AEO · Citation source tracking
Your website isn't the only source an AI engine trusts.
Surgbly categorizes every citation an AI engine pulls from — owned site, marketplace, directory, review site, publisher, community — so you can see which source types are missing, not just that a citation is missing.
Every source is categorized from the citation URL an AI engine actually returned, not a guess.
Competitor cited on 14 review sites. Routed to an Influence Plan for review-site outreach.
AI engines cite the internet, not just your homepage.
An AI answer engine often builds its response from a mix of sources — review sites, marketplaces, directories, forums — and a brand can be well-covered on its own site while being invisible everywhere else those answers actually come from.
Owned-site tunnel vision
Most tools only check the brand’s own website, missing where AI engines are actually pulling proof from.
Review-site blind spot
A prompt asking "is X trustworthy" often gets answered from review sites the brand has never claimed.
Repeated competitor wins
The same competitor citation shows up across multiple prompts and nobody notices the pattern.
No owner for the fix
A missing directory listing or review profile isn’t a website edit — it needs a different kind of action entirely.
How this feature works
From a raw citation URL to a source-type gap.
Collect every citation URL
Every citation URL observed during AI visibility monitoring is collected across all tracked prompts. Duplicate URLs across prompts get merged into one record before anything is categorized.
Every citation URL is normalized and deduplicated before categorization starts.
37 citation URLs
Categorize by source type
Each citation is categorized as owned site, competitor site, marketplace, review site, directory, publisher, community, documentation, or unknown. Nine categories total, so a review-site citation never gets folded into a generic "external" bucket.
Every category comes from the actual citation URL an AI engine returned — never inferred.
8 categories used
Find the missing category
A source type with zero citations, while competitors are cited there repeatedly, gets flagged as a gap. It only counts when a competitor is actually winning that source type, not a hypothetical.
A zero-citation category next to real competitor activity is what flags the gap — not just a lower score.
Review sites flagged
- Competitor A cited on 3 review platforms across 6 prompts.
Surface repeated citation winners
The same source cited across many prompts is surfaced by name, not buried in a long URL list. A page repeated across six prompts carries more weight than six different pages cited once each.
The same URL cited across multiple prompts gets named directly, instead of getting lost in a domain list.
1 repeated winner
Route the source gap
A missing source type routes to an Influence Plan, since it requires action outside your own website. A recheck is scheduled automatically after the action window closes, so the gap doesn’t go silent.
Every Influence Plan states plainly that Surgbly can’t edit the third-party source directly.
Routed to Influence Plan
- 1Claim a profile on the review platform competitors are cited from.
- 2Request reviews from 5 recent customers.
- 3Recheck citation sources in 30 days.
Explore it yourself
Explore the citation source workspace.
Key capabilities
Everything a citation source view needs.
Categorization
- Owned site, competitor site, marketplace, review site
- G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, LinkedIn, Reddit, publisher, community, documentation
- Categorized from the actual citation URL, not a guess
Gap detection
- Zero-citation source types flagged against competitor coverage
- Repeated citation winners surfaced by name
- Source gaps distinguished from content, freshness, and access gaps
- Sample size, source frequency, and provider context kept with the gap
Routing
- External source gaps routed to an Influence Plan
- On-site source gaps routed to a Fix Pack or brief
- Review-platform presence and repeated winners prioritized for action
- Recheck scheduled after an Influence Plan action
Business outcomes
What changes once sources are categorized, not just counted.
See past your own website
Know which external source types are actually shaping AI answers about your brand.
Find the missing source type
A zero-citation category next to a competitor’s strong one points straight at the gap.
Repeated winners, named
Stop scrolling a URL list — see the exact source cited across the most prompts.
The right kind of action
A missing review profile gets routed as outreach, not mistaken for a website edit.
Why Surgbly does it better
A named source gap instead of a shrug.
Traditional
- 1A citation rate drops.
- 2Nobody separates owned-site citations from external ones.
- 3No idea which source type is actually missing.
- 4The recommendation, if any, still points at the website.
Surgbly
- 1Every citation categorized by source type.
- 2Zero-citation categories compared against competitor coverage.
- 3Repeated citation winners surfaced by name.
- 4External gaps routed to an Influence Plan, not a website edit.
Use cases
Built for the moment the website isn't the whole problem.
Integrations
Built from citation data already captured in AI visibility monitoring.
- ChatGPT
- Perplexity
- G2
Questions
Answers before you have to ask.
What source categories are tracked?
Owned and competitor sites, marketplaces, G2-style review platforms, directories, LinkedIn, Reddit and other communities, publishers, documentation, and unknown sources.
Does Surgbly fix external sources directly?
No — external source gaps route to an Influence Plan, a recommended action for the channel, since Surgbly can’t edit a third-party site.
How is a "repeated citation winner" identified?
A specific URL cited across multiple prompts in the same tracked set is surfaced by name, not just its domain.
Can this replace review-site or directory management tools?
It identifies the gap and recommends the action — dedicated review or directory tools may still be used to execute it.
See where your citations are actually coming from.
Run a citation source breakdown and see the first source gap.