Trackers answer whether. We answer why — with evidence you can verify.
The category comparison in plain sentences: trackers watch the scoreboard; we audit the site and seal the evidence.
What a tracker does, in one sentence: it watches whether AI systems mention a brand, and reports the scoreboard.
What we do, in one sentence: we audit whether AI systems can access, parse, and extract your pages — and seal the evidence.
The comparison
| Aspect | Trackers | Generative Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| The question | Whether a brand is cited in AI answers. | Why a page is or is not readable by AI systems: access, parsing, extraction. |
| The record | A dashboard of mention counts. | A sealed evidence bundle with a SHA-256 digest anyone can recompute. |
| The scope | One brand's scoreboard. | Every URL, every documented AI actor, every policy decision on the site. |
| After you fix something | The next scoreboard refresh. | A rescan that verifies the fix landed — VERIFIED, NOT VERIFIED, or INDETERMINATE. |
| The relationship | A different category. | Complement, not competitor: they watch the scoreboard. You fix the site. |
The table describes the tracker category in general terms; each tool differs. Feature sets change; check their documentation.
The category, named plainly
Otterly, Profound, and the Semrush AI Toolkit are examples of the tracker category: services that watch whether AI systems mention or cite a brand.
This page compares categories, not vendors. It does not rank tools, and it does not review feature sets.
The two questions need each other. A mention without access evidence cannot tell you what to fix; access evidence without a mention cannot tell you who noticed. They watch the scoreboard. You fix the site.
The line we hold
Nobody can promise citations — not us, not a tracker. What we record is narrower and checkable: what your site serves to AI systems today, what changed, and whether a fix landed.
Citation-checking, evidence-grade — in validation. Watch the variance, not the promise.
Every sealed bundle re-verifies in public — the digest is recomputable by anyone at /verify, no account required. That is the difference in one line: the scoreboard is observed from outside; the site is audited from the inside, with the evidence to show for it.