Citino teamAI assistants that search the web answer from the pages they find. For most questions a buyer asks, such as “best WMS for a 3PL” or “alternatives to Palletworks”, the pages they find are mostly not yours: review sites, directories, comparison articles, forum threads, news and your competitors’ own pages. What those pages say about you is, to a large extent, what the answer says about you.
Seeing which pages those are is part of AI search analytics. This article explains why they matter and how to find them.
How outside pages get into the answer
The engines describe their own process in similar terms:
| Engine | What its documentation says |
|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | May issue multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources and show a wider and more diverse set of links than a classic results page |
| Perplexity | Searches the internet in real time, gathering information from sources such as articles, websites and journals, and cites them |
| ChatGPT | When it uses web search, the model often taps into many sources and answers with citations |
| Claude | When it uses information from the web, it provides direct citations |
The common thread: the answer is assembled from whatever the searches return. A question about your category returns the pages that rank for it, and most of those are written by someone other than you.
Why third-party pages often outweigh your own
- There are more of them. For a category question, your site is one result; reviews, lists and threads about the category are many.
- They answer the question asked. “Best X for Y” is the subject of comparison articles, not of your product page.
- They name several brands. An answer that recommends a shortlist needs sources that compare options. Your page compares no one.
- They are independent. A page that praises its own product is the one source an answer has most reason to discount.
So a brand can have an excellent website and still be missing from answers, because the pages engines actually read for its buyers’ questions do not mention it.
The kinds of pages that tend to be read
| Kind of page | Why it is read | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Review and software directories | They list and compare products in a category | Claim your profile; keep facts current |
| Comparison and “best of” articles | They answer shortlist questions directly | Make sure the authors have accurate information |
| Forum and community threads | They capture real users’ experience | Take part honestly where you have something useful to say |
| Your competitors’ pages | They answer comparison questions about them | Nothing to change; read them for the reasons they give |
| Your own pages | They state your facts in your words | State your key claims plainly where buyers would look |
| News and analyst coverage | They describe companies in the market | Earned over time, not edited |
Step 1: Collect the citations for your questions
Track your buyers’ questions on each engine and keep every page each answer cites. One answer’s citations tell you little; a month of daily answers shows which pages come up again and again.
Step 2: Count and sort them
Count how often each page and each site is cited, per engine, for the questions you care about. Then sort the list by owner: your pages, third-party pages you can influence, and competitor pages you cannot.
Step 3: Read the top pages
For the most-cited third-party pages, check three things: do they mention you, is what they say accurate and current, and how do they describe you compared with the brands that win. A heavily cited page that leaves you out is a source gap; one that describes you wrongly feeds wrong answers about your brand.
Step 4: Fix the ones you can
Work through the pages you can influence, starting with the most-cited: claim and update profiles, correct outdated facts, and get included where you genuinely fit. How to find and fix source gaps covers the method. Then measure whether the answers changed, against what moved for every brand over the same days.
Your website is your claim. Other sites are the evidence engines weigh it against.
Where Citino helps
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, and keeps every page each answer cited. The pages are counted per engine and sorted by who owns them, so the list starts with what you can change. See Sources.