How to Check If ChatGPT Cites Your Website
We rank citation checks: SearchBot access, a stored prompt with source URL, then referrals. Mention tools sit below citation logs.
Citation check, ranked. If the tool cannot show the URL ChatGPT used, it is a mention toy. Google Search Console is out of this ranking. Wrong surface. Overviews are Google. ChatGPT Search is OpenAI. The ranking exists because most "AI visibility" tools count names and stop. A name without a URL is not a citation. A tool that stores names but not URLs cannot tell you which page to fix, so it cannot support a content ticket. We rank the tools that store the URL above the tools that store the name.
Cited means the answer pointed at a URL you control. Named without a link is a mention. Traffic from utm_source=chatgpt.com is a referral. People mash all three into "does ChatGPT cite us?" and then screenshot a chat they ran once. The mash is the problem. Each of the three is a different measurement with a different action. A mention tells you the brand is in the answer. A citation tells you a URL you control is in the answer. A referral tells you a person clicked. The action for each is different, and the ranking keeps them apart.
Access
Allow OAI-SearchBot. The Publishers and Developers FAQ is the snippet and referral page. Robots.txt changes can take about 24 hours. Check logs against published IPs. A 403 on that URL means you are checking a firewall, not citations. The firewall is the more common failure than the robots file. A team edits robots.txt, allows the bot, and the CDN still blocks the published IP range. The robots file says yes. The CDN says no. The fetch never happens, and the team blames the engine for a drop it caused.
GPTBot is training. Independent. Do not fail a citation audit because legal blocked training and accidentally blocked Search. The two user agents are separate, and a broad "block AI" rule in the CDN preset is the most common way a brand loses its ChatGPT citation without knowing. Legal writes the rule, the team copies it, and the next QBR shows a drop nobody can explain.
ChatGPT-User hits can appear when someone (or the model on their behalf) opens a page. That is not your Search index proof. SearchBot is. OpenAI also notes robots.txt may not apply to User because a user asked. A ChatGPT-User row in the log tells you a person, or the model acting for a person, opened the page. It does not tell you the page is eligible for Search answers.
If a disallowed URL still shows as title plus link in Atlas after a third-party pickup, that is not a citation you earned. The FAQ's noindex path still requires the crawler to read the tag. Disallow blocks the crawl. Noindex allows the crawl but tells the engine not to index. The Atlas case is the one where a page you tried to hide can still show up as a link because a third party surfaced it.
The answer object
You need the prompt, the engine, the date, and the cited host. Run ChatGPT Search, not only the logged-in chat that never browses. Include "Brand vs Brand." Note: named / cited to you / cited to a third party / absent. One session is noise. Answers move. That is why a tracker exists. The four states are the whole scoring system. Named means the answer used your brand word. Cited to you means the answer linked a URL you control. Cited to a third party means the answer linked a competitor or a forum. Absent means the answer did not name anyone in your category, which is its own problem.
We rank Promptwatch first in the directory for that object plus chatgpt.com referrals. Explore has 10 ChatGPT prompts for free, enough to see a hole. Essential is $95/mo for a working list, while Professional or an agency plan adds crawler logs. Citation analytics to page, Reddit, YouTube. Trends beat a Tuesday screenshot. Paid checks are daily. The daily cadence is the cadence. A Tuesday screenshot is a sample of one. The same prompt on Wednesday can name a different brand.
Otterly.AI from $29/mo counts mentions. Possible week lag. Fine. Not the same as page-level citation analytics on our listing. A mention count tells you a number. It does not tell you which URL won, which is the part you can act on. Profound Starter $99/mo annual is ChatGPT-only with 50 prompts. Peec AI last: screenshots, three models on Starter, extra models billed.
HubSpot AI Search Grader: free snapshot, three engines, scores not guaranteed. Not a citation ledger. A grader is a one-time score. It is not a stored answer, and it is not a trend. Treat it as a teaser, not a check.
Referrals
OpenAI says publishers who allow SearchBot can track utm_source=chatgpt.com. Put that in GA4 or Promptwatch visitor analytics (script or GTM). A session without a stored citation can still happen. A citation without a session can still happen. Rank traffic next to the log. Never as a replacement. Do not average them into an "AI score." A session means a person clicked. A citation means the engine pointed at your URL. A person can click a link the engine never cited, because the link was shared elsewhere. The engine can cite your URL and no one clicks, because the answer was enough. Averaging the two produces a number that means neither thing.
Fail states we score
Blocked SearchBot. One incognito chat. Treating an Overview impression as a ChatGPT cite. Invented instant alerts (Promptwatch paid checks are daily). Fetch, mention, no URL: you are a name in a roundup. Fetch, Reddit cited: offsite ticket. Fetch, your old /blog/2019 cited: fix that URL, do not publish a fourth clone. Each fail state has a different fix. No fetch is a webmaster ticket, not a content ticket. A name in a roundup is a content ticket, because the engine knows your brand but will not link it. A Reddit citation is an offsite ticket, because the engine trusts a forum over your page. An old URL citation is an information architecture ticket, because the engine prefers a page you would rather retire.
Content Agents only after the citation miss is a missing claim on a crawlable page. Webflow or Framer, review inbox. 5 articles on Essential. WordPress publishing is not live. The order matters. Fix access first, then the stored answer, then the URL, then the content. Jumping straight to Content Agents before access is fixed is how teams publish ten pages and wonder why nothing moved.
Pass: two weeks of the same prompts, cited URL column, fetch evidence when the cite is missing. That is the check. Product: promptwatch.com. The honest check is small on purpose. Two weeks is enough to see whether a pattern holds. A column for the cited URL is the part that turns a vibe into a measurement.