Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

This Privacy Policy explains what information GetCited.me ("we", "our", or "us") collects, how we use it, and the choices you have. GetCited.me is a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform that helps businesses monitor and improve their brand's visibility in AI-generated answers.

By using our website and product (the "Service"), you agree to the collection and use of information as described in this policy.

If you have any questions or requests regarding your data, contact us at support@getcited.me.

2. What Data We Collect

2.1. Account data

• Email address — used for sign-in, password recovery, and transactional emails.
• Password — stored only as a salted bcrypt hash; we never store or see your plain-text password.
• Name and avatar — if you provide them in your profile settings.
• Google account data — if you use Sign in with Google, we receive and store your Google account ID, name, and email, and copy your Google profile picture to our own storage. We do not receive your Google password. You can disconnect Google sign-in at any time in Settings.

2.2. Website and brand data you submit

When you connect a website or run a scan, we collect and process:

• The URLs you submit and publicly available content from those pages (page text, headings, meta descriptions) for brand-profile analysis and GEO audits.
• Brand names, competitor names and URLs, topic clusters, and tracking prompts you create or approve.

We only access publicly available pages. We do not crawl private or authenticated areas of your website.

2.3. Tracking and analysis data

• AI platform responses to the tracking prompts we execute on your behalf, including mention detection, brand rankings, sentiment, and citation sources.
• Search-demand and keyword data for your topics obtained from third-party SEO data providers.
• Publicly available community discussions (e.g. Reddit threads) relevant to your brand, when you use community-reply features.

2.4. Generated content

Content briefs, article drafts, community reply drafts, recommendations, and audit reports created by our AI pipelines for your use. This content belongs to you (see our Terms of Service).

2.5. Usage and billing data

• Feature-usage counters used to enforce plan limits (number of tracked prompts, AI answer credits, content drafts, audits, and similar metered actions). Usage events are retained for up to 365 days.
• Subscription status and billing metadata received from our payment provider (Paddle). We do not store your full card number or payment credentials on our servers.

2.6. Communication data

A delivery log of emails we send you (recipient address, subject, delivery status), and your notification preferences.

2.7. Feedback and waitlist submissions

When you send feedback or join the waitlist for paid plans, we collect what you enter together with context about the request itself:

• Feedback — your rating, message and category, plus the page URL, locale, timezone, screen and viewport size, app build, referrer, IP address, browser user-agent and country code, so we can reproduce what you saw. Your account is linked if you are signed in. The feedback form lists every one of these fields before you submit.
• Waitlist — your email address, the record of your consent and the time you gave it, which page or button you joined from, the plan you were viewing, and the same request context (locale, page URL, referrer, IP address, user-agent, country code). Your account is linked if you are signed in.

The waitlist is the only place we ask for permission to send you a marketing email — see sections 4, 8 and 9.

2.8. Advertising click measurement

When you arrive from one of our Google Ads adverts, the link carries a Google click identifier (gclid, or its gbraid / wbraid variants). If you then start a free scan, we store that identifier on the guest-scan record so we can count how many people who clicked an advert went on to finish onboarding.

Two things this deliberately is not:

• It is not stored on your device. The identifier is held in the page's memory for that visit only and is never written to a cookie or to local storage.
• It is not sent back to Google. We use it solely to count our own funnel. It is not used to build a profile of you, to target advertising, or to report conversions to any advertising platform.

It is deleted together with the guest-scan record under the retention rules in section 8.

3. Cookies

We keep cookies to a minimum. We do not set advertising or cross-site tracking cookies on this site, and we do not run remarketing or ad-personalisation tags: our advertising measurement works by importing conversion counts from Google Analytics 4 (see section 5), not by tagging you for ads.

• Authentication cookies — keep you signed in to your account (strictly necessary).
• getcited-cookie-consent — stores your cookie category choices for up to 12 months (strictly necessary for consent records).
• getcited-theme — remembers your light/dark theme preference for up to 1 year (functional).
• getcited-app-sidebar-collapsed — remembers whether the app sidebar is collapsed or expanded for up to 1 year (functional).
• Paddle checkout cookies — set by our payment provider only when you open a checkout to process the payment securely. The “Payment cookies” preference in our consent UI is informational for our consent log; checkout cookies are set by Paddle on the checkout flow and are not blocked by that switch.
• Analytics cookies (optional) — Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager, loaded only after you accept analytics cookies in our cookie consent banner. You can change your choice at any time via Cookie settings (/cookie-settings) or the preference center.

We operate our own cookie consent banner and preference center on GetCited.me. Non-essential analytics scripts are not loaded until you grant analytics consent. A public cookie inventory is available at /cookie-settings.

3.1. Consent audit records

When you accept, reject, or save cookie preferences, we store a consent audit record on our servers for compliance evidence. Each record may include:

• The action you took and the category choices (essential, functional, analytics, payment), including previous choices when you change them
• Consent and privacy-policy version identifiers
• Locale, page URL, and HTTP referrer at the time of the choice
• Approximate time recorded on your device and on our server
• IP address, browser user-agent, and country code derived from edge/network headers when available
• An optional visitor fingerprint stored in your browser’s localStorage (key fingerprint) after your first consent action (accept, reject, or save preferences) — used to rate-limit audit submissions, to link anonymous consent rows to your account after you sign in, and optionally for short-lived abuse-protection counters; it is not generated on every page load before you interact with the banner
• Your account id when you are signed in

Consent audit records are retained for up to 36 months, then deleted automatically. If you delete your account, the account id is cleared from remaining rows; the rows themselves are kept until the retention period ends.

3.2. Infrastructure analytics

Our hosting edge (for example Cloudflare) may inject a performance/Web Analytics beacon that is not controlled by our cookie preference center. We do not use that beacon for advertising. If enabled on our zone, it is treated as infrastructure measurement; see also our CSP allowlist for static.cloudflareinsights.com.

We also use Sentry for application error monitoring and performance diagnostics (client and server). Sentry is treated as reliability/security infrastructure and is not gated by the analytics cookie category. Session Replay, if enabled, captures limited UI context around errors; we configure it to avoid collecting passwords and other sensitive form fields where possible.

3.3. Abuse protection counters

To protect the Service from automated abuse, we temporarily count requests by a hashed or otherwise anonymized network address and, after you make a cookie-consent choice (accept, reject, or save preferences), optionally by the visitor fingerprint described above. These short-lived rate counters are kept in Redis for no more than 24 hours and are not used for advertising, marketing, or profiling.

4. How We Use Your Data

Your data is used exclusively to provide and improve the Service:

• To analyze your brand's visibility across AI platforms and generate visibility reports
• To create tracking prompts and execute them on AI platforms on your behalf
• To generate content recommendations, briefs, article drafts, and audit findings
• To monitor competitor presence and market positioning
• To enforce subscription plan limits and process payments
• To send transactional and product emails: account and password emails, visibility alerts, weekly digests, and billing notices (alert and digest emails can be managed in Settings)
• To email people who joined the paid-plans waitlist when those plans launch. We ask for explicit consent before adding you, we use the address only for that purpose, and every such email carries an unsubscribe link. The lawful basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time (section 9)
• To secure the Service and prevent fraud and abuse

5. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party processors to operate the Service. Each receives only the data needed to perform its function:

• Paddle — payment processing and subscription management. Acts as merchant of record; receives your email address and billing details you enter at checkout.
• Brevo (SMTP) — email delivery. Receives your email address and the content of emails we send you: transactional account email, and — if you joined the waitlist — the notice that paid plans have launched.
• Google Analytics 4 / Google Tag Manager — site analytics and optional third-party tags, only after you accept analytics cookies in our consent banner. Product usage events (for example onboarding steps, hub actions, and checkout) are sent to GA4 via direct measurement after consent. The GTM container must not duplicate GA4 configuration tags when direct measurement is enabled.
• Google Ads — we advertise GetCited.me on Google Search. Campaign performance is measured by importing conversion counts from Google Analytics 4, so what Google Ads receives is derived from the analytics data you consented to. We do not place a Google Ads remarketing tag on the site, and ad personalisation and Google Signals are disabled on our properties. If you reject analytics cookies, none of your activity reaches this measurement.
• Sentry — error monitoring and diagnostics for the Service (not an advertising or marketing analytics tool).
• AI platforms — OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), Perplexity — we send tracking prompts to their APIs to measure brand visibility. Only the prompt text is sent — no account data, no personal data, and no private content from your website.
• OpenRouter — AI model routing for content generation and analysis (briefs, article drafts, response analysis). Receives the working context needed for the task, such as publicly available content from your website, your brand description, and cited source URLs. It does not receive your account credentials or billing data.
• DataForSEO — keyword volume, search-demand, and Google AI Overview (SERP) data for the topics and domains you track.
• Reddit — public community threads are retrieved via Reddit's public APIs when you use community discovery features.
• Google (Sign in with Google) — optional authentication; see section 2.1.

Our contracts and configurations with AI providers do not permit using your data to train their foundation models where such opt-outs are available.

6. What We Do Not Do

• We do not load analytics or advertising cookies before you consent
• We do not sell or rent your data, and we do not share it with data brokers or with other companies for their own advertising
• We do not add you to any mailing list without an explicit opt-in, and we do not use the waitlist address for anything other than the launch notice
• We do not use your private data to train AI models
• We do not access private or authenticated pages on your website
• We do not send your personal data to AI platforms — tracking requests contain only the prompt text

7. Data Storage & Security

Your data is stored in a PostgreSQL database with encryption in transit (TLS). Security measures include:

• Passwords hashed with bcrypt (12 rounds); refresh tokens and API keys stored only as hashes
• Short-lived access tokens with rotating refresh tokens; password reset links expire after 1 hour
• Access controls, input validation, and hardened HTTP security headers on our API
• Access to production systems restricted to authorized personnel only

No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but we work to protect your data with measures appropriate to the risk.

8. Data Retention & Deletion

• Active accounts: we retain your data for as long as your account is active.
• Website deletion: when you delete a website from your dashboard, all associated data (prompts, tracking runs, topic clusters, competitors, drafts, and reports) is permanently removed.
• Account deletion: you can request deletion of your entire account. We cancel any active subscription immediately and permanently delete your account, all connected websites, uploaded files, and associated data. Deletion is available from within the product or by contacting support@getcited.me.
• Guest scans: websites analyzed during onboarding without an account are automatically deleted within approximately 24 hours if not claimed.
• Usage events: metering records are retained for up to 365 days for plan-limit enforcement and dispute resolution.
• Cookie consent audit logs: retained for up to 36 months, then purged automatically (see section 3.1).
• Advertising click identifiers: the Google click identifier described in section 2.8 is erased 90 days after the visit. What remains is only a flag recording that the visit came from an advert — it contains no identifier and is kept with the funnel statistics.
• Waitlist entries: retained for up to 24 months from the day you joined, or until you unsubscribe or withdraw consent — whichever comes first — then deleted.
• Feedback: retained while it is useful for product decisions and support history, and deleted on request (section 9).

9. Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction (including under the GDPR if you are in the EU/EEA), you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Rectify inaccurate data
• Erase your data ("right to be forgotten")
• Restrict or object to processing
• Data portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
• Withdraw consent for optional processing — analytics cookies, email digests, and the paid-plans waitlist — at any time
• Lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority

To leave the waitlist, use the unsubscribe link in the email or write to support@getcited.me; withdrawing does not affect the lawfulness of anything sent before you withdrew. Analytics consent can be changed at any time via Cookie settings (/cookie-settings).

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at support@getcited.me. We will respond within 30 days.

10. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date. For significant changes, we will notify you by email.

12. Contact Us

Questions about this policy or your data: support@getcited.me.