Skip to main content
This page covers the most common questions about Linkstonic — from getting your first brand set up to understanding what TrueTrace scores mean and how billing works. If you don’t find what you’re looking for here, the detailed docs for each feature are linked throughout the answers below.

​
Getting started

Linkstonic is an AI visibility and SEO intelligence platform. It tracks how your brand appears in answers generated by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, runs automated technical SEO audits across 14+ checks, and connects to your existing tools — Google Search Console, Google Sheets, Discord, and n8n.The core idea is that search now happens in two places: traditional Google search and AI answer engines. Linkstonic monitors both, gives you scored analysis of your visibility in each, and tells you exactly what to fix to improve your standing.
Yes. The Starter plan is permanently free — no credit card required and no time limit. It includes one brand, ten keywords, tracking on ChatGPT and Gemini, three SEO audits per month, and seven days of data history.If you need all four AI platforms, TrueTrace audits, Google Search Console integration, or more than three audits per month, you’ll need to upgrade to Pro (49/mo)orAgency(49/mo) or Agency (149/mo). The Pro plan includes a 14-day free trial so you can evaluate the full feature set before your first charge.
Most users complete their initial setup in under five minutes. The fastest path is:
  1. Create your account at linkstonic.com
  2. Add a brand profile with your name and domain
  3. Add the keywords you want to track
  4. Run your first AI visibility check or SEO audit
Optional steps — connecting Google Search Console, importing keywords from Google Sheets, or configuring Discord alerts — take a few minutes each but are not required to get started.
No. Linkstonic is designed to be usable by marketers, content creators, and business owners without any technical background. AI tracking and SEO audits run with a few clicks, and every failed audit check comes with AI-generated fix guidance written in plain language.Some integrations — particularly the n8n Webhook API on the Agency plan — are aimed at technically confident users who want to build custom automation pipelines. But the core platform requires no coding or technical setup.

​
AI visibility

Linkstonic tracks your brand across four major AI platforms:
  • ChatGPT (OpenAI GPT-4o)
  • Claude (Anthropic)
  • Gemini (Google)
  • Perplexity
The Starter plan includes ChatGPT and Gemini. Pro and Agency plans include all four platforms. If coverage across all four AI engines is important to your workflow, you need at least a Pro plan.
Traditional rank trackers show you where your pages appear in Google’s search results for specific keywords. Linkstonic’s AI tracking does something different: it queries AI answer engines directly — the same way a user would — and captures whether your brand appears in the response, how prominently, and alongside which competitors.AI-generated answers don’t have numbered positions the way search results do. Linkstonic instead captures position bands (Top, Middle, Bottom), mention counts, competitor co-mentions, and the full response text. This gives you a picture of your brand’s presence in AI-powered discovery that no traditional rank tracker can provide.
A position band describes where in an AI-generated response your brand appears. Because AI answers are prose rather than ranked lists, Linkstonic classifies your brand’s position into one of three bands:
  • Top — Your brand appears in the opening section of the response, where the AI names its primary recommendations. This has the highest visibility and is most likely to influence the user’s decision.
  • Middle — Your brand appears in the body of the response, often as part of a comparison or list. You’re being considered, but not leading.
  • Bottom — Your brand is mentioned at the end of the response, in qualifications or secondary recommendations. The AI acknowledges your brand but doesn’t prioritize it for this query.
When a competitor consistently occupies a Top band for a keyword where you land Middle or Bottom, use TrueTrace to audit both your content and theirs and identify what they’re doing differently.
The LLM Citability Score is a 0–100 score that represents how likely AI models are to cite your content or brand when answering queries relevant to your topic. It’s generated by TrueTrace as part of a full AI citability audit.A higher score correlates with more frequent and prominent citations across platforms. A lower score indicates gaps in your content’s structure, topical coverage, authority signals, or FAQ coverage that reduce your likelihood of being cited. TrueTrace breaks down the specific factors contributing to your score so you know exactly what to address.
TrueTrace is Linkstonic’s AI citability audit. While keyword tracking tells you whether your brand appears in AI answers, TrueTrace tells you why — and what to fix.It evaluates your content against the criteria AI models use when deciding what to cite, and returns a scored analysis with specific, actionable gaps. TrueTrace offers three modes:
  • URL mode — Audits a single page for AI citability
  • Brand mode — Scores your brand’s overall AI visibility across a set of queries
  • Competitor mode — Compares your citability against one or more competitor URLs side by side
URL mode and Brand mode are available on Pro and Agency plans. Competitor mode is exclusive to Agency.See the TrueTrace documentation for a full breakdown.
Quick and Hybrid are the two analysis depths available in TrueTrace:Quick mode runs a single AI model pass and returns results in under 10 seconds. You get an LLM Citability Score, top quick wins, and keyword gap detection. It’s the right choice when you need a fast directional signal or want to validate a single change.Hybrid mode runs multi-model validation across platforms and cross-references results for a more complete and reliable picture. In addition to everything Quick mode returns, Hybrid adds cross-platform comparison, a full citation source list, AI mention probability, and a FAQ content gap analysis. It takes longer, but the results carry significantly more confidence — making it the better choice for content strategy decisions or before making major changes to your site.
It depends on how actively you’re making changes. A reasonable baseline is:
  • Run a TrueTrace audit before and after any significant content update to measure impact
  • Run Brand mode monthly to track your overall AI visibility trend
  • Run URL mode whenever you publish or substantially revise a page you want AI engines to cite
Because AI model behavior can shift over time — even without changes on your end — quarterly baseline audits are useful even if you haven’t updated your content. Historical tracking in TrueTrace saves your results over time so you can compare scores across runs.

​
SEO audit

Every Linkstonic audit runs 14+ checks organized across these categories:
  • Performance and speed — PageSpeed Insights scores (mobile and desktop), mobile friendliness
  • Content and structure — HTML quality (title, meta description, H1, alt text, charset), schema markup, duplicate content
  • Crawlability — Sitemap validation, robots.txt, redirect chains and loops
  • Security — HTTPS, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, Content Security Policy, X-Content-Type-Options
  • International — Hreflang tag validation
  • Authority — Homepage authority signals (SSL, privacy policy, about page, contact page)
  • Internal linking — Orphan pages, deep pages, anchor text distribution
  • Trust — E-E-A-T signals (author information, credentials, case studies, trust indicators)
See the audit checks documentation for a detailed description of each check.
Most audits complete in under 60 seconds. Linkstonic runs all checks in parallel, and a progress indicator shows which checks are still running while you wait. Heavier or slower sites may take longer, but the typical experience is results in well under a minute.
Yes. Every failed or warning check includes AI-generated remediation steps directly in your audit report. You don’t need to look up documentation or interpret raw error codes — Linkstonic explains the issue in plain language and gives you specific actions to take.For example, a poor Largest Contentful Paint score comes with concrete steps like preloading your hero image, switching to WebP format, and identifying render-blocking scripts — not a generic “improve your page speed” message.
The number of audits available depends on your plan:
  • Starter — 3 audits per month
  • Pro — Unlimited audits
  • Agency — Unlimited audits
Historical score tracking is available for 7 days on Starter, 90 days on Pro, and 1 year on Agency. If you’re hitting the Starter audit limit frequently, upgrading to Pro removes the cap entirely.

​
Integrations

Yes, on Pro and Agency plans. Connecting Google Search Console gives Linkstonic access to your real search performance data — keyword positions, clicks, impressions, CTR, top pages, and country breakdowns — all surfaced inside Linkstonic without switching tools.The easiest connection method is OAuth, which takes a few clicks. Agencies and enterprise teams can also connect via a Google Cloud service account. See the Google Search Console integration guide for step-by-step instructions.
Google Search Console integration is not available on the Starter plan.
On Pro and Agency plans, you can import your keyword list directly from a Google Sheet instead of adding keywords manually. To use this feature:
  1. Make sure your keywords are in column A of your sheet, one per row, with no header row (or delete the header before importing)
  2. Share the sheet so that anyone with the link can view it
  3. In Linkstonic, go to your brand profile, open the keywords section, and select Import from Google Sheets
  4. Paste your sheet URL and confirm the import
Linkstonic reads the keywords from column A and adds them to your brand profile. You can run the import again at any time to sync updates from the sheet.
Yes, on Pro and Agency plans. Linkstonic can send alerts to a Discord channel via a webhook URL. Once configured, you’ll receive notifications when your AI mention rate or keyword tracking results change based on the triggers you define.To set up Discord alerts, go to Settings → Integrations, find the Discord card, paste your webhook URL, and enable the alert triggers for your keywords.
The n8n Webhook API is an Agency-plan feature that lets you connect Linkstonic to custom automation workflows built in n8n — an open-source workflow automation tool. Using webhooks, you can trigger external workflows when Linkstonic events occur, such as when a new audit completes, a tracking run finishes, or an alert fires.This is useful for agencies that want to push Linkstonic data into client reports, CRMs, Slack channels, Google Sheets, or other systems automatically — without manual exports. You configure the webhook endpoint in n8n and register it in Linkstonic under Settings → Integrations → n8n.

​
Plans and billing

Yes. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time from Settings → Billing.When you upgrade, the change takes effect immediately and you are charged a prorated amount for the remainder of your billing period. When you downgrade, the change takes effect at the start of your next billing cycle and your existing data is preserved.
Yes. The Pro plan includes a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. You get full access to all Pro features during the trial — including TrueTrace, Google Search Console, all four AI platforms, and unlimited audits. If you don’t upgrade at the end of the trial, your account automatically reverts to the Starter plan.
Your data is preserved when you downgrade. You won’t lose historical tracking results or audit history — but you will lose access to features that aren’t included in your new plan. For example, if you downgrade from Pro to Starter, Claude and Perplexity tracking will no longer be available, and TrueTrace audits won’t be accessible. Your existing audit history and tracking data remain in your account and will be accessible again if you upgrade in the future.
Yes. Switching to annual billing saves you 30% compared to paying month to month. On Pro, that brings the effective monthly cost to around 34.OnAgency,it′saround34. On Agency, it's around 104 per month. You can switch to annual billing from Settings → Billing at any time — the change takes effect at your next renewal date.