Measurement & KPIs
AI Citation Rate
AI citation rate measures how often your croutons appear in AI-generated answers with attribution.
Citation rate is calculated by tracking mentions of your domain or brand in AI responses.
High citation rates indicate successful prechunking. Low citation rates indicate retrieval failures.
Citation tracking requires monitoring multiple AI systems: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and others.
Citation rate trends show whether prechunking improvements are effective over time.
Citation rate does not measure page rankings. It measures chunk retrieval success.
Answer Inclusion
Answer inclusion measures whether your facts appear in AI answers, with or without citation.
Inclusion is broader than citation. Facts may be included without attribution.
Measuring inclusion requires comparing AI answers to your croutons and identifying matches.
High inclusion rates indicate successful retrieval even when attribution is missing.
Inclusion tracking validates that croutons are being extracted and used, not just that citations appear.
Inclusion trends show retrieval performance across different AI systems and query types.
Cross-Engine Consistency
Cross-engine consistency measures whether your facts appear across multiple AI systems.
Consistent retrieval across engines indicates robust prechunking. Inconsistent retrieval indicates system-specific failures.
Consistency is measured by comparing citation and inclusion rates across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and other systems.
Low consistency indicates that prechunking may be optimized for one system but not others.
High consistency indicates that croutons are structured correctly for general retrieval, not specific system optimization.
Consistency tracking identifies which engines retrieve your content and which ignore it.
Zero-Click Dominance
Zero-click dominance measures how often your facts appear in AI answers that satisfy user queries without requiring clicks.
AI systems increasingly provide direct answers. Zero-click dominance measures your share of those answers.
High zero-click dominance indicates that your croutons are primary information sources for AI systems.
Measuring zero-click dominance requires tracking AI answer content and identifying which sources provide the facts used.
Zero-click dominance trends show whether prechunking is achieving information authority, not just visibility.
Zero-click dominance does not require page clicks. It measures retrieval and citation success.
Measurement Methods
Prechunking measurement requires multiple methods:
- Automated citation tracking across AI systems
- Answer inspection and fact matching
- Query analysis to identify information needs
- Retrieval testing to validate crouton extractability
- Competitive comparison to benchmark performance
- Trend analysis to track improvements over time
Measurement is ongoing. AI systems evolve, requiring continuous monitoring and adjustment.
Measurement data informs precog modeling and crouton inventory decisions.