Overview
Every workflow in Cited starts with a business. Before you can audit your AI visibility, generate recommendations, or track progress, you need to add the business you want to optimize. This guide walks you through adding a business, understanding what Cited collects from your website, and navigating the Business HQ dashboard.
Adding a New Business
To add a business, click Add Business from the main dashboard. You will be prompted to provide four pieces of information:
- Business Name -- The name of your company or brand exactly as you want it recognized by AI engines.
- Website URL -- Your primary domain. Cited uses this to crawl and analyze your online presence.
- Industry -- Select the industry that best describes your business. This helps Cited tailor audit questions and benchmark your performance against relevant competitors.
- Description -- A short summary of what your business does, the products or services you offer, and your target audience. The more specific you are, the better Cited can generate relevant audit questions and recommendations.
Once you submit these details, Cited immediately begins crawling your website to build a comprehensive profile of your digital presence.
Website Crawling: What Cited Collects
After you add a business, Cited performs an automated crawl of your website. This is not a simple page scrape -- it is a structured analysis designed to understand your site the way an AI engine would. Here is what the crawl collects:
Page Content
Cited reads and indexes the text content across your key pages, including your homepage, about page, service or product pages, and blog posts. This content forms the foundation for understanding how AI models might represent your business in their responses.
Schema Markup
Cited detects and evaluates any structured data (JSON-LD, Microdata, RDFa) present on your site. Schema markup is one of the strongest signals you can send to AI engines, and Cited identifies what you have, what is missing, and what could be improved.
Screenshots
Visual snapshots of your key pages are captured so you can see exactly what Cited analyzed. These screenshots also help when reviewing recommendations and comparing your site to competitors.
Brand Styles
Cited extracts brand elements such as primary colors, fonts, and logo usage from your site. This information is used when generating solution artifacts (like HTML templates or content drafts) so that outputs match your existing brand identity.
Business HQ Dashboard
Once your website has been crawled, your Business HQ becomes the central command center for that business. It is organized into five tabs, each focused on a different aspect of your AI visibility strategy.
Overview
The Overview tab provides a high-level snapshot of your business's current AI visibility status. You will see your latest audit scores, recent activity, and quick-access links to start a new audit or view recommendations. Think of this as your daily check-in screen.
Facts
The Facts tab displays the key information Cited has extracted about your business from your website and any details you have provided. This includes your core value propositions, product or service descriptions, and factual claims. Keeping your facts accurate and up to date ensures that audits and recommendations are grounded in reality.
Buyers & Context
This tab helps you define and manage your target audiences. You can specify buyer personas, use cases, and the contexts in which potential customers might ask AI engines about businesses like yours. This information directly influences the audit questions Cited generates and the recommendations it provides.
Market Intelligence
The Market Intelligence tab surfaces insights about your competitive landscape. Cited identifies who your competitors are in AI search results, how they are being cited, and where you stand relative to them. This tab is especially valuable for understanding the broader market dynamics that affect your visibility.
Website Health
The Website Health tab provides a technical assessment of your site from an AI-readability perspective. It covers schema markup coverage, page load performance, content structure, and other factors that influence whether AI engines can effectively crawl, understand, and cite your website.
Managing Multiple Businesses
Cited supports multiple businesses under a single account. This is particularly useful for agencies managing client portfolios or companies with multiple brands.
You can switch between businesses from the main dashboard. Each business has its own independent Business HQ, audit history, recommendations, and analytics. Changes to one business never affect another.
To add another business, simply click Add Business again and repeat the setup process. There is no limit to the number of businesses you can manage, though your subscription plan determines how many active businesses are included.
Editing Business Details and Logo
You can update your business information at any time by navigating to your Business HQ and clicking the Settings or Edit option.
From here you can:
- Update your business name, website URL, industry, or description.
- Upload or change your business logo. The logo appears throughout the platform and in any generated reports.
- Trigger a fresh website crawl if your site has changed significantly since the last crawl.
Keeping your business details current is important. Cited uses this information when generating audit questions, evaluating AI responses, and building recommendations. Outdated information can lead to less relevant results.