Quick answer

Track citations in AI search from Scrunch's Citations and Prompts Monitoring tabs.

Citations are which sources AI platforms link to when answering questions. Here's how to track them:

Start in the Citations tab for overview metrics:

• Citations by Owner: How often your site, third-party sites, or competitor sites are cited
• Top Domains Cited: Which domains are cited most frequently for your tracked prompts
• All Citations table: Complete breakdown by domain or URL with Influence Scores

Drill down to URL level for deeper insights:

• Click into any domain to see specific URLs that have been cited.
• View which prompts cite each URL and how frequently.
• Track citation consistency and week-over-week trends.

Analyze citations at the prompt level in the Prompts Monitoring tab:

• See exactly which sources are cited in AI responses to prompts.
• Review how citations shape the actual AI answer.
• Identify which competitors appear in cited sources.

Track changes over time: Use the date selector (default: last 12 weeks) to spot citation patterns.

Slice data with filters: Segment analysis by citation owner, citation topic, prompt topic, persona, AI platform, funnel stage, branded versus non-branded prompts, and other filters.

Bottom line: The more you're cited or mentioned in cited sources, the more likely that you'll appear in AI responses and be discovered by customers.

Start here

Why you should track citations in AI search

Citations—aka the URLs cited by AI platforms in response to user prompts—shape AI answers. The more you’re mentioned in citations or cited yourself, the likelier it is that you’ll show up in AI responses (and show up accurately). To optimize AI search performance, you need to understand which sources LLMs are citing and identify citation opportunities.

Here’s how to do it using Scrunch.

Before you begin:

• Log in to Scrunch or sign up for a free 7-day trial to follow along.
• Add your brand and website to the AI context tab in Scrunch, including any alternate domains or subdomains you want to track.
• Customize your brand context in Scrunch (alternative brand names, key competitors, customer personas, key topics, etc.).
• Add prompts to track in the Prompts Monitoring tab in Scrunch (or let Scrunch’s AI generate prompts for you based on your brand or convert a list of SEO keywords into prompts).

Step 1: Track citations in AI search in the Citations tab

Log in to Scrunch and navigate to the Citations tab.

Select Citations from left-hand sidebar

This page shows you citation breakdown by owner (i.e., your brand, third parties, or competitors), the top domains cited for the prompts you’re tracking, and a full readout of all tracked citations (by domain or URL).

Every time an AI platform answers one of your tracked prompts, Scrunch records exactly which webpages were cited.

You can see how citations change over time by using the date selector at the top of the page (it’s set to the last 12 weeks by default).

Click the “Last 12 weeks” button to view your options or set a custom date range.

View date options

Likewise, all the information in the Citations tab can be sorted based on filters, like citation owner, citation topic, prompt topic, persona, AI platform, funnel stage, branded versus non-branded prompts, whether your brand or a competitor’s brand is present, country, and more.

Click the “Add filter” button at the top of the page to view your filter options.

View filter options

The Citations by Owner panel at the top of the page tells you how often any page on your website has been linked to as a citation in AI responses, as well as how often AI responses have cited third-party or competitor webpages.

View Citations by Owner

The Top Domains Cited panel to the right tells you which domains specifically are cited most often for your tracked prompts.

View Top Domains Cited

Below that is a sortable table of all currently tracked citations. You can view this table based on domain or specific URL.

View domains or URLs

Regardless of your view, you’ll see:

• Domain or URL: The specific website domain or webpage URL and a corresponding tag to indicate whether it belongs to your brand, a third party, or a competitor.
• Brand mentions: A yes or no indicator of whether your brand is mentioned in the cited source.
• Competitor Mentions: A list of all competitive brands mentioned in the cited source.
• Domain Topics: A list of all key topics the citation is related to.
• Prompts: The unique number of prompts that have cited this source for any response over a selected time period.
• Responses: The number of responses that have cited this source over a selected time period.
• Citation Consistency: The percentage of responses that have cited this source (calculated by dividing the number of responses that have cited the source by the total number of responses that cited any source).
• Influence Score: A numerical score that indicates how influential this source is (calculated by multiplying the percentage of responses that have cited the source by the unique number of prompts).

If you click into a table row from the domain view, you’ll see every URL from that domain that has been cited for a tracked prompt, at which point you can click into any row to drill down to the URL level.

If you click into a table row from the URL view, you’ll automatically be taken to the URL drilldown page.

Select a URL.

View URL drilldown

From here you can see the unique number of prompts that have cited this URL over a selected time period, as well as the number of responses.

You can also see the prompts in question, alongside the number of responses, citation frequency, and a week-over-week citation visualization for each prompt.

When you click into a specific prompt, you’ll be taken to the seed prompt section of the Prompts Monitoring tab.

Select a prompt.

Step 2: Track citations in AI search by prompt in the Prompts Monitoring tab

This page shows you a prompt-level breakdown of competitive presence, brand presence, and citations.

View Competitive Presence, Brand Presence, and Citations

You can scroll down the page and click into any prompt variant based on the AI platforms you’re tracking in Scrunch.

Select a prompt variant.

View prompt variant analysis

At the top of the page you’ll see a high-level overview of brand presence, position, sentiment, citations, and competitive presence for that prompt.

Further down you’ll find a full read-out of the AI answer from that particular platform, showing how different sources are cited in the response.

View AI response

Use this data to understand what AI platforms are saying and how based on the sources they cite.

To the right of the AI response you can see which of your competitors are present in the response.

View Competitive Presence

Below that you can see exactly which sources were cited in the response.

View Citations

With this information in hand, you have total visibility into how your brand and competitors are being cited for the prompts you care about, which third-party and competitive sources are most influential to AI responses, and how those sources are shaping AI answers.

What’s next

Start increasing your citations and mentions in cited sources:

1. Identify citation opportunities: Find third-party sources that mention competitors but not you.
2. Prioritize citation sources: Focus on the most influential sources for LLMs.
3. Scale mentions in cited sources: Consider tools like Noble and Stacker to help you scale brand mentions in cited sources.
4. Update or create content: Review competitive sources and update or create content to exceed content quality.

Citations shape AI answers. If you want your brand to show up more in AI responses, you need to win more citations and get mentioned in cited sources.

Scrunch also recommends tracking agent traffic and referral traffic to get a comprehensive view of how your brand is performing in AI search and the results it’s driving.

Not a Scrunch customer yet? Start your 7-day free trial or request a demo to see Scrunch in action.