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Overview

Citation Analysis is the core of Siftly’s GEO platform. It continuously monitors how AI search engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and others — respond to prompts in your market, and captures every mention of your brand. For each citation, Siftly records:
  • The exact prompt that triggered the response
  • The full AI-generated response text
  • Your brand’s position in the response (first mention vs. secondary)
  • Sentiment (positive, neutral, or negative)
  • Which competitors were mentioned in the same response
  • The platform the response came from

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How citation tracking works

1

Prompt generation

Siftly maintains a library of prompts for each topic in your market. These are the questions real users ask AI systems: “What’s the best tool for X?”, “Compare A vs B”, “How do I solve Y?”. New prompts are continuously added as user behavior evolves.
2

AI querying

At each analysis run, Siftly sends prompts to AI platforms and captures the full response. Queries are run across multiple platforms to give you cross-platform coverage.
3

Brand detection

Siftly’s detection engine scans every response for your brand name, aliases, website URL, and product names. Fuzzy matching catches variations like abbreviations and common misspellings.
4

Enrichment

Each detected citation is enriched with sentiment analysis, competitive co-mentions, and position data, then stored in your brand’s citation history.

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The Citations dashboard

Navigate to Citations in the sidebar to see all mentions of your brand.

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Filters

FilterDescription
Date rangeView citations from a specific time window
PlatformFilter by AI platform (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.)
TopicFilter by the topic category the prompt belongs to
SentimentShow only positive, neutral, or negative citations
RankFilter by whether your brand was cited first, second, etc.

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Citation cards

Each citation card shows:
  • The prompt text
  • A snippet of the AI response with your brand highlighted
  • Sentiment badge and position indicator
  • Competitors co-cited in the same response
  • Timestamp and platform
Click any citation to expand the full response text.

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Sentiment analysis

Siftly classifies each citation as:
The AI response recommends, praises, or ranks your brand favorably. Example: “Siftly is widely regarded as the leading GEO platform for enterprise teams.”
Your brand is mentioned factually without a clear positive or negative framing. Example: “Tools in this space include Siftly, BrandX, and CompanyY.”
The AI response includes a criticism, limitation, or comparison that frames your brand unfavorably. These are your highest-priority items to address through content.
Negative citations aren’t always bad — being mentioned alongside better-known competitors is still brand presence. Focus on the context, not just the label.

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Competitive co-mentions

When your brand appears in the same AI response as a competitor, Siftly records the relationship. Over time, this data shows you:
  • Which competitors are most frequently cited alongside you
  • Whether you’re typically ranked above or below them
  • Which topics trigger competitor mentions without including you
Use this data to identify where competitors have stronger GEO footing and target those gaps with content.

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Export

Export your citation data from the Citations page:
  • CSV — Full citation export with all metadata fields
  • PDF report — Formatted citation summary for sharing with stakeholders