Measuring Citations in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity: Monitoring Without Expensive Tools
How do you know if your therapy practice is being cited by AI search engines? This article provides a manual monitoring routine and the three paid tools that automate it, with a fair price-performance comparison.
Dit artikel hoort bij: Becoming Findable as a Therapist: The Complete SEO Handbook
- +Therapists who want to measure their AI visibility without immediate investment
- +Practices already actively working on GEO and wanting to know if it works
- +Anyone considering purchasing a tool and wanting a fair comparison first
- -Those who do not yet have content on their site optimized for AI search
- -Therapists who are unwilling to spend time on manual measurement and do not have a budget for tools
In classic SEO, Google Search Console tells you exactly which keywords bring traffic, which pages rank, and their position. For AI search, that dashboard does not yet exist. AI search engines do not show you which queries led to a citation of your site, and most do not leave a referrer tag in your analytics. This makes measurement difficult, but not impossible.
The Free Method: Monthly Manual Scan
Set aside 30 minutes per month. Make a list of five to ten questions your ideal clients would ask, mixed between local ("somatic therapist in Utrecht"), thematic ("difference between psychotherapy and body-oriented work"), and symptomatic ("recognizing trauma in your body"). Ask the exact same questions in ChatGPT (with web search on), Claude (with web search on), Perplexity, and Google AI Overview. For each question, note: which sites are cited, what is your position (or are you not cited), and what type of page of yours is chosen if you are cited.
What to Note in That Scan
Maintain a simple spreadsheet with: date, engine, question, top 3 cited sites, are you cited yes/no, which page, which sentence was cited. After three months, you will see patterns: which questions are most promising, which pages are chosen most often, and which engines you are lagging behind on. That is more signal than most therapists ever have about their AI visibility.
Track Your Referrer Traffic (Small, But Useful Signals)
While AI engines do not share full search data, they sometimes send a referrer if someone clicks on your site from an AI answer. In Google Analytics 4 (or in Microsoft Clarity, which we also use), you can filter by referring domains. Look for chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai, gemini.google.com, and copilot.microsoft.com. Since 2025, we have seen steadily growing traffic there for sites actively working on GEO.
The Three Automated Tools (Fair Comparison)
Otterly.ai
From approximately 29 dollars per month. Daily tracks 25 to 100 prompts in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. Shows which sources are cited per prompt, with share-of-voice per competitor. Strong in competitive comparison, less strong in suggestions for improvement. Suitable for practices that already have a GEO strategy and want to measure.
Profound
From approximately 499 dollars per month. Enterprise tool with deep analytics, sentiment per AI answer, and agent-based monitoring. Too heavy and too expensive for a sole practitioner, interesting if you work with multiple practice locations or are building a larger brand.
Peec.ai
From approximately 25 euros per month. European tool with a focus on smaller businesses. Daily tracks up to 50 prompts, provides concrete suggestions per page, and has a Dutch interface. Good value-for-money starting point if you absolutely want to automate.
What We Recommend for Most Practices
Start with the free manual method for three months. Build your spreadsheet and learn which questions are most important. Only then, if you see that AI search truly generates traffic and clients, consider a tool. Otherwise, you will be investing 30 euros per month in a dashboard you barely look at. For a practice with a maximum of 50 new clients per year, the manual method almost always wins on cost and learning value.
Further Reading
Measurement is part of the 'Becoming Findable as a Therapist' pillar. In parallel, ask yourself if the substantive authority is in order via E-E-A-T for healthcare content. And check if you are not unintentionally blocked anywhere by correctly configuring your AI crawlers or by avoiding GEO errors.
GSC AI Report and Semrush AI Toolkit
Google Search Console Now Shows AI Impressions
Since June 2026, Google Search Console shows the Search Generative AI performance report. Open Performance in search results, click on the search type filter and choose AI Overviews or AI Mode. You will now see how often your page was shown in an AI summary, how many clicks that generated, and for which search queries. This is the first time a major platform directly exposes AI impressions. For therapists, this means: add this report to your monthly routine, in addition to manual scans in ChatGPT and Perplexity. A page with many AI impressions but few clicks often has an overly complete answer upfront (the user already gets their answer from the summary); a page with few impressions often lacks clear E-E-A-T signals or FAQ structure.
Semrush AI Toolkit for Prompt Tracking
Semrush rolled out an AI Toolkit in June 2026 with three features of interest to therapists: prompt tracking (define 10 to 20 search queries your clients would ask, Semrush runs them weekly through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini and logs whether you are cited), ChatGPT referrer measurement (shows actual traffic from ChatGPT in your analytics), and a brand information checker (shows what LLMs say about you, with instructions to correct misinformation). Not free, but for practices seriously investing in AI visibility, a real time-saver on the manual routine.
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Veelgestelde vragen
Can I not just look at my Google Analytics?
Partially. AI engines sometimes send a referrer, but not always. You will see the traffic that clicks through, not the citations where someone saw your site but did not click (because the answer was sufficient). For the latter group, you need a manual or automated scan.
How often should I measure?
Monthly is sufficient for most practices. AI search rankings change slower than classic Google rankings, and you want to avoid being startled by noise every week. Stick to a fixed time (e.g., the first Monday of the month) so you can see trends.
What do I do with the results?
Three actions. One: look at which pages are cited most often and strengthen them with more internal links and updates. Two: look at questions where you are not cited and write a TL;DR block and FAQ for them. Three: look at competitors who are cited and analyze what they do differently (often a clearer structure or more schema).
Is investing in a tool worth it?
For a solo practice, almost never in the first year. For a practice with multiple locations or an agency that measures for clients, yes. The tipping point lies around 100 new clients per year or multiple practice locations.