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The Citation Engine

Your buyer hears three vendor names. Yours has to be one of them.

The Citation Engine is a monthly retainer that gets your company named when buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. We build and run the content that earns the mention, and we measure it every month as Share of Model. What we sell is the mention in the answer, not the click.

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What changed

The AI answer now
writes the shortlist.

Monthly Share of Model
16+ assets a month
Written guarantee
An AI answer on a laptop screen with one result highlighted in green

What's included

One engine. Everything in one retainer.

Measure first

Before anything is sold, we put 20 of your buyers' questions to the five AI engines and show how often you are named, next to your strongest competitor. That number becomes the baseline in your contract.

Build what the engines cite

At least 16, on average 20 publish-ready assets a month: answer pages, comparison pages, articles and data pieces. Each one is verified and approved, then we publish it straight into your CMS.

Report every month

A monthly Share-of-Model report across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews: how often you are named against your strongest competitor, which vendors the engines name in your category, and the reasons they give.

A dashboard, not an article counter

Your Share-of-Model curve over time with the competitive set beside it, updated after every measurement. The buyer questions are agreed at onboarding and then frozen, and the raw answers sit in the dashboard, so you can check every number.

Your voice, your buyers, your plan

A brand voice document, an overview of your audience and personas, and a content strategy with an editorial calendar. Part of the retainer, not billed as onboarding.

Refresh what you already paid for

Your archive is not dead, it is unreadable to the engines. Depending on your content base we work Refresh-First (about 70 percent existing content), Hybrid (about half and half) or Build (mostly new), fixed in the contract.

A strategy call every month

30 minutes with your decision maker: the numbers, what changed, and next month's plan.

Presence, guaranteed in writing

You get a written visibility target and a window: 6 months for a refresh or hybrid site, 9 months for a full build. Miss it inside the window and we keep working at no fee. We guarantee presence, never that a competitor disappears.

Why now

The click is disappearing.
The mention is not.

68%

of US Google browser searches ended without a click (SparkToro, Jan to Apr 2026)

58%

lower position-one click-through under an AI Overview (Ahrefs, desktop, 2026)

250

AI-referred visits per quarter at Helium42, up from about 3

The offer

One retainer. No setup fee.

A pure monthly retainer: no setup fee, no onboarding charge. Six-month minimum term, then month to month. At least 16 assets a month, 20 on average, as a floor, never "up to". We share the price in the first call, once we have measured where you stand.

The promise is deliberately a single one: inside the agreed window, your company is named in the AI answers of its category. Two consequences usually follow: classic rankings recover, and visitors from AI answers convert better. We report both, but we only promise presence.

Monthly Share of Model dashboard on a tablet next to printed Citation Engine reports

Frequently Asked Questions

Straight answers before you commit

What is the Citation Engine?

A monthly retainer from peppereffect that gets your company named in AI answers to your buyers' questions. We produce at least 16 assets a month, 20 on average, and report your Share of Model across five AI engines every month.

What exactly is included in the retainer?

At least 16, on average 20 assets a month published into your CMS; a monthly Share-of-Model report with the competitive set and the reasons the engines give; a dashboard with your Share-of-Model curve and the raw answers to a frozen set of buyer questions; a brand voice document, audience and persona overview, content strategy and editorial calendar; the refresh of your existing content where it applies; and a 30-minute strategy call every month. There is no setup fee and nothing is sold on top.

What does it cost?

One fixed monthly retainer with no setup fee and no onboarding charge. Six-month minimum term, then month to month. We share the price in the first call, after the free AI visibility measurement shows where you stand.

How is Share of Model measured?

We ask a fixed set of buyer questions in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and record which vendors each answer names. Share of Model is the share of answers that name your company, shown next to the share of your strongest competitor.

What exactly is guaranteed?

Presence, not displacement. You get a written target and a window (6 months for a refresh or hybrid site, 9 months for a full build). If the target is missed inside the window, we keep delivering for up to 3 more months at no fee, within the continuing contract. If the contract is cancelled, the guarantee ends, and there are no refunds. The guarantee requires CMS access within 10 working days, approvals within 5 working days, one named decision maker and attendance at the monthly call.

How do we start?

With the free AI visibility measurement: we put your buyers' questions to the AI engines and show you who gets named instead of you. If the number matters to you, we walk through it together in a 20-minute call and agree the next step.

THE NEXT STEP

Stop Renting Leverage. Install It.

Together we can achieve great things. Send us your request. We will get back to you within 24 hours.

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