=== CitedSpy - AI SEO & AEO Tracker to Beat Competitors in AI Answers ===
Contributors: arshitasharma
Tags: ai seo, ai visibility, aeo, chatgpt, brand monitoring
Requires at least: 6.5
Tested up to: 7.0
Requires PHP: 7.4
Stable tag: 1.0.2
License: GPLv2 or later
License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

See which competitors AI assistants recommend instead of you. Track your AI visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.

== Description ==

**Get your brand recommended by AI assistants.**

[CitedSpy](https://citedspy.com) tracks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Mode name your brand when buyers ask about your category - and shows you which competitors they name instead. This plugin brings that scoreboard into your WordPress dashboard.

It asks the real questions your buyers ask - "best CRM for a small team", "affordable running shoes for flat feet" - on a schedule, and records which brands each engine names, in what order, how favourably, and which sources it cites. That becomes a visibility score you can track week to week.

You connect once and the data appears. There is nothing to configure, no API key to paste, and no code added to your theme.

Not sure where you stand yet? Run the free [AI visibility checker](https://citedspy.com/ai-visibility-checker) first - it scores any brand in about a minute, no account needed.

**What you get in WordPress**

* Your visibility score, and whether it is moving up or down
* Your share of voice against the competitors AI engines recommend instead of you
* A breakdown for each engine, so you can see where you are strong and where you are absent
* The prompts you rank in, and the ones you do not
* How many mentions and prompt runs are behind the numbers

Deeper work - editing prompts, managing competitors, generating reports - happens in your [CitedSpy dashboard](https://citedspy.com).

**How it works**

1. You tell CitedSpy your brand, your competitors, and the questions your buyers ask. Onboarding suggests a starter set by reading your own site, so a new brand is not starting from a blank page.
2. CitedSpy puts those questions to each AI engine on a schedule, capturing the answer a real person would see rather than a model API response. The two are not the same: the consumer products search the live web, and that is what your customers actually read.
3. Every answer is analysed for which brands appear, where in the answer, how positively, and which URLs the engine cited as its sources.
4. The results roll up into a visibility score, share of voice against your competitors, and a per-engine breakdown - which is what this plugin displays.

**Why your traffic is dropping**

People increasingly ask an AI assistant instead of a search engine. When they do, the assistant names a handful of brands and cites a handful of sources. If yours is missing while your competitors are there, you are invisible to a growing share of buyers - and nothing in your analytics tells you, because the visit never happens.

**What are GEO and AEO?**

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) are what search engine optimization turns into once the answer replaces the results page. Instead of ranking a link, you are trying to be the brand an AI assistant names, and the source it cites, when someone asks about your category.

A rank tracker cannot measure that, because there is no rank. There is an answer, and either you are in it or you are not. The only way to know is to ask the questions your buyers ask and read what comes back - which is what CitedSpy does, on a schedule, across every engine.

**Requires a CitedSpy account**

This plugin is a client for CitedSpy, a paid subscription service. All of the work - querying ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Mode, and analysing their answers - runs on CitedSpy's servers, not on your site.

New accounts start with a free 7 day trial, which you can create during setup. After the trial you need a paid plan to keep seeing data. See [pricing](https://citedspy.com/pricing) for what each plan includes. Subscriptions are handled entirely on citedspy.com; this plugin never asks for payment details and contains no payment code.

The plugin itself is free and unrestricted. It contains no license checks, no feature gates and no time limits - there is nothing in the plugin code to unlock, because the plugin only displays data your CitedSpy account returns.

Full product documentation lives in the [CitedSpy docs](https://citedspy.com/docs).

**What this plugin does, and what it does not**

To be precise about the split, because the title promises an outcome and the plugin is only part of how you reach it:

* **The plugin** reads your CitedSpy data and displays it in wp-admin. That is all it does. It does not edit your posts, change your titles or meta descriptions, add schema, touch your theme, or write anything to the public side of your site.
* **CitedSpy, the service**, does the measuring and the analysis, and is where the competitor comparison, the GEO scoring and the improvement suggestions live.

So "beat competitors in AI answers" is what CitedSpy helps you do. The plugin is the window onto it, not the thing doing the work.

== Installation ==

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Open **CitedSpy** in your WordPress admin sidebar.
3. Click **Connect your site**. You will be taken to [citedspy.com](https://citedspy.com) to sign in or create a free account and approve the connection.
4. Approve, and you will be returned to WordPress.
5. If you are new, finish setting up your brand in CitedSpy. Your numbers then appear on the plugin page.

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= Do I need a paid CitedSpy plan? =

You can start with a free 7 day trial, and you will need a paid CitedSpy plan after that to keep seeing data. Plans differ in how many brands, prompts and competitors you can track, and are managed entirely on [citedspy.com](https://citedspy.com/pricing).

To be clear about where the limit lives: the plugin is free and has no restrictions of its own. It shows whatever your CitedSpy account returns, so when a subscription lapses the service stops returning data and the plugin says so.

= Which AI engines does it track? =

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Mode. Answers are collected from the live consumer products, so what CitedSpy records is what a person asking that question would actually see.

= Does this plugin slow down my site? =

No. Nothing runs on the public side of your site. The plugin only makes a request when an administrator opens the CitedSpy page in wp-admin, and the result is cached.

= What data leaves my site? =

Your site URL when you start the connection, and your connection token when the CitedSpy admin page loads. No visitor data, post content, or personal data is sent. See the External services section below.

= Is this an SEO plugin? Do I still need one? =

Yes, you still need one. CitedSpy does not touch your titles, meta descriptions, sitemaps or schema, and it does not compete with Yoast, Rank Math or SEOPress. It measures a different surface: whether AI assistants recommend you when someone asks about your category. Run it alongside your SEO plugin, not instead of it.

= Can I disconnect? =

Yes. Use **Disconnect this site** on the plugin page, or simply deactivate the plugin, which disconnects automatically. Your CitedSpy account and its data are unaffected.

= Where does the data come from? =

CitedSpy queries ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Mode with real category questions and analyses the answers. The plugin displays the results; it does not query the engines itself.

== External services ==

This plugin connects to the CitedSpy API at https://api.citedspy.com to retrieve your brand's AI search visibility data. The plugin cannot function without it, because all AI engine monitoring runs on CitedSpy's servers.

Data sent, and when:

* **When you click "Connect your site":** your site URL, so that CitedSpy knows which site is being linked and can pre-fill the brand you are tracking. Nothing is transmitted before you click this button.
* **When an administrator opens the CitedSpy page after connecting:** the connection token stored on your site, used to retrieve your own workspace's metrics.
* **When you disconnect or deactivate the plugin:** the connection token, so CitedSpy can mark the site as disconnected.

No visitor data, post content, comment data, or personal data of your site's users is ever transmitted.

Service provider: [CitedSpy](https://citedspy.com)
Terms of service: [https://citedspy.com/terms](https://citedspy.com/terms)
Privacy policy: [https://citedspy.com/privacy](https://citedspy.com/privacy)

== Screenshots ==

1. Your AI visibility numbers inside the WordPress dashboard.
2. Connecting your site takes three clicks and no API keys.
3. Per-engine breakdown, competitor share of voice, and the prompts you rank in.

== Changelog ==

= 1.0.2 =
* New plugin title, naming the outcome rather than only the category.
* Description now leads with the outcome, with the market context moved below it.
* Added "How it works", "What this plugin does, and what it does not", and two new FAQ entries.
* Links in the description and the External services section are now clickable.
* Tags updated: replaced "geo" with "chatgpt".

= 1.0.1 =
* Clearer plugin title and description, and a short explanation of GEO and AEO.
* No functional changes.

= 1.0.0 =
* First release. Connect a site to a CitedSpy workspace and view AI visibility metrics in wp-admin.

== Upgrade Notice ==

= 1.0.2 =
Listing copy only. No functional changes.

= 1.0.1 =
Listing and documentation only. No functional changes.

= 1.0.0 =
First release.
