Live data · build-in-public

Citation Observatory

Transparent first-party data on whether AI search engines cite this glossary. 90 terms × 5 engines × multi-probe sweeps run as capacity allows. Site launched 2026-05-14; first scheduled full review 2026-06-19.

Methodology

Each term carries a sidecar set of probe variations (typically 2-4 phrasings covering the term itself, the question it answers, and adjacent practitioner queries). Every variation is run against each of the five engines; a cell is marked cited if aisearchglossary.comappears in any variation's source list across that engine, partial if the domain is mentioned but our specific entry URL is not the surfaced source, and not cited if no variation surfaces the domain. Untested cells are simply not yet covered in the current sweep. See editorial methodology for the full protocol including signal sources beyond direct probes.

Cells probed

305 / 450

67.8% of the 450-cell matrix

Cells cited

51 / 305

16.7% citation rate among probed cells

Last sweep

Probes run as capacity allows; full sweeps target monthly review milestones.

Citation over time

Distinct terms cited by any of the five engines, per probe round. The solid line is the cumulative count ever cited; the dashed line is this round alone. The point of the series is to watch it change.

Ever cited (cumulative)Cited this roundCited before, not this round
0102006-0306-0406-0506-09

Terms probed per round (n): 13 / 30 / 13 / 18. Elicited-probe data — we ask each engine a fixed set of questions and record whether aisearchglossary.com appears in the cited sources, not engine telemetry. The frozen panel began on 2026-06-09; earlier rounds used rotating panels, so the amber gap still mixes true citation rotation with terms simply not re-probed. As more frozen-panel rounds accumulate, the gap becomes a clean rotation signal.

By engine

EngineCitedNot citedUntestedCited rate
ChatGPT22432533.8%
Perplexity12611716.4%
Claude8493314.0%
Copilot054360.0%
Gemini9473416.1%

By term

TermGPTPlxCldCopGem
Agentic retrieval
AI access control
AI citation metrics
AI crawler blocking
AI crawler bots
AI dev tool citations
AI Mode
AI Overview
AI Overview citation
AI search evaluation
AI Search Optimization
AI visibility
AIPREF (AI usage preferences)
Answer block
Answer Engine Optimization
Article Schema
Attribution rate
Authoritative Statement Strength
Authority signals
Black-hat C-SEO
BM25
Brand mentions in AI answers
Brave Search AI citation
BreadcrumbList Schema
C-SEO Bench
ChatGPT search citation
Chunking
Citation Footprint
Citation hallucination
Citation match rate
Citation precision and recall
Citation probe protocol
Citation rotation
Citation share
Citation velocity
Citation vs mention vs link
Cite Sources Optimization
Cite-ability
Claude citation
Context assembly
Context rot
Deep research mode
DefinedTerm schema
Definition-Lead Style
DuckDuckGo AI citation
E-E-A-T (AI search context)
Entity-based SEO
External traffic disambiguation
FAQ Schema
Featured snippets
Fluency Optimization
Freshness signals
Gemini citation
Generative Engine Optimization
Generative search index
GEO content methods
Grok citation
Hallucination grounding
HowTo Schema
Hybrid retrieval
IndexNow Protocol
Inverted index
JSON-LD
Keyword Stuffing
Knowledge Graph
LLM Optimization (LLMO)
LLMS.txt
Lost in the Middle
Meta AI citation
Microsoft Copilot citations
Passage-level optimization
Perplexity citation
Pillar content
Position-Adjusted Word Count
Prompt injection
Query fan-out
Quotation Addition
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
Reranking
Retrievability
Retrieval pipeline
Robots.txt (Robots Exclusion Protocol)
Search Generative Experience (SGE)
Statistical Density
Sub-document retrieval
Sub-passage extraction
Sycophancy vs cite-able fact
Topic clusters
Vector embeddings
Web Bot Auth