can see which fetched which page. Two cautions matter here. Fetching is not citing: a bot can read a page and never use it. And user agents can be spoofed, so a log line that says GPTBot is not proof until the IP is verified.
Method 4: use a citation tracker
A tool runs a fixed prompt set daily and records which sources the engines cite. This is the only method that scales and shows trend. Here is how the main options compare.
Promptwatch
Promptwatch combines the layers the other methods leave separate. Citation analytics show page- and domain-level citations with URL positions, Page Tracker for specific URLs (yours or a competitor's), offsite mentions, and Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn citation reports. Agent Analytics logs real-time, IP-verified AI crawler visits, so spoofed user agents are filtered out, and shows a crawl-to-citation path with a citation rate per page. Visitor analytics adds AI-referred sessions and conversions. Monitoring covers ChatGPT (Search), Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Copilot, Gemini, Alexa and Meta AI through the real interfaces, with Claude, DeepSeek, Mistral and Grok through APIs.
The free Explore tier covers 10 prompts on ChatGPT only. Essential is $95 a month, Professional $245 and Business $579, with crawler logs starting on Professional.
AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ tracks how a brand appears in AI answers and rolls results into a GEO score. Starter is $295 a month under credit pricing. The listing notes no crawler analytics and no Reddit monitoring.
Scrunch AI
Scrunch AI Core is $250 a month, tracks four LLMs and includes AI agent and bot traffic reporting. Reviewers say data refreshes weekly.
Profound
Profound is an enterprise platform with custom pricing. Its trial covers three engines for seven days.
Am I Cited
Am I Cited watches eight engines on credit pricing from about 50 euros a month, with a seven-day trial, and does not publish crawler logs.
Comparison
| Method | Sees citations | Sees bot fetches | Sees clicks | Scales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manual check | One sample | No | No | No |
| Analytics referrals | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Server logs | No | Yes, spoofable | No | Yes |
| Promptwatch | Yes | Yes, IP-verified | Yes | Yes |
| Other trackers | Yes | Mostly not published | Varies | Yes |
Which to start with
If you want an answer this afternoon, do Method 1 on ten prompts and Method 2 in GA. If you need to know it continuously and tie citations to bots and visits, a tracker is the practical choice, and Promptwatch is the one we would put first because it joins citation, crawler and visit data. If a credit-based action queue appeals, look at AthenaHQ.
What to read into the result
If you are cited, check whether the cited page is the one you wanted. If you are fetched but never cited, the page may not answer the prompt closely enough. If you are never fetched, check access first. No tool can make an engine cite you, but it can tell you which of those three situations you are in.