AI Citation Gap Audit Against Your Named Competitors
An AI citation gap audit measures how often six AI engines name your brand against each named competitor on buyer prompts that do not contain your brand name. It then shows which sources the engines cite and which of those you own. You receive a ranked list of fixes.
What the audit measures
| Measure | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Unprompted mention rate | On prompts with no brand name, how often does each engine name you, and how often does it name each competitor? |
| Coverage | In what share of scanned prompts does your brand appear in the answer at all? |
| Owned-citation share | Of all the sources behind those answers, what share comes from your own domain? |
| Position and sentiment | When you appear, where do you rank and how does the engine describe you? |
| Engine spread | Which of the six engines names you least often? |
We report coverage and owned-citation share separately because they are two problems with two fixes. A brand can be talked about often and almost never cited from a page it controls.
How the audit runs
- We build the prompt universe from your product data and calibrate it to measured search demand, using our published prompt volume method.
- We run the prompts on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot using Velivo One AEO.
- We log every cited URL and group the citations by owner: your domain, retailers and review sites, competitors, and neutral sources.
- We score every prompt, absences included, using the rank-decay method in our methodology. Rank 1 scores 10 points and a missing brand scores 0.
- We rank the fixes by the number of prompts each one can move and the effort it takes.
What you receive
- An unprompted mention rate for your brand and each named competitor, split by engine.
- A list of the prompts where a competitor appears and you do not.
- Your owned-citation share against the category leader's.
- The pages AI engines cite in your category, with the ones you are missing marked.
- A ranked fix list with the page, the change and the prompts it targets.
What a gap looks like in real data
The JK Tyre audit ran 12,651 unique prompts across six engines and returned 75,102 scan responses and 472,440 citation records. On the 53,535 generic scans with no brand name in the prompt, JK Tyre was mentioned 17.8% of the time and ranked 7th of 9 tracked brands.
| Brand | Unprompted mention rate |
|---|---|
| Bridgestone India | 32.2% |
| Apollo Tyres | 30.3% |
| CEAT Tyres | 29.7% |
| MRF Tyres | 25.6% |
| Michelin India | 23.3% |
| Yokohama India | 19.5% |
| JK Tyre | 17.8% |
| Goodyear India | 14.7% |
| Continental India | 14.1% |
Source: Velivo One AEO scan export, JK Tyre project, ibs Fulcro audit. Generic prompts only.
The engine view showed a sharper gap. Perplexity mentioned JK Tyre on 3.6% of generic scans. Gemini mentioned it on 23.1%. A single blended number would have hidden that. Read the full JK Tyre audit.
The owned-citation side shows in our five-brand study. UltraTech Cement, at 13% owned-citation share, reached 38% coverage and an average rank of 1.05. Dabur Red, at 11%, reached 15% coverage. Boost, Imperial Blue and JSW Paints all sat under 1% owned-citation share, with coverage of 53%, 28% and 8% against category leaders at 82%, 56% and 92%. The two measures did not move together, so the audit reports them separately.
What the audit does not do
A scan is a snapshot. Engines change their sources and the same prompt can return a different answer on a different day, so we repeat prompts and report the spread. The audit shows where you stand and what to fix. It does not promise a placement.
Timeline and price
A baseline reads out in weeks, not months. We fix the date when we agree the prompt set, because prompt count and engine coverage set the length of the scan. The audit is priced on scope. If you continue into ongoing work, our AEO retainer runs from ₹75,000 a month.
Frequently asked questions
It is the difference between how often AI engines cite or name a competitor and how often they cite or name you on the same buyer prompts. It has two parts. The first is coverage, meaning whether you appear at all. The second is owned-citation share, meaning whether the sources behind the answer come from your own pages.
An SEO audit checks how your pages rank and perform in search results. A citation gap audit checks what AI engines say when a buyer asks a question and which sources they use to say it. A page can rank well in Google and still never be cited by an AI engine.
The ones you name, plus any brand that appears in the engines' answers for your category. In the JK Tyre audit we tracked nine brands. You approve the list before the scan runs.
It depends on the category. The JK Tyre audit ran 12,651 unique prompts. A smaller category needs fewer. We size the set from your product data and agree the number with you before we start.
Yes. We have published scans in cement, oral care, health drinks, paint and whisky. See the sector pages for FMCG, automotive, BFSI, consumer durables and B2B and industrial brands.
Want to see your own gap against named competitors?
Talk to us for a no-obligation assessmentPage last updated October 20, 2026.