The public scorecard · updated 1 August 2026
We built a tool that checks whether AI engines cite you. Then we ran it on ourselves and published the result, because you were going to check anyway.
Because the site launched on 29 July 2026 and answer engines do not cite two-day-old domains. Citations require a page to have been crawled, referenced elsewhere, and stable long enough to be treated as a source. None of that is possible in a launch week, no matter how good the page is. The competitors below have years of published material behind them.
That is an explanation, not an excuse. The number is still 20. It should be higher by the next update, and if it isn't, that will be on this page too.
These are the six questions Citebait's own scanner generated for citebait.com, and the domains cited instead. This scan queried Claude; ChatGPT and Perplexity coverage is being added, and this page will say so when it is.
| The question a buyer types | Citebait | Who got cited instead |
|---|---|---|
| why does my business show up on google but not in chatgpt answers | Absent | business.found-by.ai, rank4ai.co.uk, searchpod.com |
| how do i get my company mentioned by chatgpt and claude | Absent | openai.com, austinheaton.com, code.claude.com |
| best way to optimize website for ai search engines | Absent | developers.google.com, searchengineland.com, semrush.com |
| how to fix robots.txt blocking ai crawlers from my site | Absent | rankecho.io, support.google.com, mihirnaik.com |
| ai citation checker for my business free | Absent | bibtexchecker.com, citetruth.com, truecitation.com |
| how to compare which ai tool names my competitors vs me | Absent | brandvizai.com, citedspy.com, topify.ai |
The last row is the one that stings: that question describes this exact product, and we are not the answer to it.
semrush.com is cited on 3 of 6 questions, more than any other domain in this category. Here is the full set, counted from the same scan.
| Domain | Questions cited on | Presence rate |
|---|---|---|
| semrush.com | 3 / 6 | 50% |
| searchengineland.com | 2 / 6 | 33% |
| business.found-by.ai | 1 / 6 | 17% |
| rank4ai.co.uk | 1 / 6 | 17% |
| searchpod.com | 1 / 6 | 17% |
| tryansly.com | 1 / 6 | 17% |
| citebait.com (us) | 0 / 6 | 0% |
The same checklist we hand to clients, applied to ourselves, in public. Every item below comes from the Playbook, and each update to this page will say what moved and what didn't.
Because it is checkable in about a minute, by anyone, for free. Running citebait.com through Citebait is the first thing a sceptical buyer would do. Getting there first is the only version of this that builds trust instead of costing it.
It also makes the method falsifiable. If the score climbs, that is evidence the checklist works, gathered on the one site where nobody can accuse us of picking a flattering client. If it doesn't climb, that will be visible here too, which is rather the point.
No. As of 1 August 2026, Citebait was cited on 0 of the 6 buying questions its own scanner generated, scoring 20 out of 100. The site launched on 29 July 2026, so it has not existed long enough to be crawled, referenced, or corroborated by any answer engine.
Longer than a launch week. Answer engines cite sources they have crawled, that other sites reference, and that have been stable long enough to be trusted. A domain that is days old has none of those signals yet, regardless of how good the content is.
Because the number is checkable. Anyone can run citebait.com through Citebait and get it in about a minute. Publishing it first is the only version of this that builds trust rather than losing it, and it turns the scorecard into evidence that the method works when the number moves.
On this scan, semrush.com was cited on 3 of 6 questions, more than any other domain. searchengineland.com and business.found-by.ai were each cited on 2.
No — but Citebait is not the example that proves it, because Citebait ranks on Google for 0% of its own buying questions too. It is a new site and it is invisible on both. The two systems are genuinely separate: search ranks pages, while answer engines assemble an answer and cite the sources they used to build it. Plenty of established companies rank in Google's top 10 and are never cited. This site is simply too new to be either.
Same scan, same six-question method, your domain. Free, about a minute, and you get the number whether it flatters you or not.