Citation Analytics for Pages, Reddit, YouTube, and Offsite Mentions in AI Answers

A mention means the model said your name. A citation means it pointed at a URL. Those are different tickets. The URL is often not yours: a listicle, a Reddit thread, a YouTube review, a news recap. Citation analytics is the function that records which pages get cited, what kind of page they are, and when a third-party page names you even if it never links back. The distinction between a mention and a citation is the first thing a visibility program has to get right, because the two fail in different ways and get fixed by different teams. A mention miss is a content or awareness problem. A citation miss on a page the bot did fetch is a competition problem. A citation miss on a page the bot never fetched is an infra problem. Collapsing them into one number hides which one you have.

Google's AI features guidance still covers Overviews. It does not store ChatGPT or Perplexity answers on a prompt you typed. The Google guidance is the right reference for Google surfaces. It is not the reference for the assistant answers that citation analytics is built to capture, and a team that tries to map the Google guidance onto ChatGPT will end up measuring the wrong pipe.

Promptwatch is the tool that does this at page and domain level, with a Reddit report, a YouTube report, news as its own citation type, citation search, competitor domains highlighted in sources, and offsite mentions. Every citation is classified into 22 content types and 20 source types. Explore is free (ChatGPT, 10 prompts). Essential is $95/mo. Site: promptwatch.com.

Which URL won

Page-level tracking tells you the exact path that appeared in the answer. Domain grouping rolls those paths up so you can see a publisher beating you even when no single article dominates. Citation search is the filter when you remember a domain but not the prompt. The three work together. Page-level is the evidence. Domain grouping is the pattern. Citation search is the lookup. A team that only looks at domain grouping will miss the one article that carries a publisher. A team that only looks at page-level will miss the publisher that wins through volume. You need both views to tell whether the loss is one strong page or a whole domain outpacing you.

Competitor domains get highlighted in the source list. That saves the "wait, is this us?" pass. Share of voice on mentions can look healthy while the cited URL is a rival comparison post. The highlight is the check on the share of voice number. A mention share that looks fine can sit on top of a citation share that is losing to a competitor, and the highlight is what makes the two visible at the same time.

First cited, ramp-up, peak, decay

Citation Trends is not a count. Per cited page you get first-cited date, ramp-up, peak citation rate, and decay. A page that peaked eight weeks ago and is sliding needs a refresh. A page that was first cited yesterday is a seed, not a program. Content-type charts show whether landing pages, listicles, news, or how-tos are carrying the citations this month. The trend view is what turns a citation count into an action. A flat count tells you nothing about whether to refresh, leave alone, or replace. The ramp and decay tell you which of those three to do, and the first-cited date tells you whether the page is even mature enough to judge.

Twenty-two content types and twenty source types sound like taxonomy for its own sake until you see news citations pulling a brand you never briefed. ChatGPT news citations are tracked as a distinct type so a journalist recap does not hide inside "other." The distinct news type is the one that catches the surprise. A brand that suddenly gets cited in news it did not pitch is a brand that a journalist recap picked up, and the news type is what separates that from a listicle or a how-to so the team can route it to PR instead of to content.

Reddit, YouTube, and offsite mentions

Reddit has its own report: posts, users, subreddits. YouTube has its own report: videos cited, frequency, models. If the model keeps citing a two-year-old review video, that is your GEO problem even if your blog is current. The two reports exist because Reddit and YouTube behave differently from publisher pages. A Reddit thread is a live discussion that can change between fetches. A YouTube video is a static asset with a long shelf life. The fix for each is different, and putting them in one "offsite" bucket hides which one you have.

Offsite mentions catch the case where AI cites a third-party page that names your brand with no link to you. The page influenced the answer. You still have no href. Filter those by content type and source before you decide whether to pursue a correction, a partnership, or your own page. The filter is what makes the decision. An offsite mention on a listicle is a content gap you can fill. An offsite mention on a journalist recap is a PR relationship you can build. An offsite mention on a forum is a community conversation you can join. The same "offsite mention" label covers three different actions, and the filter is what tells you which one to take.

Otterly.AI from $29/mo and Peec AI from $95/mo will show sources on the prompts they check. They are not this citation-type and offsite stack. Ahrefs Brand Radar ($199/mo plus plan) is mention research at index scale. Semrush AI Toolkit is $99/domain. Method: how we rank. Tools list.

Professional is $245/mo if you need more prompt volume. Agency Kick-off is $199/mo. The price jump from Essential to Professional is a prompt-volume and crawler-log jump, not a citation-analytics jump. Citation analytics starts on Essential. The question that moves you to Professional is whether 50 prompts is enough or whether you need 150 plus the log layer.

FAQ

If we are mentioned but never cited, is that a content problem?

Often yes. The model knows the name and still fetched someone else's URL. Ticket the cited page, not the homepage in the abstract. The cited page is the one the model chose, and it is the one to study or to displace.

Does Explore include Reddit and YouTube reports?

Explore is a 10-prompt ChatGPT taste. Treat Reddit and YouTube citation reports as paid-platform work. The free tier is for seeing the shape of the product, not for running the report.

What to do this week

Pick 20 prompts and record the cited URL by hand on ChatGPT and Perplexity once.
Load the same prompts into Promptwatch and compare the stored sources.
Open Reddit and YouTube reports. Write down any thread or video that outranks your docs.
Filter offsite mentions to pages that name you with no link.
Refresh the one owned URL that already has a first-cited date and a falling peak.