Measure AI citations by combining direct manual checks (querying each answer engine for your target questions and inspecting the sources), server-log analysis of AI crawler user agents, and where available, third-party monitoring tools — because none of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Gemini currently ships a webmaster analytics dashboard.
The only official visibility today is Google's — Google Search Console reports AI Overview impressions and clicks in the same Performance report as classic results. Bing Webmaster Tools shows Bingbot crawl activity, which is a leading indicator for ChatGPT Search visibility.
For the other engines, three practices work. (1) Maintain a target-questions list and re-query each engine on a schedule; log the citations. (2) Filter server logs by AI-crawler user agents — GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended — to confirm they are fetching. (3) Track referral traffic labeled with each engine's referer where the assistant links out.
Third-party tools are emerging but should be treated with caution — most sample rather than exhaustively test, and none can see inside a private ChatGPT session.
Track share of voice per engine per question, not absolute citation counts. Absolute counts vary with query volume; share of voice tracks competitive position.