Illumae tracks whether Perplexity, Gemini and ChatGPT cite your pages for the questions your audience actually asks. When they don't, it points you to the article that should be winning that answer and tells you why it isn't.
Nearly half of Google searches now show an AI-generated answer, and a growing share of research never reaches a blue link at all. Ranking still matters, but it no longer tells the whole story. Most SEO tools have responded by adding an AI-visibility tracker — usually as a separate paid add-on that stops at a dashboard. Illumae includes citation tracking in every plan and connects it to the content that changes the outcome.
You generate a stable set of 10 to 15 questions your audience would put to an AI assistant — a mix of brand, category, comparison and how-to. Each week, Illumae sends every question to Perplexity and Gemini, which run a live web search and return the exact sources they used, and to ChatGPT through its web-search API. For every question it records whether one of your pages is cited, in what position, and which other domains are cited instead. You see citation rate per engine over time, your share of citations versus competitors, which of your URLs get quoted, and the full answer text behind each result.
A mention rate tells you there's a problem. It doesn't tell you what to do. When a tracked question isn't citing you, Illumae finds the article on your site that should be answering it and scores that article 0 to 100 on the seven signals AI answer engines use to decide what to quote: a clear extractable answer near the top, question-shaped headings, factual and source density, entity clarity, liftable lists and tables, freshness, and on-page schema. Each low-scoring signal comes with a specific fix — not "improve your content", but "add a 40 to 80 word direct answer under the first heading" or "cite two named authorities with dates".
Semrush, Ahrefs and Surfer all track AI answers now, and all three sell it as a separate add-on — typically £60 to 100 per month on top of a subscription that already costs more than Illumae. Frase bundles it, but as a score to work from rather than a fix. Illumae's citation tracking and GEO scoring are part of the £40/month-per-domain plan, with no add-on and no separate dashboard to learn. For an agency running several client sites, that difference compounds every month.
Because Illumae generates and publishes your content, AI Search Visibility isn't a bolt-on report — it's the feedback stage of a loop. Track which questions you're missing, open the article that should own them, apply the GEO fixes or regenerate it, publish, and watch next week's check. Everything happens on the same subscription, against the same brand profile, with the same quality gate that every Illumae article passes before it goes live.
Illumae tracks Perplexity, Gemini and ChatGPT. It doesn't yet track Google AI Overviews directly — there's no official API for that, and the scraping-based workarounds other tools use are unreliable enough that we'd rather not report a number we can't stand behind. It also doesn't monitor unlinked brand mentions across news and forums the way a dedicated brand-monitoring product does. If AI Overview coverage or PR-style mention tracking is your priority, a specialist tool alongside Illumae is a reasonable setup.
Perplexity and Gemini — both run a live web search and return the exact sources they used — and ChatGPT via its web-search API. Every tracked question is checked weekly. Illumae does not track Google AI Overviews directly (there is no official API, and the scraping workarounds are unreliable) or Claude (a small share of the answer-engine market today).
The tracking itself is similar. The differences are that Illumae includes it in the £40/month plan rather than selling it as an add-on, and that it connects each un-cited question to a scored, fixable article in the same tool that writes and publishes the change — rather than ending at a dashboard.
GEO is the practice of structuring content so AI answer engines quote it: a clear direct answer near the top, question-shaped headings, cited facts with dates, explicit entities, liftable lists and tables, freshness signals, and on-page schema. Illumae's GEO score measures these signals on your pages and gives a specific fix for each weak one.
Once. Illumae drafts a set of 10 to 15 questions your audience would put to an AI assistant from your brand profile; you edit them to taste, and the weekly check runs from then on. Keeping the set stable is what makes the trend line meaningful.
Citation tracking runs on subscribed domains. The free plan includes GEO scoring of your existing articles, so you can see where your content stands for AI answers before you pay anything.
Start free, score your existing articles for AI-answer readiness, and add citation tracking when you subscribe a domain.