About
Evidence over hype.
Search used to be ten blue links. Now it's one generated answer, and the engine writing it decides which brands get named. Ranking was measurable. Being named isn't, unless someone builds the instruments. Nobody was checking whether AI engines could reach a business's site, quote its pages, or recommend it. So we did.
The Citation Lab exists to answer one question with evidence: where do you stand? Not with a guarantee, since engines are black boxes and anyone promising you a ChatGPT citation is selling something they can't deliver. With a diagnosis: what's blocking you, what's unquotable, and who's being named instead of you.
What we hold ourselves to
Honest findings
Every finding we hand you is one you can check yourself: specific, sourced, reproducible. The same honesty is why we won't promise an AI citation or recommendation. Engine behavior is proprietary and it changes, so a guaranteed mention is a promise no one is in a position to keep. You get the diagnosis instead: what's blocking you, evidenced rather than guessed.
Free readiness check
The AI visibility readiness check costs nothing, always. It is a readiness check, not the full assessment: it tells you whether the engines can reach and read your site, and where the obvious gaps are. The detailed six-layer assessment is paid work. But you should never pay to find out whether something is broken.
Bounded scope
Every paid engagement is fixed-fee with defined deliverables. No hourly meters, no scope drift, no invoices you didn’t see coming.
Appropriate cadence
Monitoring frequency is set by how fast your market moves, not by our revenue target. If quarterly is right, we’ll recommend quarterly.
We drink our own champagne
We use the check ourselves, on this site. We don’t recommend anything we haven’t survived.
Proof, not testimonials
We ran it on ourselves first.
You can't credibly sell a diagnosis you've never received. The first site The Citation Lab ever audited was its own. We found things, we fixed them, and every claim on this site survived that process.
The Citation Lab is new. There's no logo wall here and no testimonials yet, because we won't manufacture either. What we have is a method built on published research, and a free check that proves it on your site in minutes.
Made by
Purple Kiwi AI
A project from an independent studio.
The Citation Lab is built and run by Purple Kiwi AI, a studio that builds focused AI products for small and medium businesses, without the enterprise bloat. The Citation Lab is one of the products it builds and operates.
"Leverage, not theater — real operational friction turned into working software."
Visit Purple Kiwi AI →
From the studio
"Search gave you a list. AI gives you a verdict. If you are not optimizing to be the answer, you are already losing, quietly."
Brian Hodgdon
Founder & Principal, Purple Kiwi AI
Talk to us for 15 minutes.
A workflow review: where you stand today, what we'd check first, and whether there's anything worth fixing. If there isn't, we'll say so.