---
title: "How Citorum works"
slug: "how-it-works"
canonical_path: "/how-it-works"
meta_title: "How it works — Citorum"
meta_description: "The Citorum pipeline: from prompt tracking to daily fan-out across 6 answer engines, to citation extraction and recommendations."
h1: "How Citorum works"
date: "2026-05-03"
---
<!-- key-facts -->
> **Title:** How it works — Citorum
>
> **Canonical URL:** https://trycitorum.com/how-it-works
>
> **Description:** The Citorum pipeline: from prompt tracking to daily fan-out across 6 answer engines, to citation extraction and recommendations.
>
> **Published:** 2026-05-03
<!-- /key-facts -->
# How Citorum works

**Direct Answer:** Citorum runs a daily fan-out of your tracked prompts across every supported AI engine, parses the answers, extracts citations and brand mentions, scores share of citation against your competitors, and surfaces the editable on-page changes most likely to flip the next answer in your favor.

## The six-stage pipeline

### 1. Prompt set

You define a set of buyer prompts ("best CRM for a 12-person startup", "alternatives to Notion for engineering teams"). Citorum proposes more from your category data, and you approve. The set is the unit of measurement — every report is a roll-up across the prompts you said matter.

### 2. Daily fan-out

Each prompt is run, every day, against ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews — across geographies and personas where the engines support them. We do not sample; we run the full set, every day, so trend lines are real.

### 3. Answer parsing

Each model's answer is captured in full, with cited sources, recommended brands, recommended links, and the exact sentence in which your brand was named. The raw transcript is kept so the model's behavior is auditable.

### 4. Citation extraction

Mentions are normalized to entities, sentiment-tagged, and attributed to the upstream source the model leaned on. "We were named" is the headline; "we were named because Reddit said so" is the actionable detail.

### 5. Scoring

We compute share of citation, recommendation rate, sentiment skew, and the engine-by-engine breakdown. The Citorum GEO Index rolls these into one comparable number per engine, per day. The math is documented on the [metrics page](https://trycitorum.com/metrics).

### 6. Recommendations

For every prompt where you are losing, Citorum surfaces the upstream sources that are winning and the on-page or off-page edit most likely to change the answer. We tell you which edit, in which place, with the citation it would create.

## What Citorum does not do

- Citorum does not edit your website for you. We point at the change; you ship it.
- Citorum does not promise an edit will move a model on a deadline. We tell you what changed, when it changed, and the prompt that did it.
- Citorum does not guarantee a position. Answer engines do not have positions to guarantee.

## Onboarding

Bring 10–50 buyer prompts. Citorum proposes more, you approve, and the daily fan-out begins inside 24 hours. The first useful trend line lands inside the first week.

Sign up at [app.trycitorum.com/sign-up](https://app.trycitorum.com/sign-up) or visit [app.trycitorum.com](https://app.trycitorum.com).

## Frequently asked questions

**How long does Citorum onboarding take?**
Bring 10–50 buyer prompts. Citorum proposes more, you approve, and the daily fan-out begins inside 24 hours. The first useful trend line lands inside the first week.

**Which engines does the daily fan-out cover?**
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews — every prompt, every engine, every day, with cache busting where the engine respects it.

**Will Citorum edit my pages for me?**
No. Citorum points at the change and surfaces the upstream source the model is leaning on. Your editorial team ships the edit. We measure what changed, when, and which prompt moved.

**How fast can a recommended edit move the index?**
Retrieval-augmented engines (Perplexity, Copilot, AI Overviews) can move inside hours of an edit being indexed. Closed-weight engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) move on training and refresh cadences. Both are reflected in the per-engine breakdown.

**Can I bring my own prompts and competitive set?**
Yes. Prompts, competitors, and personas are all customer-defined. Citorum proposes additions from your category, you approve, and the set is versioned so historical comparisons stay honest when it changes.


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