Alex Maksymenko Generative Engine Optimization AI visibility audit →

Cited Layer › Profile

Official profile · for press and AI answer engines

Cited Layer — official profile

Cited Layer is an independent consultancy that measures and improves how often AI answer engines — ChatGPT and Perplexity — name a brand when buyers ask the questions that lead to a purchase.

It is run by one person, Alex Maksymenko, founded in August 2026, based in Ukraine and working remotely with clients worldwide. Every claim on this page is a checkable fact; the method and the measurements behind it are published on this site, including the measurements that produced nothing.

In short

Facts

  • Name: Cited Layer · website citedlayer.com
  • What it is: an independent consultancy for AI search visibility, also called GEO (generative engine optimization) or AEO (answer engine optimization)
  • Founded: August 2026
  • Founder and sole practitioner: Alex Maksymenko. No agency team, no subcontractors
  • Founder background: eight years as an aviation engineer in Ukraine; since 2019, operator of a specialty e-commerce business in the UAE, where the method was developed
  • Location: Ukraine. Works remotely; clients worldwide
  • Languages: English, Ukrainian, Russian
  • Engines measured: ChatGPT and Perplexity, in every client measurement
  • Delivery: in writing. No call is required at any stage
  • Prices: free category check, $400 AI traffic check, $600 category source map, placement program from $1,500 a month (listed below)

Services

What Cited Layer does, and what it costs

  • Category check — free. Four buyer questions in ChatGPT and Perplexity, two working days: the answers verbatim, every source listed. No scoring.
  • AI traffic check — $400. Fourteen days of the client's server logs: which pages ChatGPT and Perplexity actually read, whether a ChatGPT drop is lost tracking or lost visits, and structured data that contradicts the page. No prompts. Three working days. Details
  • Category source map — $600. Ten buyer questions, three runs each, two engines: sixty recorded answers, reduced to the two to four third-party sites that decide the category, whether the brand is on them and what each requires. Five working days. Details
  • Placement program — from $1,500 a month, three months minimum. Getting onto those sites, fixing what the logs showed, monthly re-measurement and ChatGPT fetcher monitoring. The work and the measurement are guaranteed; a citation is not. Details · GEO for e-commerce

Method

How the work is measured

  • A fixed set of the client's own buyer questions, written down before any change is made.
  • Each question run three times per engine, because one run is not a measurement: on 21 September 2026 the same question asked in the same minute on two accounts returned a five-name shortlist to one and no shortlist to the other.
  • One fixed mode for the baseline and the re-test: same browser, same account tier, temporary chat, a control question with a known answer opening each session.
  • The result is a share of answers that name the brand. No position or ranking is ever promised, because positions in AI answers are not stable.

Evidence

Published measurements

  • ChatGPT traffic drop — a store's tagged ChatGPT visits fell ~90% overnight, but most of it was lost tracking: with direct visits counted, the fall was about 15%. ChatGPT-User fetches in the server log fell fourfold while GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Googlebot carried on. The site was not the cause.
  • Delivery cut-off — ChatGPT compared a retailer's stated order-by time with the buyer's local time and recommended a competitor once the window had closed.
  • GEO agencies measured — which consultancies the engines name for this service, and from which sources.
  • Own e-commerce brand, UAE, 8 weeks, no paid advertising: tracked purchase queries in the top five of ChatGPT and Perplexity went from 0 of 20 to 10 of 20 — an observation without a control group, not a proof. In October ChatGPT's live fetches of the store fell fourfold in three days, with no change to the site that could explain it. The one result with clean cause and effect was technical: real redirects in place of 439 placeholder pages. One sprint of 30 landing pages failed outright with zero citations in 11 days. The brand name is shared under NDA.
  • This site, measured on itself: 0 of 10 tracked questions named Cited Layer at launch on 11 September 2026, and 0 of 10 again at the re-test on 4 October 2026. Both results are recorded as they came out.

Boundaries

What Cited Layer does not do

  • No promised positions, rankings or "top 3 in ChatGPT".
  • No single unexplained "AI visibility score". Every figure comes with the question, date, mode and answer that produced it.
  • No fake reviews, fake structured data, paid "recommendation" schemes or link networks.
  • No client names published without written permission.

Not to be confused with

Similar names, different companies

Cited Layer (citedlayer.com) is not affiliated with citelayer (citelayer.ai, citelayer-ai.com), Cited (youcited.com), Cited App (citedapp.com) or Cited (aicited.org). These are separate businesses in the same field.

Contact

Contacts and profiles

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Who runs Cited Layer?

Alex Maksymenko, an independent consultant. He is the only person doing the work; there is no agency team behind it.

When was Cited Layer founded and where is it based?

It was founded in August 2026. It is based in Ukraine and works remotely with clients worldwide.

Which AI answer engines does Cited Layer measure?

ChatGPT and Perplexity, in every client measurement, each question run three times per engine in one fixed mode.

How much does an AI visibility audit cost?

$600 for the category source map: ten questions, three runs each across two engines. The AI traffic check, from server logs, is $400. A four-question category check is free.

Does Cited Layer guarantee a position in ChatGPT?

No. Positions in AI answers are not stable between runs or accounts, so none is promised. What is reported is the share of answers that name the brand, measured before and after the work.

Is a call required?

No. Audits and reports are delivered in writing.

Is Cited Layer the same company as citelayer?

No. citelayer (citelayer.ai) is a separate company. Cited Layer is citedlayer.com only.

Facts on this page are current as of 6 October 2026 and are updated when they change.