Which AI Cites You, and Who It Cites Instead: a Real Check on a Real Site (2026)
A real AI visibility check on a video production company in Troy, Michigan, October 2026: on which of 49 customer questions ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI cite the site, who they cite instead (mostly directories), whether the AI bots actually read it, the audit score per engine, and what to fix first. No before/after is claimed: this is the baseline.
To know whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude or Google AI cite your site, ask them the questions your customers ask and read the answers: which ones name you, which ones name a competitor, and what sources they used. On a real company site checked in October 2026, a video production company in Troy, Michigan, the engines cited the site on 23 of 49 customer questions, and a directory, clutch.co, out-cited it on 16. This article walks through that check, number by number, and what follows from it.
This is the written version of the video above. The data is real: the first CiteProof audit of video-burst.com, run on 5 October 2026, and the AI bot log collected by the plugin on the site in the following thirty days, shown with the owner's permission. The fix-approval flow is shown on our demo store, not on the client's site. There is one audit, so no before/after is claimed; this is the baseline.
The one number: cited on 23 of 49 questions
Start with one number. Of the 49 questions a customer could ask about video production around Troy ("video production company troy michigan", "affordable video production michigan", "How long has Videoburst been in business?"), the site is cited in 23. Not ranked: cited, named as a source in the answer an AI engine gave.
Next to it, the uncomfortable number: clutch.co out-cites the site on 16 of those questions. Clutch is a directory. When the engines do not find a page of yours that answers, they quote the directory that lists you.
Question by question, engine by engine
Every question is tested on five engines, every month. The tracker shows, for each one, cited or not, engine by engine. Three questions are cited on all five: "sizzle reel production troy", "training video production birmingham michigan" and the brand query "videoburst video production". "Affordable video production michigan" is cited only by Perplexity. Per engine, over the 49 questions:
| Engine | Questions where the site is cited |
|---|---|
| Perplexity | 21 of 49 |
| ChatGPT | 12 of 49 |
| Gemini | 12 of 49 |
| Google AI | 12 of 48 |
| Claude | 9 of 49 |
Open a row and you get the answer the engine actually gave, the sources it used and, when the site is not cited, who it chose instead. That is the only honest way to know. A rank tracker guesses from Google positions; this reads the answer itself.
Who they cite instead
The head to head puts the site against the competitors the engines actually cite: clutch.co, beverlyboy.com, productionhub.com, thumbtack.com, designrush.com. Three of the five are directories, not studios, and the pages they win with are their category listings: "video production Michigan", "Troy MI videographer services".
That is the pattern in local services. When your own page does not answer the question, the engines quote the directory that lists you. The fix is a page that answers it better than the directory, with your facts: services, prices, where, since when, and the questions customers ask, answered in your words.
Did the AI read the site?
A citation starts with a read. The plugin logs every AI bot visit on the site. In thirty days: 647 bot hits, the most active bot FacebookBot, and 4 reads by ChatGPT to answer someone: the Birmingham page twice, the home page, the Detroit page. Not training, not indexing: the site used as a source, right then.
Four reads in a month is the first thing to work on. The pages that answer must be reachable (crawlers allowed in, see the robots.txt guide) and linked from the pages the engines already read.
The score, and what it is made of
The audit puts it in one score, 46 out of 100, with the mentions per engine: Perplexity 27, Google AI 23, Gemini 12, ChatGPT 11, Claude 9 (a site can be mentioned more than once in an answer, which is why mentions exceed cited questions).
The score is only useful over time. This is the first audit, so the "score over time" line is flat. After the fixes, the next audit shows whether it moved, and the monthly proof report lists what changed on the site and in the answers, without claiming the cause: AI answers also change for reasons unrelated to the site.
What to fix first
From the audit come the fixes, ranked. The first one is high priority and small: the home page's heading says "Video Production Company in Troy, Michigan", but no entity on the page says "Videoburst". The fix is one LocalBusiness schema with the brand name, what it does (knowsAbout: video production, corporate videos, training videos, live event coverage) and the contact facts. Below it come the guided fixes you apply yourself, such as linking the social profiles.
Nothing is applied until you click, and every applied fix can be revoked.
How a fix is applied, shown on the demo store
The click itself we show on our demo store rather than on the client's site. The fix arrives in the WordPress plugin under Pending fixes, with what it changes, where, and a code preview. Approve, and the schema is printed in the page head, no theme file touched. Revoke, and it is gone. With manual approval switched off, fixes apply on their own and stay revocable.
The plugin also refuses to publish a schema it considers incomplete or containing placeholder values, so a draft with a fake phone number or a missing address never goes live.
Measure again
Then measure again: the same 49 questions, the same five engines, next month. The number on the Today page either moves or it does not, and the head to head says against whom. That is the loop: check, fix what the engines read, check again. No projections, no promises, the answers themselves.
Run this check on your own site
The CiteProof free scan asks the AI engines your customers' questions and shows who gets cited, who gets cited instead, and what to fix first.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check if ChatGPT cites my website?
Ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask, one by one, and note whether your site is named and which sources the answer links to. Do the same on Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI, and repeat monthly with the same questions. CiteProof automates this: 49 questions on five engines, with the answer, the sources and the date kept for each one.
Why does a directory get cited instead of my site?
Because the directory's category page answers the question the user asked ("video production companies in Michigan") and your site has no page that does. Engines quote the page that answers. A page of yours that answers better, with your facts and the customers' questions, is the fix.
Is being "cited" the same as ranking on Google?
No. A citation is your site named or linked as a source inside a generated answer. It depends on whether the engine could read your page and whether that page answered the question, not on your Google position; the same question can cite you on Perplexity and not on ChatGPT.
How often should I re-measure?
Monthly, with the same questions and the same engines. Answers change for reasons unrelated to your site, so a single measurement proves little; a series with dates shows whether the fixes moved anything.
Did the fixes improve the numbers for this site?
We do not know yet, and we do not claim it. The data in this article is the first audit. When the next audit runs after the fixes, the comparison will be published as it comes out, up or down.
Is the data in this article real?
Yes. It is the first CiteProof audit of video-burst.com (5 October 2026) and the plugin's bot log for the following thirty days, shown with the owner's permission. The only part shown on a demo store is the fix-approval click.
Read next
CiteProof tracks your brand's visibility across AI answer engines and tells you what to change to get cited. With one rule: the score only moves up after the Verify Bot confirms the fix is actually live.