Citino teamAI search analytics is the measurement of how AI assistants answer the questions your buyers ask. It tells you whether ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude name your brand, how often compared with your competitors, in what position, how they describe you, and which pages their answers came from.
Why AI search needs its own analytics
Buyers now ask assistants what to buy, and the assistant answers with a short list of brands. If you are not on that list, you may never know: there is no ranking report for an answer and no click to count.
The answers also come from somewhere you can measure. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a “query fan-out” technique, “issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources” to build a response. Perplexity says it searches the web in real time and cites its sources in every answer. So an answer is a result of pages you can see, and a trend you can track.
Classic search tools do not cover this. The Search Console Performance report, for example, shows the queries people typed and the clicks your site earned. It does not show what an assistant said about you in the answer.
What AI search analytics measures
Every AI search analytics report comes down to four numbers, counted over the answers to the questions you track:
| Metric | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Visibility | Were you named at all? |
| Share of voice | How much of the conversation is yours? |
| Position | How early are you named? |
| Sentiment | How are you described? |
Two more things sit behind the numbers:
- Citations. The pages each answer cites. They show which sources decide the answer, including the ones you do not own.
- Claims. Whether the facts stated about you, such as price, plans and integrations, are correct. See how to fix what AI assistants get wrong.
How AI search analytics works
- Choose the questions. A fixed set of prompts worded the way buyers ask them, such as “best warehouse management software for a 3PL”. How to choose the prompts to track covers this.
- Ask every engine, on a schedule. The same prompts, with the same wording, on each engine, daily, from a clean session with no account history.
- Record every answer. The full text, the brands named and their order, the tone, and the pages cited.
- Count, with a margin of error. AI answers vary from run to run, so one answer proves little. A rate over many answers, with a margin of error, shows what is real. How to measure AI visibility works through the maths.
- Act, then check. Find the questions you lose and why, fix the pages behind them, and test whether the fix moved the number more than noise would.
Wording matters at every step. Research on language models has found them highly sensitive to small changes in how a prompt is written (Sclar et al.), which is why a tracked prompt keeps its wording fixed.
AI search analytics, SEO analytics and web analytics
| Measures | Misses | |
|---|---|---|
| SEO analytics | Rankings, impressions and clicks on a results page | What an assistant says in its answer |
| Web analytics | Visits that reach your site, including some from AI assistants | Buyers who read the answer and never click |
| AI search analytics | Whether and how answers name you, and their sources | Visits and revenue, unless joined to web analytics |
The three work together. A page that ranks well is more likely to be read by engines that search the web; an answer that names you can send a visit; and web analytics shows what those visits are worth.
What to look for in an AI search analytics tool
- The engines your buyers use. At least ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. Check which engines cost extra.
- Daily runs with fixed wording. Weekly checks take months to tell a change from noise.
- Numbers counted honestly. Ask whether the margin of error is calculated over prompts or over answers; over answers looks precise but understates uncertainty.
- Every answer kept. You should be able to read the answer behind any number, with the pages it cited.
- A way to tell whether a fix worked. Most tools tell you what to fix. Few can show whether a specific change moved the number, net of what moved every brand on the same days.
How to choose an AI visibility tool lists the questions to ask in a demo.
AI search analytics is only as good as the questions behind it and the honesty of its error bars.
Where Citino fits
Citino is an AI search analytics tool. It asks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity your buyers’ questions every day, with Gemini, Google AI Mode and Claude as add-ons, from a clean session with fixed wording, and shows who gets named, in what order, how they are described and from which pages. Every number carries a 95% margin of error bootstrapped over prompts, as the methodology sets out, and every fix gets a verdict. Everyone tells you what to fix. Citino tells you whether it worked. See how Citino measures.