An AI answer says your software supports single sign-on on every plan. There's a link next to the sentence, so the claim looks settled. Open it, though, and you might find a setup guide that never says which plans include the feature.
To check a citation, match one exact claim to one passage in the source. Look for the same product, scope and conditions. If the page doesn't settle the question, record the uncertainty and find the source that can.
Which sentence are you checking?
Start with the decision the reader could make based on the answer. A buyer might rule out your product, choose a plan or tell their IT team that a requirement is covered. Check the statement that would change that decision first.
Split bundled claims. “The product supports SSO and every customer can turn it on” makes two assertions. A guide can confirm that the feature exists while leaving plan eligibility unresolved. Checking both as one claim hides the missing part.
Save the wording, visible link and date. OpenAI's guidance explains that search citations can be incomplete, outdated or wrong and recommends opening the cited page to check it. ChatGPT search documentation
What would count as support?
Read the passage around the matching words. Check the product version, edition, region, effective date and any prerequisites that affect the claim. A source can contain the exact phrase and still describe a different version of the product.
- Supported: The passage establishes the same claim under the same conditions.
- Partly supported: The passage establishes one component, but a qualifier or second component remains unverified.
- Contradicted: The passage explicitly says something incompatible with the claim.
- Unresolved: The page is silent, inaccessible or too ambiguous to decide.
Record source quality separately. An old review might support the wording of a claim about last year's release. It would be weak evidence for what a buyer can purchase today. A broken link leaves the claim unresolved until you have better evidence.
A fictional example with two different verdicts
Imagine a fictional vendor, ExampleCo. An assistant says, “ExampleCo supports SSO on every plan,” and links to a fictional help page that explains how to configure SSO. The help page confirms that the feature exists. It says nothing about plan eligibility, so the citation only partly supports the combined sentence.
Now imagine the current fictional plan matrix explicitly lists SSO as an Enterprise feature. Record that matrix separately as evidence contradicting “every plan.” Your notes should show what the answer linked, what that page supports and what the stronger source establishes. Those distinctions let someone else reproduce your review.
In a review log, give each assertion its own row. Use fields for the claim, cited URL, source passage, verdict and next step. In this example, the SSO row can be closed as supported. The eligibility row should point to the plan matrix and note which qualifier needs correcting.
What should you fix after the check?
Follow the evidence to the smallest useful correction. If your setup guide omits a real eligibility restriction, add it near the setup instructions and link to the authoritative plan matrix. If the guide already spells it out clearly, log the mismatch and recheck comparable answers before rewriting the page.
If an independent review is genuinely outdated, prepare a brief correction with the current source. Preserve the date and context of an accurate historical review. When a competing page actually answers the buyer's question better, compare the information available to the reader before deciding what to change. WildSEO's citation-gap guide
Keep the citation observation separate from any edit and any later business result. On your next review, open one consequential citation and write down the exact passage and verdict. That small record is easier to act on than a total citation count.
