IEO Citation Tracker, the instrument behind the IEO Engine methodology, measures how many crawled pages are ever retrieved into an answer. Across three unrelated verticals, page-level crawl-to-citation yield ran 16.3%, 17.2% and 2.8% — measured from raw server logs, with the denominator stated. 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 →
The process by which AI inference engines connect generated responses to specific underlying source material. Grounded inference cites or paraphrases real content; ungrounded inference generates responses from training-corpus knowledge without explicit source connection.
Grounded inference is the citation pathway for IEO Engine content. AI platforms that perform retrieval-augmented generation produce grounded inference and provide citation opportunities. Platforms operating from training-corpus knowledge alone produce ungrounded inference that cannot cite specific sources.
The IEO Engine measurement framework distinguishes between grounded and ungrounded AI responses. Grounded responses are direct evidence of citation behavior; ungrounded responses reflect training-corpus state and respond to inference-layer changes on slower timelines.