Why we built this

Search changed.
Most websites didn't.

When someone types a question into ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity, they get a direct answer — with sources. One of those sources might be your competitor. It's probably not you. CiteScan tells you why, and what to fix.

The problem

You rank on Google.
But AI doesn't know you exist.

Until recently, the only game in town was ranking on page one of Google. You optimised your headings, built backlinks, wrote blogs — and it worked. Customers found you.

But the way people search is shifting fast. More and more, buyers are starting their research by asking an AI assistant: "What's the best CRM for a 10-person team?" or "Which agencies specialise in B2B lead generation?" The AI gives them a confident, curated answer — and moves on.

If your business doesn't appear in that answer, you don't get a second chance. There's no page two to land on.

The frustrating part: this isn't about having bad content or a bad product. Most businesses missing from AI answers have perfectly good websites. They're just missing specific signals that AI engines look for before they're willing to recommend someone — and those signals are different from traditional SEO.

60%+
of informational searches now show an AI-generated answer before any organic results
~3
sources are cited per AI answer — making the list is winner-takes-most
< 5%
of well-ranked sites have the structured signals AI engines need to cite them
What we do

We translate your website
through AI's eyes.

CiteScan works the same way an AI engine does when it decides whether to recommend a business: it reads your page, evaluates your credibility signals, checks your technical setup, and produces a verdict. We just show you the verdict — with the specific reasons and the exact fixes.

The output is a Discovery Readiness Index (DRI) — a single score from 0 to 100, broken into three pillars that each tell a different part of the story.

Visibility · 40% of DRI

Can AI actually find and read your content?

Many businesses unknowingly block AI search engines — not intentionally, but through outdated settings in a technical file called robots.txt. Others have content that AI can find but can't extract anything useful from: no clear answers, no specific statistics, no quotable claims.

Think of this as: is your shop door open, and does the window display actually show what you sell?

Credibility · 35% of DRI

Does AI trust you enough to recommend you?

AI engines don't recommend anonymous content. Before citing a source, they look for signals that the content comes from a real, credible entity: a named author, a verifiable organisation, credentials that match the topic. If your website doesn't clearly establish who you are and why you're qualified, AI treats you as background noise.

Think of this as: would a careful journalist cite you as a source, or pass you over because they couldn't verify the claim?

Technical Health · 25% of DRI

Is your site built in a language AI understands?

Beyond the content itself, there's a layer of structured information — invisible to human visitors, but read by every AI engine — that tells machines what your page is about, who wrote it, what type of business you are, and how to categorise you. Most websites have none of this. The ones that do appear in AI answers far more often.

Think of this as: having a conversation in a language the AI speaks natively — vs shouting at it in a language it has to guess.

Reading your results

A score is only useful
if you know what to do with it.

Most audit tools stop at diagnosis. CiteScan goes further: every gap in your score comes with a plain-English explanation of the business impact, a specific action to fix it, and an honest estimate of how long the fix takes.

70–100
Active contender

AI engines can find you, trust you, and are actively including you in answers. Your job is to maintain this and widen the gap over competitors.

45–69
On the radar

You appear in AI answers sometimes — but inconsistently. You're missing a handful of specific signals. Fixing them typically moves you into the top tier within 4–8 weeks.

0–44
Not in the room

AI engines are not recommending you. This isn't a content quality problem — it's a signal problem. The fixes are specific, implementable, and faster than you'd expect.

The thinking behind it

Why these three things?
Why in this order?

The weighting reflects how AI engines actually make citation decisions — not how we think they should, but how they demonstrably do, based on studying which pages consistently appear in AI-generated answers and which don't.

01
Visibility first (40%)
Because nothing else matters if AI can't read or extract anything useful from your content. Credibility and technical quality are irrelevant to a page that's blocked, thin, or unciteable. Visibility carries the heaviest weight because it's the genuine citability signal — without it, the other two pillars have nothing to amplify.
02
Credibility second (35%)
Because being found is different from being trusted. AI engines are more conservative than Google — they'd rather cite no one than cite an unverifiable source. Credibility signals are what move you from 'found' to 'cited'.
03
Technical third (25%)
Because structured data is the multiplier, not the message. Pages with identical content and authority score higher when they speak the machine-readable language AI engines use to categorise and extract information. It's weighted lightest because it amplifies citability rather than creating it — perfect plumbing on an unciteable page still earns no citations.
Setting expectations

When will I see results
in the real world?

Your CiteScan score updates the moment you re-scan after making changes. But AI engines take their own time to reflect those changes in answers. Here's what to expect:

Perplexity
Days

Crawls the live web for every query. Fix something today and Perplexity can reflect it within 48–72 hours.

ChatGPT Search
2–4 weeks

Uses a separate search index that updates on a rolling basis. Changes take a few weeks to appear in answers.

Claude
Days to weeks

Search-grounded answers update faster than the underlying model's training knowledge.

Google AI Overviews
Hours to days

Googlebot crawls frequently. AI Overview inclusions can shift quickly after a page update.

The honest truth: technical fixes like schema and robots.txt changes reflect fastest — sometimes within days. Content changes take a little longer because AI engines need to re-evaluate the full page. The CiteScan score gives you an immediate read; the real-world impact follows within weeks, not months.

Find out where you stand.

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Just a URL and an honest answer.

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