AI citation optimization: check what Reddit, Quora and YouTube say first

We ran one full source check for a real brand, Notion. We found 20 Reddit posts, Quora answers and YouTube videos about Notion or Notion AI. We read each one and gave it a stance with rules that we wrote before the first call. The result: 9 positive, 3 negative and 8 neutral or off-topic sources.

All 3 negative sources were on Reddit. Quora and YouTube had none. Two sources also conflict with the current Notion help center, so we marked them out of date. One is a Reddit thread from May 2025. The other is a YouTube guide from August 2026.

The 26 Notion requests ran on November 16, 2026, from 00:19 to 00:33 Singapore time, and cost $0.016049. To read three industry videos, we made 4 more calls for $0.002446. The 18 calls that you need for 20 sources cost $0.012479 at catalog prices. That is about $0.000624 per source.

The reason for this test is a product launch. On November 12, 2026, Scrunch released Citation Optimization. The Sitecore press release says the feature finds the third-party pages that AI answers cite for each prompt a brand tracks (Sitecore press release). It then ranks those pages by influence and by how easy they are to win.

The output is a list of page addresses. The next step is to open each page and read what it says about you, and from which year. Our data API does that step. It returns the post text, the comments and the video transcript, so you know what others say first. It does not change how an AI ranks or cites pages.

What Scrunch Citation Optimization does (November 12, 2026)

On November 16, from 00:15 to 00:18 Singapore time, we read four original pages. These are the Sitecore newsroom release, the Scrunch blog post, the Scrunch pricing page and the Scrunch Labs citation study. The table below uses only sentences that we found in those pages. When only a news report has a fact, we say so.

The original text has three details. First, the ranking uses two scores. One score says how much a page shapes AI answers. The other says how likely you are to get added. Winnability runs from 1 to 5 and looks at who the page names, what kind of page it is and when it changed last.

Second, Scrunch drafts but does not send. It finds the page and the author and writes the message. You copy the message, send it and then mark it as sent in Scrunch. Third, the fact check needs approved brand facts in Knowledge Studio. The system compares third-party claims with those facts and flags conflicts. Together, these details show one condition: you need an accurate list of your own facts before you can say that someone else is wrong.

On the same day, Scrunch Labs released a study. The Sitecore newsroom title is "40% of AI Assistant Sessions Never Touch the Open Web" (Scrunch Labs study release). In ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, 40.8% of sessions had no web search before and no click after. For traditional search, the share was 21.5%. The study also says that about 91% of the extra site visits after an AI recommendation arrive with no AI referral source. So what AI answers say about you is mostly invisible in your own traffic reports.

The Scrunch blog also gives survey numbers. 58% of marketing and PR professionals do not review which third-party sources AI cites most in their category. 61% do not work to get brand mentions in trusted media. The press release says Scrunch has more than 500 customers since its founding in 2023.

The Scrunch blog post on the impostor study also splits the results by question type. Answers to refund and cancellation questions cited known impostors about 7.5 times as often as answers to product comparison questions. For login and account questions, the rate was about 6.3 times as high.

Google ranked the impostor in its top 10 organic results only 2.2% of the time, against 40.9% for the other sources in the same answers. Fewer than 1% of the impostor domains appear on any of three public phishing feeds (Scrunch impostor study). The blog calls these preliminary findings. AI models made the labels, and two independent AI reviews checked them, with no manual review. For a source check, start with the pages cited for refund, cancellation and login questions, where a wrong page costs the most. Google rankings do not show these pages.

According to CMSWire, Sitecore announced the Scrunch acquisition on June 3, 2026, for about $225 million (CMSWire acquisition report). CMSWire attributes this figure to Bloomberg. We saw this amount only in news reports, not in a Sitecore release. One day before the launch, on November 11, 2026, Sitecore introduced MarketingIQ. It feeds Scrunch data into content and campaign work in SitecoreAI (MarketingIQ release).

Which sites AI answers cite: Reddit, YouTube and Quora

Before we chose the platforms, we read two public citation studies. Ahrefs updated its list of the 50 most-cited websites in Google AI Overviews on November 3, 2026 (Ahrefs study). For the US and all topics, YouTube has 24.5% of citations, Reddit 18.1% and Quora 4.4%. Together, the three sites have 47.0%.

The denominator is all citations of the top sites. So the number tells you the share among cited sites. It does not tell you how many answers cite each site.

The second source is the Rankspot AI Citation Index, updated November 14, 2026 (Rankspot index). It looks at 144,305 answers to buying questions from September 1 to November 14. For each site, it counts the share of answers that cite the site at least once.

Reddit appears in 15.3% of Google AI Overview answers but in only 2.3% of ChatGPT answers. For YouTube, the numbers are 22.2% and 0.8%. The two engines pick sources in very different ways. So the platforms you check depend on which AI your buyers use. One overall ranking is not enough.

The Scrunch Labs citation study gives a third set of numbers (Scrunch Labs study). For prompts without a brand name, third-party sources support 89.6% of answers. Across more than 442 million citation events, 87.2% came from sites other than the brand's own site.

The study also lists a citation half-life, which shows how fast cited sources change. ChatGPT is the fastest at 3.4 weeks. Google AI is at 4.5 weeks and Perplexity at 5.8 weeks. Fast change means that the pages cited today can be different a month from now. So a source check needs to run again each month.

Google and OpenAI describe their own rules. Google Search Central has a page on AI features (Google Search Central). It says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. The usual search basics apply. Google Search Help has a separate page that explains what AI Overviews are (Google AI Overviews help).

The OpenAI help center says that ChatGPT search answers include links to sources, and users can open them to check (ChatGPT search help). The OpenAI crawler page says that OAI-SearchBot is used to show websites in ChatGPT search results (OpenAI crawlers).

Researchers have also studied whether page edits can change visibility in generative answers. The 2023 GEO paper reports that some edits raised visibility by up to 40% on its own test set (GEO paper). That is a lab test of edits to your own pages. It is a different thing from activity under other people's posts.

From ai citation optimization to a page list

In search suggestions on November 16, the query "ai citation optimization" suggests "citation optimization". The query "scrunch citation optimization" suggests "scrunch citations". So people search for the general topic, and some look for the Scrunch feature by name. With or without Scrunch, the second half of the work is the same. You get a list of pages that AI answers cite, and you read each page.

Pages in the list fall into two groups. For pages with a URL, fetch them by address. For a Reddit thread, use reddit/comments, which returns the post body and the comments together. For a YouTube video, use youtube/transcript for the full transcript and youtube/comments for comments.

For pages with only a keyword, search first and then pick. Use reddit/search, quora/search, quora/answers and youtube/search. In our test, fetching by URL wasted almost nothing. Keyword search returned many results that were not about the brand. In Quora answer search, only 2 to 9 of 20 results were relevant.

We read the prices from the public catalog on November 16 at 00:15 Singapore time. Each call has one price, whatever the number of rows. All seven capabilities showed available=true. The platform pages are Reddit data API, Quora data API and YouTube data API. For a first setup, start with the quickstart.

Test design: why Notion, and how we judged

We set the brand rule before the calls. The brand had to change its prices or plans in the last 12 months. Then we can judge "out of date" against the current pricing page, not by feel. Notion fits. Its AI pricing changed three times in 18 months. The latest change came in two steps, on October 19 and November 2, and the next change is set for December 1.

We read the official facts for the out-of-date test on November 16, from 00:20 to 00:45 Singapore time. The Notion pricing page shows Plus at $10 and Business at $20 per member a month, billed yearly. Our text extractor did not get the monthly prices from that page. The monthly prices, $12 and $24, come from the Y8 transcript, which reads the official pricing page as of October 3. Y1 and Y2 also say that Business costs $24 billed monthly.

The Notion AI FAQ says full Notion AI is in Business and Enterprise. Free and Plus get a limited number of trial uses. The credits page and the plan change page explain credits and plan changes.

We also wrote the stance rules before the first call, at 00:18 Singapore time. The table below gives the short form.

In more words: Positive means the source recommends the product, says it works well or says it is worth the price. Negative means the source complains, says it is not worth it, says the author left, or reports a limit or a bug. Neutral or off-topic means the source names the brand with no judgement, or it is not about the brand.

We judged "out of date" separately. A source is out of date when its price, plan name or feature status conflicts with the official pages above. Only facts count, not tone. One source can be negative and out of date.

A person read each source and made each call. We did not let a model judge in bulk. The out-of-date test compares each claim with an official sentence, and a model can easily treat "Business has AI" and "Business has unlimited AI" as the same claim. With many sources, filter first with keyword rules for prices and plan names. Then a person reads only those lines. We saved every call and reason in files, and all chart numbers come from those files.

Here is one of our requests. The key stays in an environment variable and never goes into the command. This call fetched the 2025 thread:

curl -s https://api.everyinfra.com/api/v1/social \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EVERYINFRA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"platform": "reddit", "action": "comments",
       "params": {"url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1klq9r9/notion_pricing_update_no_more_ai_for_plus_accounts/", "limit": 50}}'

A transcript needs one parameter:

{"platform": "youtube", "action": "transcript",
 "params": {"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMkxYfrI4gU"}}

The first call ran at 00:19:48 and the last at 00:33:24 Singapore time. The test key allows 10 calls a minute, and several writing tasks shared it. So we got five 429 responses. Each time we waited 60 seconds and tried again.

None of the five was charged. We sent 26 requests in total, and 21 succeeded and were charged, for $0.016049. We saved each response as a file and computed all numbers from those files.

Results: 9 positive, 3 negative, 8 neutral, 2 out of date

The 20 sources are 7 from Reddit, 5 from Quora and 8 from YouTube. Reddit is the opposite of the other two platforms. Reddit has 3 negative, 4 neutral and no positive sources. Quora has 4 positive sources out of 5, and YouTube has 5 positive sources out of 8. Neither has a negative source.

All negative sources are Reddit community posts. Users started these discussions themselves, and the complaints focus on the credit change after October 19. Most Quora and YouTube content is tool lists and reviews, and the authors have a reason to recommend. Y3 has an affiliate link, and Notion sponsored Y7.

Second, "out of date" and tone are not linked. R7 is negative and out of date. Y5 is a neutral long guide that was correct in August, but the credit rules changed after that.

One sampling limit is important. We picked the 20 sources from search results. On Reddit, we searched "Notion AI worth it" and "Notion pricing", which tend to find posts with opinions. On YouTube, we searched "Notion AI review 2026", which finds reviews. So "all negative sources are on Reddit" describes this sample only. It does not describe the full reputation of Notion on Reddit.

With a page list from a tool such as Scrunch, the sample comes from what AI answers cite. That sample is closer to what buyers see in AI answers.

Reddit: all the negative sources, and comments about money

R3 was posted in r/Notion on November 4. The author says they used the Business plan for more than two years and liked Notion AI. They used it for client records, deliverables and meeting notes. After the credit change, it stopped working well for them. The post has 118 votes and 34 comments.

At 00:26:26 Singapore time, we fetched 32 comments with reddit/comments. The top comment says the writer is in the same place and that AI became "basically useless" after the credit change. Other top comments discuss where to move. They name Granola and Wispr Flow, and one describes Claude with MCP to send content back to Notion.

R6 was posted on October 19. The body is only a link to a post by a Notion co-founder about the price change. At 00:33:24 Singapore time, we fetched 34 comments. The top ones say "I love intransparent pricing!" and ask what credits are worth. One Business user asks how a company can change terms for paying users on short notice.

The post itself is a neutral link, but the comments are not. This is why we always fetch comments for Reddit threads. With the title and body only, you would skip R6 as an off-topic link.

To compare comment sections, we wrote two keyword rules before the count. The "leaving" rule matches words such as Obsidian, Granola, AppFlowy, Nuclino, Otter, leave, migrate, cancel, switch, alternative and "moved to". The "money" rule matches words such as credit, pricing, price, the dollar sign, pay, bill, expensive, greedy and cost.

The rules are rough. A comment that mentions "credit" in passing also counts. But we used the same rules on all six threads and videos, so the comparison is fair.

Under the R6 pricing post, 22 of 34 comments talk about money (65%). Under the old R7 thread, 21 of 35 do (60%). Under the YouTube workflow video with more than 100,000 views, only 2 of 50 top comments talk about money and 2 about leaving. This video does not discuss prices, and the pricing posts do. So these numbers show that comments follow the content. They do not show a platform difference.

R2 was posted in r/ObsidianMD, not in a Notion community. The author left Notion a year ago and says the push toward paid AI features was "the last straw". The post has 81 votes. A Notion brand team can easily miss posts like this. It sits in a competitor community, and a Notion keyword monitor may not find it. But it ranks near the top when you search "Notion AI worth it".

R5 is a pricing cheat sheet posted in r/Notion on October 20, with 30 votes and 25 comments. The author made it because clients and the community asked many questions. The post says the new pricing starts on November 2 and applies to Business and Enterprise only. Free and Plus do not change. These lines match the Notion help center, so R5 is neutral and current.

At 00:27:47 Singapore time, we fetched 22 comments. With the same rules, 5 of 22 mention leaving (23%). That is lower than R6 (27%) and R3 (41%). But 8 talk about money (36%), close to R3 (34%). Three posts cannot show if a clear rule summary makes the discussion calmer. We will compare again in the next check.

Each of these shares rests on only 20 to 35 comments, so we checked the counts. The 95% Wilson interval for "leaving" is 10% to 43% under R5 and 26% to 58% under R3. Most of the two ranges overlap. A two-sided Fisher exact test gives p = 0.24 for "leaving" and p = 1.0 for "money" between R5 and R3.

The largest gap is money under R6 and R5 (65% against 36%), with p = 0.055, just above the usual 0.05 line. To detect a gap of 23% against 41% at the 0.05 level with 80% power, each thread needs about 105 comments. R5 has only 25 comments in total, so a full fetch cannot reach that number. Use the comment signals to find threads to read. Do not use them to rank the mood of two threads until each has more than 100 comments.

R7 is the Reddit source that we marked out of date. It was posted on May 13, 2025, and asks if Plus accounts lose AI. We fetched 35 comments at 00:28:04 Singapore time. The comments describe an older world. Free and Plus users could add AI for 8 to 10 dollars a month. Business had "full unlimited AI".

The current Notion help center says new buyers cannot add the add-on. Business AI is not unlimited either. Each member gets 1,500 Standard and 500 Select credits a month. When an AI answer cites a thread like this, readers get prices from 18 months ago.

This thread also shows a tool limit. The time window of reddit/search is fixed to the last month, so keyword search cannot find a 2025 thread. We fetched it by URL with reddit/comments.

This matches the output of tools such as Scrunch, which give you URLs of cited pages. By URL, you can fetch a page from last month or from last year. For complete comment trees, see our post on Reddit "more comments" and completeness. Threads with fewer than 35 comments come back in one call.

R4 is a different kind of neutral source. The title tells readers to "try this once", and the body promotes a Notion backup tool with a product link. It names Notion and does not criticize it, so the rules make it neutral. But if an AI answer cites this post, the answer shows a third-party product promotion. We added a note to the table. The brand team decides whether to act on pages like this.

Quora: mostly recommendations, and noisy search

Four of the 5 Quora sources are positive. The questions are list questions, such as "best AI tools in 2026" or "best free productivity tools". Each answer lists Notion AI as one item with one or two lines of praise.

At 00:21:35 Singapore time, we searched "Notion AI worth it" with quora/answers and got 20 answers. Our rule counts a result when the text or title contains Notion AI, Notion's, Notion Plus or similar forms, with case. By that rule, only 9 of the 20 answers were about Notion AI. At 00:32:27 Singapore time, we searched "Notion AI price per month". Only 2 of 20 answers were on topic.

The rule is case-sensitive because "notion" is a common English word. Phrases such as "the notion of" or "no notion" fill the results otherwise. At 00:20:55 Singapore time, quora/search for "Notion AI" returned 20 question pages. Twelve of them were under the unanswered path, so nobody had answered yet. Only 8 had answers.

Reddit had a similar problem. At 00:32:44 Singapore time, we searched "Notion AI credits" with newest first. None of the 4 results were about Notion. They discussed credits in other products. Only a query with clear intent, such as "Notion AI worth it", returned 4 relevant results out of 4.

One quora/answers call costs $0.001389 at catalog prices. With 2 useful answers out of 20, each useful answer costs about $0.0007, which is still cheap. The larger cost is the reading time. We filter with a regular expression first and then read what is left. With Quora page addresses from an AI answer, you can skip search and read only those pages.

Quora answers also have low view counts. Q4 was posted on November 12, and it had 9 views when we fetched it. Q3 from August had 1,389 views and 12 upvotes. Low views do not mean low impact. In the Ahrefs data, Quora still has 4.4% of Google AI Overview citations. An answer with a few dozen views can appear in many AI answers once an AI cites it.

YouTube: prices and sponsors are in the transcript

For all 8 YouTube sources, we fetched the full transcript with youtube/transcript. Then we read the lines about price and plans. At 00:24:07 Singapore time, youtube/search for "Notion AI review 2026" returned 10 videos. Eight were reviews and tutorials that we used. The other 2 were a security guide and a one-minute tutorial, which we did not use.

Y5 is a 44-minute guide uploaded on August 24. It covers Notion AI features, prices and prompts. At about minute 20, it says that from August 3, 2026, some AI features on Business and Enterprise use rolling six-hour and monthly windows. That was true in August. It stopped being true after October 19.

The video neither praises nor criticizes, so it is neutral, but it is out of date. It has 1,483 views and is the most detailed video in our set. When an AI answer cites it for "how much does Notion AI cost", the answer uses the old rules.

Y2 is the opposite case. It was uploaded on November 3. It opens by saying that every old review says Notion AI costs $10 a month, and that this is wrong. Then it explains that the add-on ended in May 2025. Full Notion AI now needs a Business seat at $20 per member a month, billed yearly. Since October 2026, each seat has a monthly allowance of Standard and Select credits.

We checked each line against the official pages, and all of them match.

Y3 is a review uploaded on May 7, with 9,200 views and an affiliate link in the description. It says Business costs $20 per member a month, billed yearly, and includes AI meeting notes and enterprise search "for free". That is true today. But the Notion credits page says that from December 1, AI Meeting Notes use Standard credits, about 10 per one-hour meeting. So in our table, Y3 says "No (check again after December 1)". For claims with a known end date, add a "next check" column to your table.

Of the 8 comments under Y3, 3 say the script sounds like ChatGPT wrote it or repeats typical AI patterns. This is not about Notion. But as a brand team, you need to know when viewers doubt a review, because that changes the weight of the source.

Y7 is a tutorial uploaded on December 1, 2025, with 64,000 views. In the transcript, the author says Notion reached out to sponsor a video about the new AI features, and thanks Notion for the sponsorship. But none of the 10 youtube/search results, this one included, returned the is_paid_partnership field. The catalog says that this field "may be absent".

YouTube Help asks creators to declare paid promotion, and viewers then see an "Includes paid promotion" label (YouTube paid promotion help). The US Endorsement Guides also require disclosure of material connections (16 CFR 255). In our data, the search field is not a reliable signal. Read the transcript.

Y8 puts the price check date on screen. The video says its prices come from the Notion pricing page "checked on October 3rd, 2026", with the date on screen. At the end it says that it gives no score and no winner. Our rules make it neutral, and the prices match. When a video shows its check date, anyone can tell if it is out of date.

For YouTube comments, our post on comment reply pagination explains how to use youtube/comments. For Y4, we fetched 50 top comments. The top one (32 likes) says the viewer gave the full Notion playlist to NotebookLM and then had Claude apply the ideas. Another says the viewer hit Notion API limits often and had Claude build a clone on a private server.

These comments are not judgements of Notion, so we count them as neutral. But they show what viewers discuss. The YouTube Data API commentThreads method also sorts by time or relevance (YouTube Data API docs). We used the popular sort.

How to judge "out of date": facts, official quotes and times

The out-of-date check has three steps. First, pull out the facts that you can check: price, plan name, feature included or not, and start date. Second, find the current official page and note the time you read it. Third, compare.

When the facts match, mark the source current. When the official page names the date of the next change, note a check date too. When the facts do not match, mark the source out of date and put the official sentence next to it. When the official page does not open, mark the source "to check".

We hit the third case in this test. The R7 post links to the Notion help page about the 2025 pricing changes. We opened it at 00:45 Singapore time, and it returned 404.

Notion removed the old page, but the old thread is still there. So the date of the thread is the only way to judge its claims. Brands can learn from this. After a price change, redirect the old help page to the new one. When the old page just disappears, third-party links point to nothing.

The timeline makes this clear. 12 of the 20 sources were posted before October 19, when Notion moved to credits. Most of these 12 give no exact price or allowance, so they are not out of date. But the experience they describe is the experience under the old rules.

Two of the 3 negative Reddit posts are from October 17 or later. The third is the May 2025 thread from the previous price change. So the negative posts follow the price changes. Quora answers spread from June to November. YouTube reviews spread from May to November.

What industry videos say about "citations": three transcripts

We searched YouTube for "AI citation optimization" and read the transcripts of the top three videos. The first is a Semrush tool demo uploaded by George Vlasyev on May 11, 2026. It shows how to view brand mentions and sentiment in AI answers. It quotes a 2026 Ahrefs study: 67.8% of URLs that LLMs retrieved but did not cite were on Reddit. We could not find the original source for this number, so we did not use it in our charts. The video also recommends that you reply to both positive and negative feedback.

The second is a talk uploaded by Citation Labs on May 20, 2026. The speaker separates three things. A citation is a link in an AI answer, at domain or page level. A brand mention is your name in the answer. Sentiment is the tone of that mention. He says that more citations are not always better, because a mention can be unpleasant.

Our table has the same structure. Being cited is one fact. What the cited page says about you, and whether it is current, needs a separate judgement.

The third is a general explainer uploaded on October 23, 2026. It says that "getting cited by AI" is the new goal for content, and it explains how to edit your own pages. It covers your own content, not third-party sources.

Run the table with an AI assistant: MCP setup example

An AI assistant can also run this check. EveryInfra has a remote MCP server. At 00:37 Singapore time, we sent initialize and tools/list to api.everyinfra.com/mcp. These two steps call no capability and cost nothing. The server returned 12 tools. For data, we use everyinfra_list_capabilities and everyinfra_call_api.

The MCP specification is at modelcontextprotocol.io. Our setup notes are on the MCP server page. Below is a Claude Code setup example, based on the Claude Code MCP docs:

claude mcp add --transport http everyinfra https://api.everyinfra.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $EVERYINFRA_API_KEY"

After setup, write a prompt that names the capability and the rules:

Use only the everyinfra tools. Do not browse the web.
1. Call reddit/comments with everyinfra_call_api for the three URLs below, limit 50.
2. Get the transcripts of these two videos with youtube/transcript.
3. Copy each sentence about price, plan or credits. Compare it with the official sentences I paste.
   Make a table: source, date, quote, official sentence, match / no match / to check.
Leave the stance column empty. I will fill it in.

We leave the stance column for a person to fill in. Copying sentences and comparing them with official text is mechanical work, and an AI assistant can save time there. When your team keeps the table in Notion, Notion has its own MCP server too (Notion developer docs). With both connected, the table can go straight into a database.

We used remote MCP before for brand mention monitoring, and scheduled tasks for a Reddit pain point digest. The setup is similar.

Cost: about $0.0125 for 20 sources

The gap between the actual charge and the catalog total has three causes. One quora/search call ($0.001389) returned question pages but no answers, and none of our sources came from it. One extra quora/answers call ("Notion AI price per month") found 2 relevant answers out of 20. One reddit/search call with newest first found 0 relevant posts.

These three calls were the cost of learning. A second check of the same brand does not need them. The five 429 responses were not charged. Under our billing rules, failed calls and empty results are free. The full price list is on the pricing page.

Compare this with Scrunch. The Scrunch Core plan costs $250 a month and answers "which pages do AI answers cite". Our API answers "what does each cited page say". You can do the two steps apart, or one after the other.

Limits and cautions

First, our API fetches public content. It cannot change how an AI ranks or cites pages. Google Search Central says AI Overviews have no extra optimization requirements. Scrunch itself says "find and reach out", and you send the messages.

Second, reddit/search has a fixed one-month window. To check older threads, you need their URLs first. Quora keyword search is noisy: sometimes only 2 of 20 answers are useful. YouTube search did not return the is_paid_partnership field in this test, so read the transcript to find sponsorship.

Third, the test key allows 10 calls a minute. After a 429, wait 60 seconds and try again. For production keys, see the limits on your account page. The Notion help page about the 2025 changes now returns 404, so only third-party dates show the old rules.

Fourth, follow platform rules when you reply or correct. The Reddit Content Policy bans content manipulation and vote manipulation (Reddit Content Policy). Use of public content also falls under the Public Content Policy and the Data API Terms. The US Consumer Review Rule bans fake reviews and the sale of reviews (16 CFR 465).

When a brand corrects a price under an old thread, it must use an account that shows who it is. Use of YouTube data also falls under the YouTube API Services Terms.

Fifth, 20 sources are one sample, not the full reputation of Notion. One person made the stance calls, with no second review. The comment signals use keyword rules, which also count comments that mention "credit" in passing. The rules are in this post. Use them on another brand, and you can compare the results.

Industry news (last 60 days)

• November 12, 2026: Scrunch released Citation Optimization and Imposter Detection. Scrunch Labs published its study the same day: 40.8% of AI assistant sessions do not touch the open web (Sitecore press release). CMSWire reported it too (CMSWire launch report).
• November 11, 2026: Sitecore introduced MarketingIQ, which connects Scrunch data to content and campaign work (CMSWire report).
• November 10, 2026: OpenAI launched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta. Businesses can claim their ChatGPT profile. The help center says ChatGPT can still use other sources (OpenAI help center, OpenAI policy, ChatGPT release notes). We tested it in check store listings and reviews before you claim.
• November 3 and November 14, 2026: Ahrefs and Rankspot updated their AI citation studies. YouTube and Reddit are in the top two of both.
• November 2, 2026: existing Notion workspaces moved to Standard and Select credits. New workspaces moved on October 19.
• October 29, 2026: Reddit reported Q3 2026 results (Reddit investor relations). Daily active uniques were 130.3 million, weekly active uniques 515.2 million and revenue $895 million.
• October 15, 2026: Google described changes to how links show in AI Mode and AI Overviews (Google blog).

How to repeat this for another brand

For your own brand, start with the official facts. Copy the sentences about price, plans, features and start dates from your pricing page and help center. Record the URL and the time you read each one. Be specific. "Business costs $20 per member a month, billed yearly" is more useful than "Business is fairly priced". Later, you compare third-party sentences with these sentences word by word.

The Scrunch fact check uses brand facts stored in Knowledge Studio for the same reason. Without a fact list, you cannot say that someone else is wrong.

Next, get the source addresses. With a tool such as Scrunch, use its list of cited pages. Without one, ask ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity five to ten questions that buyers ask. Copy the source links next to each answer. Choose questions close to a buying decision, such as "is X worth it", "X or Y" and "how much does X cost". Pages cited for these questions are the most likely to affect a purchase. Sort the addresses by platform: Reddit, YouTube, Quora and other sites.

Then fetch the original text by address. For Reddit threads, use reddit/comments, up to 100 comments per call. For YouTube videos, get the transcript first, and get top comments for busy videos. For Quora, when you have only a question page, search answers with quora/answers and the question title. Save each response as it is, with the fetch time in the file name. Next month, fetch again and compare.

After that, judge each source for stance and for "out of date". Write the stance rules before you read, and do not change them later. For "out of date", look only at facts, and put the third-party quote next to the official sentence. Then compute two sets of numbers: stance by platform, and the count and dates of out-of-date sources.

Last, hand the table to the owners. Website and help center issues go to the content team. Old community threads go to community managers. Corrections for long videos go to the person who works with creators. One full run for one brand costs one to two cents in API fees. Reading time depends on the number of sources and the video length, and we did not time it in this test.

What to do with the table

After you hand over the table, three kinds of work remain, and the brand owns all of them. The first is to fix your own pages. Put start dates on the pricing page, help center and changelog. Redirect old help pages instead of removing them. The 404 on the 2025 Notion help page is an example that a redirect would avoid.

The second is to reply in public in communities. Use an account that shows who you are. Under the old thread, add one line with the current rule and its start date. Link to the official page. The third is to contact content authors. For a long video like Y5, the author may add a correction line to the description or a pinned comment.

None of these steps ask an AI to change its citations. They change whether the cited page is accurate. At the next check, fetch the same 20 sources again. You can then see which pages changed and where the comment discussion moved. By the Scrunch Labs half-life, half of ChatGPT citations change in three to four weeks, so a monthly check is a good rhythm.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Scrunch Citation Optimization cost, and which plans include it?

The Scrunch blog says all Enterprise plans include it. Self-serve plans get up to 10 targeted citations a month. Impersonation takedowns are free and unlimited on all plans. The pricing page lists the Core plan at $250 a month, with 125 prompts and 5,000 responses a month. Question source: the search suggestion "scrunch citations".

How is ai citation optimization different from SEO?

SEO looks at where your own pages rank in search results. AI citation work looks at which pages AI answers cite, and most of those pages are not yours. Scrunch Labs puts the third-party share at 87.2%. Google Search Central says AI Overviews need no extra optimization. So we suggest that you first check what third-party pages say. Question source: the search suggestion "citation optimization".

Without Scrunch, can I find which pages AI answers cite?

Yes, by hand. Ask your category questions in ChatGPT search or Google AI Overviews. Copy the source links next to each answer. Then fetch the original text by address with reddit/comments or youtube/transcript. At scale, manual records take a lot of time, and that is the part that tools like Scrunch charge for. Question source: the transcript of YouTube video QmZw_LgAMm8, where the speaker asks which kind of citation we mean: on-site or off-site, domain or page.

Can I reply under an old thread to correct an out-of-date price?

Yes, but use an account that shows who you are. Say who you are, what the current rule is and when it started, with an official link. The Reddit Content Policy bans content manipulation, and US rules ban fake reviews. One industry video that we read suggests replying to both positive and negative feedback, in public and in a way that others can check. Question source: the transcript of YouTube video bkrRH2cKyiA.

Why can Reddit search not find a thread from last year?

The time window of reddit/search is fixed to the last month. In this test, keyword search could not find the May 2025 thread. With the thread URL, reddit/comments fetches it with no time limit. Question source: this test, with 35 comments fetched at 00:28:04 Singapore time.

How can I tell if a YouTube review is sponsored?

Read the transcript and the description. In this test, Y7 says in its transcript "thank you to Notion for sponsoring this video". But the search results did not return the is_paid_partnership field. YouTube asks creators to declare paid promotion, but the flag is not always in the data. Question source: the transcript of YouTube video VSKIS5D-gQg.

References

1. Sitecore press release, Scrunch Launches Citation Optimization, November 12, 2026: https://www.sitecore.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/2026/11/scrunch-launches-citation-optimization-to-help-brands-influence-the-sources-behind-ai
2. Sitecore press release, 40% of AI Assistant Sessions Never Touch the Open Web, November 12, 2026: https://www.sitecore.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/2026/11/40-of-ai-assistant-sessions-never-touch-the-open-web-new-scrunch-study-finds
3. Sitecore press release, Sitecore Introduces MarketingIQ, November 11, 2026: https://www.sitecore.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/2026/11/sitecore-introduces-marketingiq-to-turn-brand-intelligence-into-business-growth
4. Scrunch blog, Introducing Citation Optimization, November 12, 2026: https://scrunch.com/blog/citation-optimization-land-sources-ai-trusts-shut-down-ones-it-shouldnt/
5. Scrunch pricing: https://scrunch.com/pricing/
6. Scrunch Labs, Citation dynamics: https://scrunch.com/labs/citation-dynamics/
7. CMSWire, Scrunch launches Citation Optimization: https://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/sitecore-scrunch-launches-citation-optimization-for-ai-search-visibility/
8. CMSWire, Sitecore acquires Scrunch: https://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/sitecore-acquires-scrunch-to-boost-ai-search-visibility/
9. CMSWire, MarketingIQ: https://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/sitecore-places-its-bet-on-answer-engine-visibility-with-marketingiq/
10. Ahrefs, The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Google AI Overviews, updated November 3, 2026: https://ahrefs.com/blog/most-cited-domains-ai-overviews/
11. Rankspot, AI Citation Index, updated November 14, 2026: https://www.rankspot.ai/most-cited-sources
12. Google Search Central, AI features and your website: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
13. Google Search Central, Creating helpful content: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
14. Google Search Help, About AI Overviews: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/14901683
15. Google blog, AI Mode and AI Overviews link updates, October 15, 2026: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/updates-ai-mode-overviews-explore-web/
16. OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT search: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-chatgpt-search
17. OpenAI platform docs, Overview of OpenAI crawlers: https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots
18. OpenAI Help Center, Setting up your business on ChatGPT: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001635-setting-up-your-business-on-chatgpt
19. OpenAI policy, Businesses in ChatGPT: https://openai.com/policies/businesses-in-chatgpt/
20. OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT release notes: https://help.openai.com/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes
21. Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, arXiv 2311.09735: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735
22. Notion pricing: https://www.notion.com/pricing
23. Notion Help, Notion AI FAQs: https://www.notion.com/help/notion-ai-faqs
24. Notion Help, What are Notion credits: https://www.notion.com/help/what-are-notion-credits
25. Notion Help, Standard, Select and Notion credits eligible features: https://www.notion.com/help/standard-select-and-notion-credits-eligible-features
26. Notion Help, Track usage in the Notion credits dashboard: https://www.notion.com/help/track-usage-in-the-notion-credits-dashboard
27. Notion Help, Upgrade or downgrade your plan: https://www.notion.com/help/upgrade-or-downgrade-your-plan
28. Notion developer docs, Notion MCP: https://developers.notion.com/docs/mcp
29. CodexBar docs, Notion usage notes (August 3, 2026 rules): https://github.com/steipete/CodexBar/blob/main/docs/notion.md
30. YouTube Help, paid product placements: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/154235
31. YouTube Data API, CommentThreads: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/commentThreads
32. YouTube Data API, Search: list: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/search/list
33. YouTube API Services Terms of Service: https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/api-services-terms-of-service
34. US Code of Federal Regulations, 16 CFR 255, Endorsement Guides: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-255
35. US Code of Federal Regulations, 16 CFR 465, Consumer Review Rule: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-465
36. Reddit Content Policy: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy
37. Reddit Public Content Policy: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/26410290525844
38. Reddit Data API Terms: https://redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms
39. Reddit Q3 2026 results, October 29, 2026: https://investor.redditinc.com/news-events/news-releases/news-details/2026/Reddit-Reports-Third-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx
40. Model Context Protocol specification: https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18
41. Claude Code docs, MCP: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/mcp
42. Scrunch blog, impostor study: https://scrunch.com/blog/impostors-are-in-your-ai-answers-websites-posing-as-your-brand-and-why-llms-cite-them/
43. EveryInfra public capability catalog: https://api.everyinfra.com/api/v1/social/catalog
44. EveryInfra remote MCP server: https://api.everyinfra.com/mcp
45. The 20 tested sources and 3 industry videos, listed below. For Quora we list question pages only, not author names.

R1 https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1xh7ua1/should_i_use_notion/
R2 https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1x8h3su/leaving_notion_was_the_best_decision_i_made/
R3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1xnv2er/business_user_of_2_years_they_had_a_good_thing/
R4 https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1xsze08/if_you_use_notion_for_anything_important_try_this/
R5 https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1xapojk/cheat_sheet_for_the_new_notion_pricing/
R6 https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1xa7mld/big_update_overhauled_our_pricing_and_packaging/
R7 https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1klq9r9/notion_pricing_update_no_more_ai_for_plus_accounts/
Q1 https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-AI-tools-for-solo-entrepreneurs-in-2026
Q2 https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-free-online-productivity-tools-in-2026
Q3 https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-AI-tools-to-increase-daily-productivity-in-2026
Q4 https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-AI-tools-to-save-time-and-increase-productivity-in-2026
Q5 https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-tools-to-turn-your-personal-knowledge-into-a-searchable-conversational-AI-assistant
Y1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KznaBvCs2Y
Y2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Lqh_kbd6U
Y3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNQcwNMxLsE
Y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofzHbyxkpVg
Y5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMkxYfrI4gU
Y6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RaQHJr3K44
Y7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSKIS5D-gQg
Y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF4O6JpC7kA
Industry video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkrRH2cKyiA
Industry video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmZw_LgAMm8
Industry video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhT1MlButHA