Frequently Asked Questions

Cited is a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tool for small businesses. It checks whether AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude recommend your business when people ask, shows you who they name instead, and gives you the files to fix it.

Run the free audit: copy the prompt from our homepage into Claude, ChatGPT or another AI assistant and it audits your site in a few minutes. If you want more, create an account, add your website and run a paid audit. The docs walk through it step by step.

No. Reports are in plain words, and every fix comes with a short install guide, with steps for WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix and Webflow when we can tell which one runs your site. If you have a developer or an AI coding agent, you can hand the fixes to them.

Yes. The free audit asks ChatGPT five questions your buyers might ask and tells you whether the answers cite your site and who they cite instead. No account, card or install needed. The AI bot check at youcited.com/ai-bot-check is free too.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of making your business the one AI assistants name and cite when people ask questions in your field. When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude for a recommendation, the answer names a few businesses. GEO is the work of making sure yours is one of them.

SEO is about ranking in a list of links on a search page. GEO is about being named or cited in the single answer an AI assistant writes. They overlap: clear pages, structured data and a site search engines can crawl help both. But an AI answer only names a few sources, so there is no page two.

A paid audit asks OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude, using a flagship and a fast model from each, three times per question. You can add more models, plus Google AI Mode and AI Overviews as a real Google user sees them. The free audit uses ChatGPT.

More people now ask an AI assistant where to buy, who to hire and what to try, and many never click through to a list of links. If the answer doesn't name you, you're not in the running for that customer.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is another name for much the same work: structuring your content so AI assistants and answer engines pick it as the answer. People use AEO and GEO interchangeably.

An audit asks AI assistants the questions your buyers ask, records every answer and the sources it cites, and scores how often you appear. A paid audit also checks whether AI bots can reach your site and recommends what to change.

Each AI model gets a 0-100 score: Cited (how often it links to your site) counts for 50%, Visibility (how often you show up at all) for 30%, and Share of Voice (your share of all the sites it cited) for 20%. Model scores roll up into one per engine and one overall, and you can change the weights.

Yes. Every question in your report lists the sites each AI answer cited instead of you. That list shows which directories, review sites, articles and businesses AI trusts for your questions.

Changes to your own website, such as content to add, structured data, an llms.txt file or robots.txt rules. Each is labelled proven, when our citation research shows that kind of change wins citations, or best practice.

Cited generates fix files (llms.txt, schema markup, FAQ blocks, robots.txt rules and page outlines) with an install guide. It doesn't write your blog posts or marketing copy, and it never changes your website itself. Once you add a fix, Cited can check your live site to verify it.

Every audit has a web report you can share with a read-only link, and you can download it as PDF or Markdown. Each new audit compares itself with the previous one.

Yes, and that's how we built it. Your assistant can run the free audit from a prompt, or connect to our hosted MCP server at https://mcp.youcited.com/mcp to add your business, run audits, read reports and generate fixes. Key pages in the app also have a Copy prompt for your agent button.

In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors, click Add custom connector and enter https://mcp.youcited.com/mcp. Sign in to Cited when asked. In Claude Code, run: claude mcp add --transport http --scope user cited https://mcp.youcited.com/mcp. Custom connectors need a paid Claude plan.

Yes. Any client that supports remote MCP servers can use https://mcp.youcited.com/mcp, including ChatGPT on plans with custom connectors, Cursor and Codex. The cited agent setup command configures Claude Code, Cursor and Codex for you.

An agent can create an account for you and run work on it. It gives you a claim link and a 6-digit code so you can take the account over. Payments always go through a Stripe checkout link that a person opens; agents can't pay on their own. Unclaimed accounts are limited to one business and one audit and are deleted after 7 days.

The cited command-line tool runs audits, checks credits and sets up AI agents from your terminal. Install it with Homebrew (brew install youcited/cited/cited) uv (uv tool install cited-cli) or pipx (pipx install cited-cli). Every command can output JSON for scripts.

No. The first audit is free. After that you buy credits when you need them and nothing renews. 1 credit is $1.

A standard audit is 10 credits, and 1 credit is $1. It covers up to 5 questions on each AI engine's main models. Each question after that costs 1 credit, up to 25 questions, and each extra model costs 2 credits. A scheduled re-check of the same questions is 5 credits. You can also pay $15 for a single audit without buying a pack.

Each pack lasts 12 months from purchase, and we always spend the credits that expire first.

Yes. Unused credits bought in the last 30 days can be refunded from your Billing page. If an audit fails, its credits come back to you automatically.

It's optional. Save a card and pick a pack; when your balance runs low we buy that pack for you with a bonus. You set a monthly limit and it pauses if it reaches it.

Email support@youcited.com or use the contact form. We usually reply within one business day.

Our docs explain how AI assistants pick their sources and what you can do about it, and our blog has a new GEO post most weeks.