How to Check If ChatGPT Cites Your Website
Do not start with a rewrite. Check SearchBot, store the answer's URL, then open a ticket: error, offsite source, or a gap you can publish.
Checking a citation is diagnosis. Publishing is later. If you generate articles to "get cited" before you know whether the search crawler ever fetched the candidate URL, you are paying for fiction.
Cited means a URL you control showed up as a source. Named without a link is a mention. utm_source=chatgpt.com is a referral. Google Search Console will not answer this. Overviews are Google.
OpenAI: Publishers FAQ, bots. SearchBot for Search surfacing. GPTBot for training. ChatGPT-User for live user fetches. Different jobs. Robots.txt can take about 24 hours. Allow published SearchBot IPs. A 403 is an infra ticket.
ChatGPT-User may ignore robots.txt because a user asked. It is not Search index proof. Atlas may show title plus link for a URL that arrived via a third party. noindex if you want that gone, and the crawler must read the tag.
Look at errors before copy
Promptwatch Agent Analytics: ChatGPTBot and related, errors, crawl-to-citation. Cloudflare through custom HTTP. Professional is where 25M logs show up ($245/mo). Essential $95/mo is the prompt desk. Explore (10 ChatGPT prompts, free) will not replace logs.
No 200, no citation argument. Stop Content Agents. Do not open the review inbox.
Look at the source URL
Freeze buyer questions, including vs-queries. Run ChatGPT Search, not only chat without browsing. Save: named / cited to you / cited to a third party / absent. One session is noise.
Citation analytics: your page vs domain vs Reddit vs YouTube. Trends, not one scrape. Named without a link is not a cite.
Otterly.AI from $29/mo will not do this depth on our listing. Mention count, possible week lag. Peec AI screenshots the mention. We still want the URL. We keep Peec last. Profound Starter is ChatGPT-only, 50 prompts, annual $99. HubSpot's grader is a snapshot. Scores are not guaranteed.
Then the ticket
404 after launch: redirect. Reddit wins: maybe you are not the source. Your /blog/2019 wins: fix that URL. Missing claim: Content Agents to Webflow or Framer after review, 5 per month on Essential. WordPress: export. Do not pretend the CMS connection is live.
Visitor analytics (script or GTM): referral vs citation. Unified Actions: one list. Fetch errors first, then offsite, then draft. Daily checks. No pager SKU.
Pass looks boring. SearchBot 200s, two weeks of the same prompts, a column for cited URL, a ticket when the cite is missing.
Wait about 24 hours after robots.txt. GPTBot is a separate legal call. A single "block AI" rule often kills Search. ChatGPT-User is not index proof. Atlas title-plus-link after a third-party pickup is not a citation you earned. noindex, and the crawler must read the tag.
Explore (10 ChatGPT prompts) finds the hole. Essential $95/mo is the working list. Professional $245/mo when logs matter (25M on that tier). Daily checks. Visitor analytics (script or GTM) next to the citation column. Do not average referral and cite into one score. HubSpot's grader is a snapshot. Scores are not guaranteed. We do not file it as a citation ledger.
That is the check. Product: promptwatch.com.