ChatGPT citation checker: which sites does it cite?
A free AI visibility checker. Type the question your customers ask. You get the sources ChatGPT cites in its answer, the pages it read without citing them, and the searches it ran to find them. The answer comes from the real chatgpt.com interface, the one your visitors see.
Takes 10 to 60 seconds.
Try:
ChatGPT is searching the web and writing its answer…
Cited, read, searched: three different things
Cited
The links shown in the answer: the visitor sees them and can click.
Read
Opened by ChatGPT during its search, but no link shows them. They feed the answer without sending a visit.
Searched
The queries ChatGPT typed into its search engine, often more precise than the question asked: the ones to rank on.
Which questions trigger a web search
ChatGPT does not search for everything. Measured on several hundred questions: reviews, “best site for”, “A or B”, prices, regulations and anything dated almost always trigger a search, and therefore sources. Style advice and general definitions are mostly answered from memory, without any link.
We never force the web search. The question is asked to chatgpt.com as is, with its default model, and ChatGPT decides on its own whether to search, exactly as it does for your visitors. No source in the result therefore does not mean the tool failed: on this question, your customers get an answer from memory, without a single link. To find the sites that get cited, rephrase as a comparison or a “best … for …” question.
How to get cited by ChatGPT
Aim at what ChatGPT searches for, not at the question. The purple queries are the ones it typed into its search engine: a page that ranks on them is a page it will open.
Read but not cited: compare. ChatGPT found your page and preferred another one. Open the cited pages: they often give a clear list, a price or a direct verdict where yours stays general.
Let OpenAI’s robots in. If your robots.txt blocks OAI-SearchBot or ChatGPT-User, ChatGPT can neither find nor open your pages. Check it with AI crawlers.
Good to know
ChatGPT does not answer the same way twice. A question asked again within three days returns the stored answer, with its date.
The country is where the question is asked from: ChatGPT may cite other sites from another country.
The tool is free and limited to 20 new questions per hour and per visitor.