How To Track AI Search Citations with SE Ranking API

Have you ever wondered where AI search cites your brand? Maybe you’re unsure how to interpret the data or wish you had more control over data retrieval. By leveraging SE Ranking’s API, you can conduct powerful AI search discovery and understand where your competitors stack up. That’s what we’re covering in this guide.

Why Track Brand Citations in AI Search

One of the most important things for SEO agencies, content marketers, and businesses to understand today is how their brands are cited in AI search. Many big SEO tools offer ways to pull this information, but they can be expensive. If you want greater flexibility in how you run these queries, leveraging APIs is highly effective. This guide shows you how to use SE Ranking’s API to pull powerful AI SEO research.

Setting Up Your SE Ranking API Key

First, make sure you have an active SE Ranking account and an API key. If you don’t, follow this guide to set up your API key.

This guide focuses on the data API, not the projects API. The data API pulls from SE Ranking’s database of search rankings and related data, while the projects API pulls data from your specific projects.

Integration Options

You can use the SE Ranking API with other integrations like Looker Studio or Make to create your own workflows. You can also use their MCP if you want to explore that option.

This guide focuses on creating Python applications in Google Colab to retrieve the data you need. If you’re unfamiliar with Colab, don’t worry. Thanks to LLMs and shareable templates like the one provided here, you can accomplish quite a bit without extensive coding knowledge.

Step 1: Initial Python Setup

When running in Python, make sure your setup is correct. Here’s what to import:

Import requests and pandas. These libraries allow you to call the API and organize your data.

Pull your API key from secrets. Store your API key under secrets so you don’t expose it publicly while still being able to run necessary calls.

Once your setup is complete, with the appropriate headers indicating what the API should do and where to find your key, you can start building your functions.

Step 2: Building Functions for Brand Monitoring

Each function performs a specific task. In this example, we’re looking at two engines: AI mode and AI Overview. You can also query Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Gemini, though those will use more API calls. For this guide, we’re focusing on two essential engines for SEO professionals.

Set your parameters. Provide a list of brands and engines, then specify the information you’re looking for:

• Brand sources
• The engine
• The search volume for each AI Overview query

Set a limit to 50. This prevents overuse of your API while capturing the top 50 queries that mention these brands.

Run the function. The function processes your parameters and returns the results to the database.

Step 3: Testing the Function

Test your setup with the included testing function. It fetches all the prompts for your brand name across AI mode and AI Overview, limited to 10 results to demonstrate functionality. The process runs in the background automatically.

After a few minutes, you’ll receive:

• The prompts
• Potential search volume for each prompt
• The type of search
• The brand found, and the engine searched
• The source
• The answer

Note: AI mode may show zero traffic because SE Ranking attaches keyword volume data specifically to AI Overview prompts.

Step 4: Setting Up Competitor Analysis

Beyond tracking your own rankings, you need to understand where competitors rank and how you compare. This requires a new function.

Define your parameters:

• Your brand and competitor brands
• The engines you want to query
• Location (US in this example)
• Result limit (50)

Call the API. The function calls the API and returns the requested information, including volume data grouped by brand.

Step 5: Running the Competitor Analysis

With your function set up, you can run a full analysis.

Enter your brand. Add your brand name to the query.

Add competitors. Include the competitors you want to analyze. The example uses competitors in the carbon fiber manufacturing space.

Select engines. Choose your engines (swap in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity as needed).

Run the functions. Execute the following:

• Run all the prompts
• Generate brand summary
• Generate engine summary
• Compare brands versus competitors

The analysis produces a detailed chart showing how many prompts were found for each brand (for example: 100 prompts, 100 prompts, and 29 prompts) along with total volume (34,000, 6,000, and 1,000). It also breaks down prompt counts by engine or group, revealing coverage levels across different brands.

Step 6: Viewing and Analyzing the Results

The tool stores all results in a brand versus competitor data sheet.

Download the sheet. After downloading, you’ll have comprehensive data showing which prompts your brand appears in and which prompts your competitors appear in.

Identify gaps. Analyze the data to identify opportunities where competitors are present, but you’re not.

Apply filters. For example, filter for just AI Overviews and sort ascending. You might discover that while a competitor shows up for “aluminum honey cone suppliers,” you appear for “aluminum versus supplier.” This reveals potential terms to target after evaluating volume and other factors.

With this data, you can build a strategy to increase your visibility across AI platforms.

The Benefits of This Approach

This entire process takes about three minutes to run. By setting limitations on query volume, you avoid burning through your API keys while still gathering valuable insights. The approach is significantly cheaper than tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, and you retain full control over your API calls. We use this tool to gather information and build strategies for GEO and AI SEO.

If you have questions or want to try it out, sign up for a 14-day free trial courtesy of SE Ranking. 

Saving Your Copy and Adding Your API Key

You must follow these steps carefully to make the tool work:

Step 1: Save a copy to your drive.

• Go to File
• Select Save a Copy in My Drive
• This is the only way to run the notebook in your own drive

Open the copy in a new tab.

Step 2: Add your API key.

• Navigate to the keys section
• Create your key exactly as shown: SE Ranking
• Enter your API key in the value field
• Enable access to the notebook

Without completing these steps, the tool won’t work. This is critical for testing on your own.

Tracking brand mentions in AI search is just the beginning. If you want to turn this data into a strategy that drives real results, we can help. Contact us today to discuss how we can help your brand get cited more often by AI engines. And until next time, happy marketing.