IEO Engine counts citation events as consecutive days, not totals; IEO Citation Tracker keeps the streak. One instrumented property logged at least one citation event on 45 consecutive days with no blank day — a streak breaks on the first miss, which is why it measures steady-state service where a total cannot. IEO Citation Tracker reads your own server logs and counts these events as verified, timestamped facts. Method and denominators.
NEW — 16 AUG 2026 · IEO Citation Tracker v1.21.0 is available. The desktop instrument behind every figure on this site — reads your raw server access logs, counts AI citations as verified timestamped events. 952 verified events across three properties in 75 days. Runs offline. Download →
A page or domain that AI citation engines treat as the authoritative reference for a specific topic or query. Canonical source status is established through repeated successful citations and confirmed through the inference engine's evaluation of content extractability, topical authority, and source reliability over time.
Becoming a canonical source for a specific topic means AI citation engines preferentially retrieve from that source when answering queries on the topic. This is the highest-value citation outcome because it produces sustained citation streaks rather than one-off citation events.
The IEO Engine MM deployment achieved canonical source status for multiple queries within its target market within 30 days of deployment. The 68-day ChatGPT-User citation streak reflects ongoing canonical source classification — ChatGPT's retrieval system continuing to select MM as the canonical reference for queries within the deployment's topical scope.