How to Enable and Use Citation Tracking in AEO God Mode Pro

The Citation Tracker queries AI answer engines directly with your site’s topics and checks whether your content gets cited in their responses. It works with Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

This is a Pro feature. It requires an active Pro license.

Accessing the Citation Tracker

Go to AEO God Mode > Citations in your admin sidebar (admin.php?page=aeo-god-mode#/citations).

If you don’t have a Pro license, you’ll see a gate screen describing the feature. Activate your license in AEO God Mode > Settings to unlock it.

Step 1: Add API Keys

ChatGPT is already included and works with no key, running on your plan credits instead. Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude each need your own API key before the tracker can check them. You can connect just one of the three or all of them, whichever you want to monitor.

• Click API Keys in the top-right corner
• Click Add Key next to Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude
• Create a key on that provider’s own dashboard. When it asks for a name, use something recognisable such as AEO God Mode, so you can always tell what the key is for and track its usage on the provider’s side
• Paste the key into AEO God Mode and click Save

Every engine is asked through its official API, using a search-capable model, so the answers match what real users see. Gemini uses Google Search grounding.

Security: API keys are encrypted before they are stored, stay on your own site, and are never shown again in full.

Why the Citation Tracker asks for your own API keys

Checking a citation is not a database lookup. Every check is a live question put to a real AI engine, and each engine charges for answering it. That cost lands per question, per engine, every time you run a check.

Bringing your own keys means you pay each provider directly at their rates, with no markup from us, and you keep full control of your spending limits inside your own provider dashboards. It also means a check on 20 questions across 4 engines is 80 paid API calls, so you can see exactly why this is not bundled as unlimited.

ChatGPT works without a key

ChatGPT is the exception. It runs on our own account, so a licensed site can track ChatGPT citations on day one without touching an API dashboard. That costs 3 credits per question checked, taken from your monthly plan credits.

Three credits reflects what the check actually costs to run. Unlike most AI features, the price is driven by the engine’s web search fee rather than the text it writes, so a single question is a few pence of real spend rather than a fraction of a penny.

If you would rather not spend credits, save your own ChatGPT key and the tracker will use it instead. You can switch between the two at any time from the API Keys panel, and switching never deletes a saved key.

Pro or Growth for citation tracking

Both plans include the Citation Tracker. The difference is how much checking you can do and whether you need keys at all.

	Pro	Growth
Monthly credits	500	1,500
Perplexity, Gemini, Claude	Your own keys	Your own keys
ChatGPT	Your key, or 3 credits per question	Your key, or 3 credits per question
ChatGPT questions on plan credits	About 166 per month	About 500 per month
Always-on AI Mentions, no keys needed	Not included	Included
Competitor citation tracking	Not included	Included

Choose Pro if you already hold API keys for the engines you care about, or you are happy to create them. Your checks then cost you nothing in credits, and your 500 credits stay free for drafting, rewrites and topical maps.

Choose Growth if citation tracking is the main reason you are here. You get three times the credits, so ChatGPT checks stop competing with your content work, and Always-on AI Mentions tracks how often engines name your brand across the web with no keys to manage at all. Growth also shows which competitors get cited on the questions you lose, which is the part that tells you what to write next.

Step 2: Run a Citation Check

Once at least one API key is configured:

• Click Run Check
• The tracker generates up to 20 queries based on your content:

– Questions from your top 5 categories (e.g., “What are the best resources about [category]?”)

– Questions from your top 5 most-commented posts (e.g., “What should I know about [post title]?”)

– A brand query (e.g., “What is [your site name] and what do they do?”)

– Questions from posts with schema overrides applied

• Each query is sent to every connected engine
• The response text is scanned for your domain name
• If your domain appears, it’s counted as a citation

This process can take 30-60 seconds depending on how many engines are connected. There’s a 500ms delay between queries to avoid rate limits.

Understanding the Results

Dashboard Stats (4 cards)

• Total Citations: Number of times your domain was found in AI responses across all checks
• Checks Run: Total number of query-engine combinations tested
• Hit Rate: Percentage: (total citations / total checks) × 100
• Last Check: Timestamp of the most recent check

Per-Engine Breakdown

Shows citation count grouped by engine (e.g., “12 citations: Perplexity”), so you can see which AI systems cite you most.

Most Cited Pages

A ranked bar chart showing which of your URLs appear most frequently in AI responses, sorted by citation count.

Recent Checks Table

A detailed log of each individual check, showing:

Column	What It Shows
Engine	Which AI system was queried
Query	The exact prompt sent
Cited?	✓ if your domain appeared, ✗ if not
URL	The specific URL that was cited (if found)
Time	When the check ran

The table shows the 20 most recent results, newest first.

Automatic Scheduled Checks

The tracker runs automatically twice a day. You don’t need to manually run checks after initial setup, but you can trigger one any time with the Run Check button.

Data Retention

• Results: The last 500 individual check results are stored
• History: 90 days of daily aggregated stats (checks count & citation count per day) kept for you

Troubleshooting

“No queries could be generated” error:

• You need published content. The tracker uses your categories and posts to build queries. Publish at least a few posts before running a check

Run Check button is disabled:

• You need at least one API key configured. Click the API Keys button and add one

Engine shows error in recent checks:

• Check that your API key is valid and has sufficient credits/quota
• API errors are logged with the HTTP status code for debugging

Zero citations despite having content:

• This is normal early on. AI systems take time to learn about your site
• Make sure you have a robots.txt that allows AI crawlers
• Check that your llms.txt is active and serving correctly
• Improve your citability score (see the Citability Score page)