How to Choose LLMO Tools: What Citation, Visit and Page Checks Measure

LLMO tools measure three broad things: citations in AI answers, visits that come from AI services, and page settings. They may all be sold as “AI visibility,” but the data is different.

Suppose your manager asks, “We want an AI optimization tool. Which one should we buy?” The first decision is not the product name. It is what you want to know.

This article starts with what free, first-party data from Google and Bing can show. Then it explains how to compare paid tools that fill the gaps. Information is current as of September 23, 2026.

Three Things LLMO Tools Can Measure

An LLMO tool measures citations, visits, page settings, or a combination of them. LLMO is the work of helping AI services such as ChatGPT describe your business accurately in their answers.

The table below compares the three.

What is measured	What you learn	What you do not learn	Main data source
Citations and mentions in AI answers	Whether an answer showed a link to your page or your brand	How many people saw that answer	First-party reports, citation-tracking tools
Visits from AI services	How many people arrived from an AI link and what they did	What they asked the AI	Tracking tags, analytics such as GA4
Page settings	Whether search and AI services can read the page	Whether the page will be cited	Page audits, Search Console

These three cannot stand in for one another. More citations do not guarantee more visits. A higher audit score does not guarantee citations.

When you read a tool’s product page, first check which of the three it measures. That alone narrows the list considerably.

Free First-Party Data

Before buying a tool, you can check part of your visibility and citations in free reports from Google and Bing. Both require you to verify and register your site.

Report	Covers	What you learn	What you do not learn
Search Console generative AI report	Google AI Overviews and AI Mode	How often your pages were shown	The answer text or competitors’ pages
Citation Share in Bing Webmaster Tools	Copilot, Bing and selected partner AI experiences	Your share of citations for each query	Competitor domain names, visits

These are figures each provider publishes about its own services. Citations in ChatGPT or Perplexity are not included in either report.

What the Search Console Generative AI Report Shows

Google announced reports for visibility in generative AI features on June 3, 2026. It later added that, as of August 31, 2026, the reports had rolled out to all websites worldwide [1].

The report shows how often links to your pages appeared in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. You can split impressions by page, country, device and date [2]. Generative AI features in Google Discover have a separate report, and the device breakdown is available only for Search [1]. Check the report and its help page to see whether clicks or queries are available.

To get started:

1. Open Search Console and select your site’s property.
2. Use the “Open the Generative AI performance report” link on the help page.
3. In the pages table, check which pages have the most and the fewest impressions.

If you cannot find the report, your site may not yet have enough impressions in these features. Data from Search Labs experiments is not included [2].

When you export the data, values shown as “~” or “-” become zeros [2]. Do not conclude from the file alone that a page was never shown.

What Citation Share in Bing Shows

On June 16, 2026, Bing added four preview features to the AI reports in Bing Webmaster Tools: Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare [3].

Citation Share is the percentage of all citations shown for a specific grounding query (a search the AI uses to find support for its answer) that went to your site [3]. Its denominator differs from a typical citation rate that counts how many answers cited you. For example, if a query showed ten citations and two were yours, your share would be 20% (an illustrative example).

Bing says this is not a ranking or a traffic share, and it does not reveal competitor domains [3]. It is not a tool for learning how far you trail a specific competitor.

Once your site is registered in Bing Webmaster Tools, you can open the AI reports. They cover Copilot, Bing and selected partner AI experiences [3].

Criteria for Choosing a Citation-Tracking Tool

Compare paid citation-tracking tools on the six criteria below. Consider them when first-party data is not enough, for example when you need citations in ChatGPT.

Criterion	Question to ask the vendor	Why it matters
AI services covered	Which AI services, countries and languages do you query?	The tool is of little use if it misses the services your customers use
Number of runs	How many times can the same question be asked?	AI answers vary even for the same question
Full answer storage	Can we read the answer text and cited links later?	A percentage alone does not tell you what to fix
Failed runs	Are runs that returned no answer counted in the denominator?	Counting failures as “not cited” lowers the figure
Collection method	Do you use an API or the consumer interface?	Conditions may differ from what users see on screen
Pricing unit	Do you charge by question, AI service or run?	You can estimate the cost of adding questions

When you get a demo, bring one real question your business cares about. Ask to see what the screen shows when your site is not cited, not only a prepared success story.

Also check whether the tool shows “X out of Y runs” next to the percentage. One out of five and 20 out of 100 are both 20%, but they mean different things.

Tools for AI Visits and Page Audits

Measure visits with a tracking tag or GA4 and page settings with an audit tool and Search Console, and record them separately from citation figures.

An AI visit is a record of a person arriving on your site from a link in an AI answer. Analytics such as GA4 or a tracking tag show which AI service they came from. Some visits arrive without referral information, so not every visit can be counted.

For page settings, first confirm that search and AI services can read the page. For ChatGPT, sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links [4].

GPTBot, which is used for training, is a separate setting. Blocking GPTBot does not change whether OAI-SearchBot is allowed [4]. See how AI crawlers differ for details.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode have no additional technical requirements. Pages must be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet [5]. Before creating special AI files, confirm that the page can appear in ordinary search.

Example Tool Combinations by Goal

Start with free first-party data, then add citation tracking, then visit measurement, adding only what you need. The companies below are fictional examples.

Example company (fictional)	What it wants to know	Combination
Company A: most traffic comes from Google	Whether its pages appear in AI Overviews	Start with the Search Console generative AI report only
Company B: customers compare options in ChatGPT	Whether it is cited for comparison questions	First-party data plus a citation-tracking tool
Company C: needs to report enquiries	Whether citations led to enquiries	First-party data, citation tracking and a tracking tag or GA4

You do not need everything on day one. Write down what first-party data told you and what it did not, then fill only the gaps.

In AgentSignal, the AI citation rate feature asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude your questions and records your citations and the cited sources [6]. Claude is available on paid plans. Each query to one AI service uses two credits, and the first team you create receives starter credits.

AI visits appear in “AI referrals” after you install the tracking tag, and the free URL audit checks page settings. The workflow is described in how to use AI optimization. Check the pricing page for current plan prices before you subscribe.

Whichever tool you use, do not merge citations, visits and page settings into one score. Keeping them in separate columns makes it easier to decide what to fix next.