What is LLM citation and mention tracking and how does it work?
When an AI answers a question in your market, your brand either gets mentioned by name in the answer or cited as a source the AI pulled from. Citation and mention tracking captures both across every response the models give, so you know not just whether AI talks about you, but whether it trusts your content enough to link to it. It analyzes every AI response for brand names and source URLs, then logs who got mentioned, which pages got cited, in what position, and with what sentiment.
Best practices:
- Track mentions and citations separately, they are different signals with different fixes
- Watch which third party sites get cited in your market, that’s your placement hit list
- Read the exact phrases AI uses about you and your competitors, wording is intel
Tracking citations and mentions
Head to Citations under Search in your Cairrot dashboard. Every URL an AI has cited as a source shows up here with the model, the prompt, the page title, and the rank position of that citation inside the answer.
Find out who owns the citations
The Citation Owners chart splits every citation three ways: your pages, competitor pages, and neutral third party sites. Here’s the insight that changes strategy: neutral sites usually dominate.
Build your placement hit list in about a minute
- Open Citations and set your window to the last 30 days
- Click the Neutral Domains quick filter to strip out you and your competitors
- Add Top 3 Rank so you only see sources cited near the top of answers
- Sort by frequency and export
Track every brand mention with sentiment
The AI Chats page under Search analyzes the response text itself for brand mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Every response gets scored for your brand hits, competitor hits, and brand sentiment on each, and you can open any row to read the full answer.
Read the exact phrases AI uses
Sentiment Phrases logs the exact wording the models attach to every brand in your market, tagged by entity and sentiment.
FAQ
Is citation and mention tracking included in every Cairrot plan?
Yes, every paid Cairrot plan includes citation tracking, mention tracking, sentiment analysis, and exports.
What’s the difference between a citation and a mention?
A mention is when the AI names your brand in the answer text, and a citation is when the AI links your page as a source it pulled from.
What if AI never cites my website?
That’s normal at the start, most citations go to neutral third party sites, so the play is getting your brand onto the listicles and publications the models already trust while you build up your own citable content.
Start Monitoring your Brand in AI Today
Find out what AI is saying about you and whose content it’s pulling from. It’s included in every paid Cairrot plan, and you can start with a free AEO report.