AI Citation Tracking: What Are LLMs Saying About My Restaurant?

A specialty coffee restaurant in Sisli, Istanbul has run weekly AI citation monitoring since February 2026; its mention rate in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers for "Istanbul specialty coffee" climbed 180%. Here is a practical setup to measure how LLMs talk about you.

Why Citation Tracking?

Just as backlink audits became table-stakes in 2010s SEO, AI mention frequency is the new visibility signal. In 2027, 34% of diners ask ChatGPT before Google when discovering restaurants; Perplexity now has 90M weekly active users. If the models don't know you, you are invisible to a third of demand.

Citation tracking measures three things: mention rate (percentage of monitored prompts where you appear), sentiment (positive/neutral/negative), and competitive share of voice against rival venues. These are the core KPIs of AI search performance.

Tools and Pricing

Three notable SaaS tools: Profound (from $499/mo, enterprise), Otterly.ai ($29-99/mo, SMB-friendly), and AthenaHQ ($49/mo, simple dashboard). Each runs a prompt set against ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, then parses responses for your brand mentions, sentiment and rank order.

• Profound — chains and groups with 1000+ prompts
• Otterly — independents tracking 50-200 prompts weekly
• AthenaHQ — solo operators on a $49 budget, 20-50 prompts

DIY Alternative

If the budget is tight, a ChatGPT API ($0.01 per prompt) plus a 30-line Python script can query 30 prompts weekly and write results to CSV for about $4-8/month. The Sisli cafe ran this for three months before scaling up to Otterly.

The strongest ways to lift your mention rate are: structured data (Schema.org Restaurant + Menu), consistent NAP (name-address-phone everywhere identical), and topic-rich content covering specialty topics like brewing methods, origins, and local food culture. thMenu's blog module surfaces all three from one dashboard.

FAQ

Does citation tracking replace SEO? No, it complements it. Google still drives 55% of traffic; AI search is at 18% and growing fast.

How often should I track? Monthly for newcomers; weekly if you are actively optimizing. The Sisli case used weekly cadence.

Which prompts should I monitor? A mix of local intent ("specialty coffee in Istanbul"), category ("best flat white Istanbul"), and brand-defense queries with your name.

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