A Citation Audit looks at the actual web pages that AI models cite when they mention your brand or your competitors. When AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude answer a question, they often link to source URLs. The Citation Audit visits each of those URLs and pulls detailed information about the page, so you get a clearer picture of what is driving AI recommendations.
Every Gumshoe plan includes Citations (formerly the Sources page), the list of URLs that AI models cited in your Visibility Audit (formerly known as a report). For a walkthrough of that list, see our Citations article. The Citation Audit is the Pro plan upgrade: on top of that list, it scrapes each cited page and pulls out the details below, so you do not have to open every URL yourself.
What does it do?
When you run a Citation Audit, Gumshoe:
- Collects every citation URL from the AI-generated answers in your Visibility Audit.
- Normalizes each URL by resolving it to its final destination and stripping tracking parameters (UTM codes, ad click IDs, and similar), so duplicate links group together correctly.
- Fetches the full content of each cited page. Gumshoe tries a direct request first, then falls back to a browser-based scraper for pages that need JavaScript to render.
- Analyzes each page to pull out:
- Page title and description (from meta tags, Open Graph data, or the page heading)
- Author information (person or organization, from structured data and meta tags)
- Publication date (so you can see how fresh or dated the cited content is)
- Brands that appear on the page (which brands, including yours and your competitors, show up in the cited article's text and links)
What can I learn from it?
The Citation Audit page (under Monitor) shows the results. For each cited URL, you can see:
- The page title, author, and publication date
- Which brands appear on that page, both in the page content and in the AI answer that cited it
- Whether the source is your own domain, a competitor's domain, or a third-party site
- How many citations that source earned across your Visibility Audit's questions
This helps you understand not just whether AI models cite your brand, but what content they draw from when they do. You can spot the third-party articles influencing AI recommendations, see competitor content getting cited in your space, and find opportunities to create or update content that AI models are likely to reference.
Which plan includes the Citation Audit?
Every plan includes Citations, the list of cited URLs in your Visibility Audit. The Citation Audit, which adds the scraped page details above, is included with the Pro plan. To add the Citation Audit, use the Pro plan. You can compare plans on the pricing page (https://gumshoe.ai/#pricing).
Pro tip: URLs are normalized on both the Citations page and the Citation Audit (redirects are resolved and tracking parameters are removed). Normalization can take a short time to finish right after a run, so if a URL still looks like a redirect link immediately afterward, check back shortly. If it still looks like a redirect, contact our support team or ask for a human when speaking to our AI Agent over chat.