AI Search Analytics: see every AI bot that reads your site

Google Analytics tracks human visitors. It cannot identify GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot: they appear as direct traffic or are silently dropped by the GA4 bot-filtering layer. Citeme’s Beacon detects 18+ AI crawlers specifically, classifies their intent, and ties each visit to citation performance across AI engines.

Citeme detects 18+ AI crawlers including GPTBot (ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Claude), PerplexityBot, Gemini-Crawl (Google), DuckAssistBot (DuckDuckGo AI), and Bytespider (ByteDance/TikTok). Each visit is classified by intent type so you know exactly what each bot was doing on your site. Understanding which bot visited and why is the difference between acting on a signal and being confused by noise. A real-time fetch from PerplexityBot on your pricing page means something very different from a bulk training crawl by GPTBot sweeping your entire domain.

A real-time fetch means an AI engine is actively pulling your page to answer a user’s query right now. It is the strongest signal that your content is being used as a source in AI-generated answers. A spike of real-time fetches on a specific page is a direct indicator that page is driving citations. Unlike training crawls, which happen in bulk and feed future model versions, real-time fetches are triggered by a live user question. If Perplexity fetches your /pricing page 40 times in a day, someone is actively asking about your category and Perplexity thinks you might be the answer. Monitoring fetch activity by page lets you identify your highest-citation-potential content and focus your optimization there.

Yes. When a user clicks a source link inside an AI-generated answer, that visit registers as AI referral traffic. Citeme tracks these referrals by engine and by page, so you can measure which content drives actual clicks from ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude, not just crawls. Referral traffic from AI engines is still emerging but growing quickly, particularly from Perplexity and Claude, which consistently surface clickable sources. Unlike crawl volume (a leading indicator of future citations), referral clicks are a direct revenue signal: a user saw your brand cited, found it credible enough to click, and landed on your site. Citeme surfaces this data engine by engine so you know exactly where to invest.

Paste one async script tag into your site’s head. It is lightweight, records AI bot visits as well as the human visits that arrive from an AI through consented referrer attribution, and has zero impact on page speed. Setup takes under 2 minutes. Citeme provides copy-paste installation guides for WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Next.js, and any custom HTML site. No plugin or CMS integration is required beyond the single script tag. The beacon starts detecting bots immediately after installation, with your first data appearing in the dashboard within minutes of the first AI crawler visit.

Check your dashboard weekly to spot crawl spikes, new bots, or drops in referral traffic. After publishing or updating content, monitor the following 7 days. A surge in real-time fetches within 48 to 72 hours is a strong signal the page is being picked up by AI engines. Three patterns are worth watching closely: a sudden increase in fetch volume on a specific page (content is gaining AI traction), a new bot appearing in your feed (a new AI engine has discovered your site), and a drop in referrals from a previously active engine (your citations may have shifted to a competitor). Set Citeme’s alert thresholds and the dashboard notifies you the moment any of these patterns emerges.