Scrunch Launches Citation Optimization to Help Brands Influence the Sources Behind AI Recommendations

The launch builds on Sitecore’s introduction of MarketingIQ yesterday, extending the Symposium story from marketing intelligence to action. Scrunch identifies the external sources shaping AI recommendations and helps marketers earn a place in them, while its data feeds MarketingIQ to inform coordinated marketing content and campaigns across SitecoreAI.

For every prompt a brand tracks in Scrunch, Citation Optimization identifies the third-party pages cited in AI answers and prioritizes them by their influence and how easily a brand can win a place in them to strengthen its presence. Marketers can see which sources already include their brand, where competitors are featured instead, and where outreach or amplification could make the greatest difference. The platform then helps them act, preparing targeted pitches and outreach informed by the source, the opportunity and the brand’s approved information.

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Citation Optimization helps brands understand and act on the sources shaping AI answers, including sources that misrepresent who they are. New Scrunch research reveals the scale of that risk: across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot, 17% of Fortune 500 companies had an impostor website cited in AI answers. In three out of four answers citing a known impostor, the AI presented the site as the brand’s official source. Scrunch estimates that AI assistants deliver more than one million answers a year citing websites that impersonate real brands.

The findings expose a risk beyond lost visibility: AI can direct customers to an impostor while presenting it as a trusted brand source. Along with Citation Optimization, Scrunch has created Imposter Detection. It automatically surfaces suspected imposter sites and provides the actions to initiate a takedown, to help marketers see and correct where their brand is being misrepresented.

“Every AI recommendation is built on a network of publishers, reviewers, and other sources that most marketers have never been able to see clearly,” said Chris Andrew, founder and CEO of Scrunch. “Citation Optimization makes that network actionable. It shows you who matters, where you have an opportunity to earn a stronger presence, and how to approach them. For the first time, marketers are able to participate in the conversations that decide whether AI recommends them.”

The launch comes as more discovery happens entirely within AI platforms. New Sitecore research from ScrunchLabs, The New Shape of Search, found that more than 40% of AI sessions involved neither an open-web search beforehand nor a click to the open web afterward, compared with 21.5% of traditional search sessions remaining self-contained. When users stay within AI, the brands included in its answers – and the sources informing those answers – take on greater importance.

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Citation Optimization builds on Scrunch’s existing capabilities for monitoring AI answers, identifying opportunities on brands’ own websites and creating content to address gaps. It extends that work to third-party sources, helping marketers coordinate improvements across the content they own and the sources they seek to influence.

Citation Optimization is the latest in a succession of recent Scrunch product launches. Over the past 100 days, Scrunch has released Knowledge Studio, which turns brand-approved information into a source of truth for AI; Site Optimization, which delivers a prioritized, page-by-page fix list that can be deployed in one click through SitecoreAI; Agent Pages, which serves an AI-readable version of a website to verified AI agents without changing the site people see; and, just last week, Content Generation, which writes content for questions that aren’t answered anywhere on the brand’s website. All told, these innovations help marketers manage brand perception and create domain authority, improving the content they own and the sources they need to influence.

New customers from some of the world’s biggest brands have selected Scrunch in recent months, adding to its more than 500 customers since being founded in 2023.

Citation Optimization is available now. Scrunch is also working to integrate partners including Noble, Stacker and Getfluence to automate additional steps in the outreach and activation process.