Quick Start
Spotlight combines AI citation tracking with a site search widget. One project lets you monitor whether AI tools cite your content and helps visitors find answers when they land on your site.
Everything starts from the same place: run a free audit, create a project, and let Spotlight crawl your site to build your first visibility report and search index preview.
Step 1 — Create a project
Sign in at spotlight.cx, enter your website URL, and start the audit. Spotlight crawls your site, builds a searchable index for the widget, and prepares your first AI visibility baseline.
Step 2 — Copy your project ID
Once indexing is complete, you'll see a project ID like proj_a1b2c3d4 in your dashboard.
Step 3 — Add the widget (optional)
Paste this before the closing </body> tag to give visitors ⌘K search:
<script src="https://www.spotlight.cx/widget.iife.js" data-project="YOUR_PROJECT_ID" ></script>
That is it for the widget. Citation tracking continues in the dashboard and does not require code changes.
AEO & Citation Tracking
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the practice of ensuring AI tools cite your site — not a competitor — when answering questions your customers are asking. Spotlight tracks this automatically.
No code is needed. AEO tracking is entirely dashboard-driven.
Step 1 — Add keywords / prompts to track
In your dashboard, go to AEO → Prompts and add the questions your customers are likely asking AI tools. Examples: "best yoga studio in Austin", "how do I backfill data in analytics", "affordable web design London".
Free includes 3 prompts. Starter includes 50. Growth includes 200. Enterprise plans are custom.
Step 2 — Add competitors to benchmark
Go to AEO → Competitors and add the domains you compete against. Spotlight will show you how often each competitor gets cited vs. you for your tracked prompts.
Free includes 3 competitors. Starter includes 5. Growth includes 20. Enterprise plans are custom.
Step 3 — Check your AEO score
Spotlight runs citation scans across AI tools and calculates an AEO score — the percentage of your tracked prompts where your site gets cited. Scores update weekly on Free and Starter, and daily on Growth.
Use the score trend over time to measure whether changes to your content (new pages, updated FAQs, schema markup) are improving your AI visibility.
How citation scanning works
Spotlight sends each tracked prompt to AI search engines and records which domains appear in the response. Your citation count, competitor citations, and AEO score are updated after each scan. Scan results are stored so you can see trends over time.
Widget Installation
The Spotlight widget works on any website — static HTML, WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace, Next.js, Rails, or anything that lets you add a script tag.
Static HTML
Add the script tag to your <head> or before </body>. Using defer is supported.
<script src="https://www.spotlight.cx/widget.iife.js" data-project="YOUR_PROJECT_ID" defer ></script>
WordPress
Add the script tag to your theme's footer.php before </body>, or use a plugin like Insert Headers and Footers.
Webflow
Go to Project Settings → Custom Code → Footer Code and paste the script tag there.
Next.js / React
Use Next.js's <Script> component in your root layout:
import Script from 'next/script' <Script src="https://www.spotlight.cx/widget.iife.js" data-project="YOUR_PROJECT_ID" strategy="afterInteractive" />
Widget Configuration
The widget is configured entirely via data-* attributes on the script tag. No JavaScript required.
| Attribute | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| data-project | — | Required. Your project ID from the dashboard. |
| data-color | #6366f1 | Accent color for the widget (hex or RGB). |
| data-position | bottom-right | Position of the trigger button: bottom-right, bottom-left, top-right, top-left. |
| data-placeholder | Search… | Placeholder text in the search input. |
| data-shortcut | cmd+k | Keyboard shortcut to open the widget. Use ctrl+k for Windows default. |
| data-hide-badge | false | Set to true to hide the 'Powered by Spotlight' badge on eligible higher-tier plans. |
| data-theme | light | Widget theme: light or dark. |
Example with all options
<script src="https://www.spotlight.cx/widget.iife.js" data-project="proj_a1b2c3d4" data-color="#0ea5e9" data-position="bottom-right" data-placeholder="Search documentation…" data-shortcut="cmd+k" data-hide-badge="true" data-theme="light" ></script>
How the Widget Works
The widget uses a two-layer search model: semantic vector search for natural language queries, and keyword matching as a fallback for exact terms.
Indexing
When you create a project, Spotlight's crawler visits your site and builds the first index used by the widget. Paid plans increase the number of tracked prompts, competitor coverage, scan frequency, and workspace scale as your usage grows.
In-browser search
After the first visit, all search runs locally in the browser using the downloaded index. This means zero server round-trips per query — search results are instant even on slow connections.
Ask AI fallback
When the user clicks Ask AI, the query is sent to our API along with the top relevant chunks from the index. Our LLM synthesizes a direct answer from your site's own content. The answer is grounded — it never makes up information that isn't on your site.
Re-indexing
You can manually trigger a re-index from the dashboard whenever you update your site. Higher-tier plans add more frequent re-indexing and workflow automation.
FAQ
Which AI tools does Spotlight track citations in?
Currently Gemini with Google Search grounding. More AI engines — including Claude, Copilot, and Grok — are on the roadmap.
How often does citation scanning run?
Weekly on Free and Starter, and daily on Growth. Each scan checks your tracked prompts across all supported AI tools and updates your AEO score.
Does Spotlight work with password-protected pages?
No. The crawler can only index publicly accessible pages. If your site has a login-protected members area, those pages won't be indexed.
Will it slow down my site?
No. The script loads asynchronously and doesn't block page rendering. The widget index (~200 KB gzipped) is loaded in the background after the page finishes loading.
What languages are supported?
Spotlight works on content in any language — English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and more. The AI model understands queries in the same language as your content.
Can I customize the look of the widget?
Yes. You can set the accent color with data-color. More advanced white-label controls are available on higher-tier plans.
What happens to my visitors' search queries?
Queries are used to generate AI answers and are stored (anonymously) so you can see what your visitors are searching for in the dashboard. No PII is collected.
Is there an API?
A REST API is available for enterprise customers that need programmatic control over indexing and reporting.
How many pages can Spotlight index?
Your initial audit covers the key public pages Spotlight discovers first. If you need broader coverage, higher-tier plans expand how much of your site you can monitor and search.