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CitationDesk

Changelog

Every update, dated.

This page is the dated record of every change to CitationDesk since it launched on 2026-05-19 — what shipped, what it replaced, and what is queued next. Subscribe via RSS to get notified when each release lands.

v0.5.12026-09-06

Accuracy pass — we removed claims the product does not actually deliver

  • We were describing two capabilities that do not exist in the code. First: several pages said we import your Bing Webmaster "AI Performance" data and triangulate the ChatGPT channel through the Bing index plus your referrers. There is no Bing import and no referrer triangulation anywhere in the pipeline — only a static site-ownership file. Second: a few pages promised continuous tracking across "all four LLMs". The scan pipeline has exactly three citation surfaces (Perplexity, Gemini grounding, OpenAI web search) and no Anthropic/Claude client at all.
  • Both claims are now gone from /pro/, the sample report, /tools/, the case studies, the RSS feed, and — worst of the set, because you only read it after paying — the inside of the Pro report itself. Readiness scoring genuinely does cover four LLMs (it is static page analysis and needs no API), so those claims were left exactly as they were.
  • Fixed in the same pass: a partial-failure bug in the weekly scan. A single API error on one of your prompts used to flip the whole surface to an error state and discard every check that had succeeded that week — so a week you were genuinely cited could render as "—". Surfaces now report their real count plus how many checks were lost, stated as a floor rather than a total.
  • The /pro/sample/ numbers were never fabricated — they are real Bing data pulled for one sample — but the page implied your own report would contain that section. It now says plainly which sections the automated pipeline produces and which it does not.
v0.52026-08-31

Pro for publishers — a weekly citation-to-revenue report (€29 founding)

  • Pro is live: the first paid plan. A weekly report for publishers that finds citations of your pages in the sources that actually expose them — Perplexity, Gemini grounding, OpenAI web search — and lines them up against your Search Console clicks and revenue pages.
  • Founding terms: €29/month locked, first 50 publishers, cancel anytime, 30-day full refund. Checkout via Stripe; onboarding is self-serve (send your domain, first report within 7 days).
  • The free tools stay free, permanently — Pro never gates a tool. The v0.3 "free, full stop" promise narrows honestly to "the tools are free; one optional plan exists," and every page that said "no paid tiers" was updated in the same pass (pricing, homepage, about, terms, privacy, comparisons, OG images).
  • /pro/ ships with an explicit measured-honestly section: what we read directly via APIs and your own search-console data, and what nobody can read directly (the consumer ChatGPT app, Google AI Overviews) — named as limitations instead of overclaimed.
v0.42026-08-11

Truth pass — every page now describes what the site actually does

  • Contact address changed site-wide to hello@caslonmedia.com (the publisher's address). The address used before it had no MX record, so every email sent to it bounced silently — if you wrote to us and never heard back, that is why. Please resend.
  • Publisher named consistently on /privacy, /terms and /contact: Caslon Media, registered in the Netherlands, KvK 64708101 — replacing the outdated "sole proprietor" wording.
  • Privacy policy corrected: it named Plausible, which the site no longer uses (analytics are Microsoft Clarity + GA4), and claimed no cookies were set. It now describes the real cookies and the region-scoped Consent Mode v2 behaviour.
  • Privacy policy corrected the other way too: it claimed we record submitted URLs and scores. We do not — the tools run against a stateless edge proxy with no database, so there is nothing stored and nothing to delete.
  • Removed leftover descriptions of a product that does not exist: the polling engine, dashboards, Slack alerts, CSV export, API tiers, and "Phase 1B ships soon" promises across /terms, /methodology, /api/docs, two case studies, two guides, and all seven solutions pages.
  • /welcome/ was still a post-payment "thank you for upgrading" page. There are no payments — it is now a plain welcome page.
  • Outbound tool links now run through one component so a future affiliate partnership is a single config change, and outbound clicks are measured from today. Every link on the site remains plain and untagged: no affiliate programs are approved and the site earns nothing from them.
v0.32026-08-10

CitationDesk is free, full stop — no paid tiers, no waitlist

  • Repositioned: the free AI Visibility Score + fix generators ARE the product. All paid-tier plans (Pro/Team), waitlists, and "early access" tracking promises removed site-wide.
  • The full Fix Kit is now un-gated — every fix in the ranked list is free (previously top-3 with a "coming soon" paid gate).
  • /pricing/ rewritten: CitationDesk is free; for continuous citation monitoring we recommend dedicated tools (Otterly.AI, Rankscale, Semrush, SE Ranking) with plain, untagged links.
  • New /partners/ media-kit page and /disclosure/ FTC affiliate-disclosure page, both linked from the footer.
  • Publisher named site-wide: CitationDesk is published by Caslon Media (sister site: sourcescore.org).
  • Comparison pages updated to reflect the free positioning honestly — CitationDesk is a point-in-time readiness audit, not a monitoring subscription.
v0.12026-05-19

Launch — front-end + free Citation Readiness Score live

  • CitationDesk is publicly accessible at citationdesk.com.
  • Free Citation Readiness Score audit (5-dimension, client-side): SEO Foundation, GEO Readiness, Dual Fit, Entity Coherence, Bot-Crawl Health.
  • 9 knowledge-base guides shipped covering the Aleyda 10-characteristic checklist, the scoring rubric, the four-LLM polling architecture, llms.txt setup, AI bot allowlist, Citation Oracle archetypes, the Dual Fit pattern, Entity Coherence + Schema chain, and Answer Engine Optimization.
  • 2 case studies live: HoldLens (0 → 10% ChatGPT inbound in 14 days), SourceScore (480:1 bot-to-human ratio framing).
  • 3 competitive comparisons live: vs Otterly, vs Profound, vs AthenaHQ.
  • Pricing transparent: Free (3 sites × 5 queries × weekly), Pro €49/mo (25 sites × daily × 50 queries × alerts), Team €149/mo (unlimited + 4h × API), Enterprise custom.
  • Schema.org saturation: Organization + Person + WebSite + SoftwareApplication + WebPage + Article + FAQPage globally.
  • AI-bot allowlist in /robots.txt (9 crawlers: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended (listed at the time under a wrong token name; corrected 2026-09-24), Applebot-Extended, CCBot, Amazonbot, Bytespider, Meta-ExternalAgent).
  • /llms.txt at site root with site summary + priority URLs + license.
  • Cloudflare DNS-proxied + AI Crawl Control set to allow.
  • Plausible analytics wired (privacy-first, no cookies).
v0.1.12026-05-19

Same-day polish — guides 5→9, changelog, RSS, per-page OG, IndexNow

  • Knowledge base expanded from 5 to 9 pillar pages (added Citation Oracle archetypes, Dual Fit pattern, Entity Coherence schema chain, Answer Engine Optimization).
  • This /changelog page — visible freshness signal + transparency.
  • /feed.xml RSS feed for Feedly / Inoreader discovery.
  • Per-page OG images generated programmatically for each route.
  • IndexNow ping submitted for all 28 URLs to api.indexnow.org → Bing + Yandex + Seznam + Naver index acceleration.
  • sitemap.xml + llms.txt updated to reflect new routes.

What's coming next?

The free tools stay free, permanently. The roadmap for them is polish and coverage; Pro — the optional weekly report for publishers — is a separate product and never gates a tool.

Next — free-tool polish

  • Keep the scoring rubric current as AI crawler behavior and schema guidance evolve.
  • More scored public sites in the /scores/ index.
  • Guide refreshes as the AI-visibility tool landscape changes.
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