PRIVACY POLICY

The AI Citation Institute — operated by Ben Cope d/b/a AI Citation Institute ("we," "us"). Last updated: 2026-10-13. Contact: [email protected] · 1233 Biltmore Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15216.

This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your choices, when you use our website and Services.

1. Information we collect

From you / your account: name, business name, email, billing details (processed by our payment processor — we do not store full card numbers), and account settings.

Service configuration you provide: your website domain(s), competitor names/domains, target query sets, and preferences.

Connected accounts (with your authorization): access to the services you choose to connect, limited to what the features you use need:

clicks, impressions, positions), and we submit your sitemap to Google after a page change you approved, so Google re-crawls the updated page. We do not add or remove properties or users.

completeness and its consistency with your website.

encrypted (AES-256-GCM) and use only to publish on your behalf.

Google user data. Our use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy (https://developers.google.com/terms/api-services-user-data-policy), including its Limited Use requirements. We use it only to provide the features described in this Policy, we do not sell it, we do not use it for serving advertisements (including retargeting, personalized, or interest-based advertising), and we do not use it to train generalized AI or machine-learning models. Where you enable paid-ads management, we use your own Search Console data to plan your own campaigns; we do not use Google user data to target advertising at you. You can revoke our access at any time by disconnecting the service in your dashboard or at https://myaccount.google.com/permissions; the stored access credentials are deleted when you disconnect (Section 5).

Data we generate or gather to provide the Services: AI-visibility results and scores, citation URLs and mentions, page audits, drafted/optimized content, verified factual claims, competitor intelligence, and attribution metrics.

Automatically (website/platform): usage logs, device/browser data, IP address, and cookies/similar technologies for authentication, security, and analytics.

We do not seek or require the personal information of your end customers, and we design outreach features to avoid collecting end-customer PII.

2. How we use information

3. Legal bases

Where applicable, we process personal data on the bases of contract (to provide the Services), legitimate interests (security, product improvement), consent (where required, e.g. certain cookies/marketing), and legal obligation.

4. How we share information — and how we don't

benchmarks are anonymized and aggregated across no fewer than 5 organizations so they do not identify you.

confidentiality obligations, including: cloud hosting/storage, our payment processor, and the third-party AI and data providers the Services depend on (e.g., AI platforms such as OpenAI/Google/ Anthropic/Perplexity, and SEO-data providers such as DataForSEO). A current list is available on request. ``

these only as needed to provide the Services.

rights, safety, and property.

transfer subject to this Policy.

5. Data retention

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We retain information for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide the Services, then as required for legal, tax, security, and dispute-resolution purposes. We delete or anonymize data when no longer needed. Encrypted credentials are deleted when you disconnect a connected account or close your account.

6. Security

We use commercially reasonable safeguards — encryption of stored credentials, access controls, authentication, rate limiting, and monitoring. No system is perfectly secure; you are responsible for safeguarding your own account credentials.

7. Your choices & rights

You may access, update, or delete account information, disconnect connected accounts, and opt out of marketing emails. Depending on your location, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, port, or restrict processing of your personal data, or to object — contact [email protected] and we will respond as required by law.

8. Cookies

We use cookies/similar technologies for sign-in, security, preferences, and analytics. You can control cookies through your browser; some features may not work without them.

9. International transfers

If we transfer data across borders, we use appropriate safeguards (e.g., Standard Contractual Clauses) where required.

10. Children

The Services are for businesses and are not directed to children under 16; we do not knowingly collect their data.

11. Changes

We may update this Policy; material changes will be posted with a new "Last updated" date and, where required, notified.

12. YouTube API Services

Our YouTube channel maintenance feature uses YouTube API Services. By connecting a YouTube channel you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service (https://www.youtube.com/t/terms), and Google's use of your information is governed by the Google Privacy Policy (https://policies.google.com/privacy).

Google's consent screen), we read your channel's id and title, your videos' titles and descriptions, and the list of caption tracks on your videos. On our YouTube page, we write to YouTube only when you approve a specific change: one video description edit, or one caption track upload, at a time. If you engage us to maintain your channel as a managed service, we also make the ongoing edits that engagement covers (for example, keeping description links working and adding chapters and caption tracks to your videos). Every write is logged with the text before and after it so it can be reverted.

description links did not load), a history of each change made through the page including the description text before and after it, and your OAuth tokens, encrypted at rest.

deleted after 30 days. The change history keeps only what was changed, on which video, when, and whether it was verified. For a managed service, the change logs (which include before and after description text so edits can be reverted) are kept while your authorization is active. OAuth tokens are kept until you disconnect.

on our behalf to deliver features you asked for (for example, an AI provider that drafts chapter titles from a video's title and transcript), and only for that purpose. We use it only to show you the audit and to make the edits you approve or have engaged us to make.

access in your Google security settings (https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions). When you revoke access, we delete the YouTube data we store for you within 7 days. Disconnect on the page deletes it immediately.

Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy (https://developers.google.com/terms/api-services-user-data-policy), including its Limited Use requirements. We do not use YouTube data for advertising, and we do not use it to train generalized AI or machine learning models.

13. Contact

Questions or requests: [email protected] · 1233 Biltmore Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15216.

Last updated 2026-10-13.