Post-Publish Monitoring
Track citations, detect decay, stay visible
Last updated
Post-publish monitoring records whether AI answer engines — Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Gemini — cite your pages, name your brand in answers, and whether AEO scores are decaying. Citation and mention are peer measured series on the citation board — never blended. Share of Voice uses a separate Brave-search proxy, labelled honestly and never used for board slots.
Publishing is step one. AEOForged records measured engine checks across Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Gemini — citation rate, mention rate, cited & named rate, score trends, and competitive gaps. Alerts surface meaningful changes (batched into a daily digest so you are not flooded). Use the citation board and query scoreboard for measured engine outcomes; use Share of Voice only as a directional Brave proxy on a separate surface.
Setup
Register URLs for the Brave visibility proxy via aeo_track, and track the questions that matter on the citation board via measured Perplexity / ChatGPT / Gemini checks. These are separate instruments — the board never uses Brave rankings. You can do both from your agent or the API.
Via MCP (agent)
Call the aeo_track tool with the URL and one or more target queries. Your agent can register URLs as part of a publish workflow. For measured query checks, use the visibility / citation-board surfaces (see below).
aeo_track url: "https://example.com/my-guide" queries: ["answer engine optimization", "AEO tips"]
Via REST API
Send a POST to /api/v1/track with your API key. Useful for CI/CD pipelines, batch registration, or custom integrations. Read measured rates from /api/v1/visibility/scoreboard.
POST /api/v1/track
{
"url": "https://example.com/my-guide",
"queries": ["answer engine optimization"]
}Citation Board
On retainer Monitoring (client room), the Monitoring tab is a board, not a blended scoreboard: the questions you chose, each coloured by a measured appearance outcome — cited & named, named only, cited without the brand named, or absent.
Two lanes
Branded — prompts that include your brand terms (name recognition / plumbing). Goal — generic / category questions you want to win. Lanes come from the stored query class, not a free-form choice.
Three peer headline rates
Above the board: mention rate, citation rate (page estimand), and cited & named rate. Ghost share (source cited but brand not named) may appear as a tertiary line when evidence exists — never blended into the headline rates.
| Outcome | Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Cited & named | slot | Your page or site appears in answer sources and the brand name is visible in the answer — the strongest appearance outcome. |
| Named | slot | Your brand is named in the answer without a source citation to your site. A peer measured outcome — not a failed citation. |
| Cited (brand not named) | slot | Your page or site is cited as a source but the brand name does not appear in the answer text (a “ghost citation”). Informational — never counted as a brand win. |
| Not in answer / Awaiting check | slot | No measured appearance yet, or the slot is still waiting on its first engine check. |
Branded vs generic rates
Headline rates and trends split by query class. Never blend branded and generic citation or mention rates in the same client-facing sentence — branded proves plumbing; generic is the authority signal. Share of Voice on the scoreboard is computed over generic queries when a class map exists (labelled in the UI) and uses the Brave proxy — not the citation board.
What Gets Tracked
For every registered URL, AEOForged records measured engine appearance outcomes (citation, mention, cited & named), position in answers, AEO score trends, and — on a separate surface — Brave-search visibility proxy checks for URL tracking.
Citation rate (page)
Whether your exact page URL appears in measured Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Gemini answer sources — a directly observed page-tier hit. One peer rate; never blended with mention rate.
Mention rate
Whether your brand name appears in the answer text, regardless of source citation. A separate peer series — never merged into citation rate.
Cited & named rate
Checks where your site is cited as a source and the brand is named in the answer. The board’s green outcome — still reported separately from citation and mention rates.
Position in results
Where your content ranks within measured answer sources or Brave proxy checks — first source cited, inline reference, etc.
Score over time
AEO score re-evaluated on each check. Trend line shows whether content quality is holding, improving, or decaying.
Time-to-first-citation
How long after publishing before a measured page-tier citation is recorded. Key metric for content velocity.
Alerts
Alerts fire when a meaningful change is detected. Email notifications are grouped into a daily digest so you get one summary per day, not a flood.
| Type | Severity | Description |
|---|---|---|
first_cited | info | Your content was cited by an answer engine for the first time. |
lost_citation | critical | A previously visible Brave-search proxy signal dropped (not necessarily a loss of a measured page citation). |
position_improved | info | Your content moved to a more prominent position in AI answers. |
position_dropped | warning | Your content dropped to a lower position or moved from primary to inline reference. |
score_decayed | critical | AEO score fell below your configured threshold since the last check. |
content_stale | warning | Content hasn't been updated in a configurable window and freshness signals are weakening. |
milestone | info | A tracked URL hit a milestone — 10 citations, 30-day streak, top position held, etc. |
Dashboard
/monitoring
Unified citation monitoring hub: query-first visibility (tracked queries, share-of-voice, competitor gaps), tracked pages, citation sources, crawler logs, and alerts. Add queries in-app, then run a measured check.
/monitoring/[id]
Per-URL detail view. Full check history, citation timeline per engine, score trend chart, queries this page wins, and all alerts for that URL.
/visibility redirects to /monitoring?tab=queries. Client rooms expose the citation board on their Monitoring tab once Monitoring is active.
Reading the Dashboard
The monitoring dashboard shows distinct data layers. Understanding what each one measures — and what it does not — keeps your reporting honest.
Cited & named (green)
Your page or site appears in Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Gemini answer sources and your brand name is visible in the answer. The strongest appearance outcome on the citation board. Reported as its own rate — never blended with citation-only or mention-only counts.
Named only (purple)
Your brand is named in the answer without a source citation to your site. A peer measured outcome for mention rate — not a downgrade or failed citation.
Cited, brand not named (blue)
Your page or site is cited as a source but the brand name does not appear in the answer (a “ghost citation”). Informational — never counted as a brand win. High ghost share may trigger an informational callout, not a failure state.
Absent / pending (grey)
No measured appearance in the answer yet, or the slot is awaiting its first engine check. Pending is never counted as a miss.
Brave-search visibility proxy (SOV)
Share of Voice and URL tracking position checks use Brave web-search rankings as a directional proxy. This is useful for competitive benchmarking but it is not a measured engine appearance outcome and is never used for citation board slots. The dashboard labels these separately.
AI referral attribution (GA4)
When Google Analytics is connected, the scoreboard can join cited pages to AI-referrer sessions (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and similar). This is directional correlation, not causation— never claim a citation "drove" revenue. CSV: ?format=csv&dataset=referrals.
Honesty note
Citation rate, mention rate, and cited & named rate are peer series — never blended in one number or sentence. A ghost citation (source without brand name) is not a brand win. Measured engine checks power the citation board; the Brave SOV proxy is a separate instrument. Branded and generic rates stay separate in client-facing copy.
API Endpoints
| Method | Endpoint | Description |
|---|---|---|
| POST | /api/v1/track | Register a URL for citation monitoring (Brave visibility proxy) |
| GET | /api/v1/track/status | List all tracked URLs with latest citation summaries |
| GET | /api/v1/track/summary | Org-wide monitoring rollup |
| GET | /api/v1/track/[id]/summary | Per-URL monitoring summary |
| GET | /api/v1/track/[id]/history | Check history for a tracked URL |
| GET | /api/v1/track/[id]/evidence | Measured page-tier citation evidence |
| POST | /api/v1/track/[id]/check | Trigger a citation check for one URL |
| PATCH | /api/v1/track/[id] | Pause, resume, or adjust check cadence |
| DELETE | /api/v1/track/[id] | Stop tracking a URL |
| GET | /api/v1/visibility/scoreboard | Query-first measured citation scoreboard (rates, SOV on generic queries when classified, winning page). ?format=csv; ?dataset=referrals for AI-referral join |
| GET | /api/v1/citation-sources | Citation Source Intelligence — which off-site sources engines cite for tracked queries (free rollup) |
| GET | /api/v1/visibility/graph | Measured citation map for one workspace (hubs + clusters + next pack). Free; never the Brave proxy; does not trigger checks |
| POST | /api/v1/crawler-logs | AI Crawler Log Analytics — parse an access-log export against the AI bot registry (free) |
| GET | /api/v1/alerts | All alerts (filterable by severity/type) |
| POST | /api/v1/alerts/read | Mark one or more alerts as read |
MCP equivalents: aeo_track, aeo_citation_sources, aeo_crawler_logs, aeo_share_of_voice / aeo_visibility (Brave proxy).
Appearance outcomes & data sources
The citation board records measured appearance outcomes from Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Gemini — cited & named, named only, cited without the brand named, or absent. Citation rate, mention rate, and cited & named rate are peer series, never blended. A ghost citation is not a brand win. The Share of Voice tracker and aeo_share_of_voice use a Brave-search visibility proxy on a separate surface — never for board slots. AEOForged does not promise citation rates — it reports what was measured.
Share of Voice
Share of Voice tracking is available via aeo_share_of_voice / aeo_visibility — estimate your percentage of AI answer visibility vs competitors using a Brave-search visibility proxy (directional, not a confirmed engine citation). Track up to 20 keywords against 5 competitor domains. For measured ChatGPT / Perplexity / Gemini citations, use the query-first scoreboard and citation board. Returns SOV %, coverage gaps, and domination keywords.
Start tracking your content
Register your first URL and see how answer engines treat your content.