TrueTrace is Linkstonic’s on-demand audit engine. Where AI Tracking gives you a continuous stream of keyword-level mention data, TrueTrace goes deep on a single URL, brand, or competitive set — returning a detailed picture of why AI models do or don’t cite your content and exactly what to fix. Run it before a content overhaul to establish a baseline, after a site migration to verify nothing broke, or whenever a competitor starts showing up in AI answers where you used to dominate.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.linkstonic.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Three audit modes
Choose the mode that matches what you want to analyze.URL mode
URL mode analyzes a single page. Paste any publicly accessible URL and TrueTrace will check whether it’s reachable by AI crawlers, extract the content signals that matter to LLMs — headings structure, FAQ markup, entity clarity, internal link density — and return a citability estimate for that specific page. Use URL mode when you’ve published or updated a page and want to know how citation-ready it is before you promote it.Brand mode
Brand mode takes your brand name, your primary domain, and a set of target queries, then runs a holistic AI visibility audit across all four platforms. You get an overall AI visibility score, a breakdown by platform, and a prioritized quick wins roadmap showing which content gaps to close first for the biggest score lift. Use Brand mode for your quarterly AI visibility review or whenever you want a full picture of how your brand is positioned across the AI landscape.Competitor mode
Competitor mode places two or more URLs side by side and shows exactly how AI models compare them in generated answers. You’ll see which brand gets cited first, which content signals the winning page has that yours lacks, and where the authority gap originates.Two analysis depths
For each mode, you choose how deeply TrueTrace should analyze your content.Quick mode
Quick mode queries a single AI model and returns results in under 10 seconds. You get a citability score, the top three to five quick wins, and a keyword gap detection summary. Use Quick mode for a fast sanity check after you’ve made content changes.Hybrid mode
Hybrid mode runs multi-model validation across all four AI platforms. It returns the full citation source list, AI mention probability percentages by platform, a comprehensive FAQ content gap report, and a cross-platform comparison showing where your brand’s performance diverges between models.What a TrueTrace report contains
LLM citability score (0–100)
A single composite number predicting how likely AI models are to cite this URL or brand in their generated answers. The score weighs content quality, structural signals, authority indicators, and entity clarity. See the Citability Score guide for a full breakdown of the scale and what moves the number.Citation source list
An exact list of the URLs and pages that AI models currently cite when answering queries related to your brand or topic. This is your competitive intelligence goldmine: it shows precisely which pages have earned citation authority and what they have that yours doesn’t.FAQ gap analysis
A comparison of the questions your competitors’ cited pages answer versus the questions your content leaves unanswered. Each gap is a missed opportunity for your page to be the cited source. TrueTrace surfaces these gaps ranked by query volume and competitive difficulty.Sentiment analysis
A classification of how AI models describe your brand in generated answers: positive, neutral, or negative, with the specific phrases that drove each classification. If an AI model is describing your product as “controversial” or “a common alternative to” a competitor, you’ll see exactly which content is generating that framing.Feedback loop
After a TrueTrace audit, Linkstonic doesn’t know with certainty whether AI models actually cited your page in live queries — it estimates based on content signals. The feedback loop lets you mark, manually or via search console data, whether your page was actually cited. Over time, this calibration data improves the accuracy of your citability scores and gives you a real-world citation rate to compare against the model’s estimates.Historical tracking
Every TrueTrace audit is saved. Run the same URL or brand audit weekly and Linkstonic will surface week-over-week citability trend charts, so you can see whether content changes are translating into score improvements or whether a competitor’s gains are eating into your position.How to run a TrueTrace audit
Open TrueTrace
Select TrueTrace from the left sidebar. If you don’t see it, make sure you’re on a plan that includes TrueTrace access.
Choose a mode
Select URL, Brand, or Competitor mode from the mode selector at the top of the page. Each mode changes the input fields that appear below.
Enter your inputs
- URL mode: paste the full URL of the page you want to audit (e.g.,
https://example.com/blog/best-crm-software) - Brand mode: enter your brand name, your primary domain, and up to 20 target queries — one per line
- Competitor mode: enter two or more URLs to compare; the first URL is treated as your page by default
Select analysis depth
Choose Quick (single model, under 10 seconds) or Hybrid (multi-model, approximately 2 minutes). If you’re unsure, start with Quick to get an immediate read, then run Hybrid for the full roadmap.
Run the analysis
Click Run Analysis. A progress indicator will show the audit running. Quick mode results appear almost instantly; Hybrid mode results typically arrive within two minutes depending on platform response times.
Review your results
When the audit completes, you’ll land on the results page. Start with the citability score and the quick wins list at the top, then work through the citation source list and FAQ gap analysis to identify the highest-leverage content improvements.