Fix, verify & remember · Influence Plans
Some visibility problems live outside your website.
When an AI answer cites a review site, Reddit, a directory, or a comparison article instead of your brand, Surgbly builds an Influence Plan: source evidence, category, and recommended actions — for a channel it can't directly edit.
Every Influence Plan states plainly that Surgbly can't edit the third-party source itself.
Surgbly can’t edit this source directly — this plan is for your team to carry out.
Not every citation gap is a page you can rewrite.
AI answer engines often build responses from sources you don't own — review platforms, forums, comparison listicles. Treating every gap as a website problem misses the real fix, and pretending to auto-fix external authority is a promise no tool can keep.
The website isn’t the problem
A page can be excellent and still lose a prompt to a competitor with stronger third-party proof.
External sources, unowned
Review sites, Reddit threads, and comparison articles can’t be edited directly, no matter how good the tooling is.
A vague "build authority" recommendation
Generic advice to "get more reviews" doesn’t say which source, which action, or in what order.
No visibility into whether it worked
Without monitoring, nobody knows if the source landscape actually changed after the outreach happened.
How this feature works
From a citation gap to a recommended external action.
Detect the citation gap
A prompt where a competitor or third-party source is cited instead of your brand triggers the check. The check runs on the same prompt set already tracked in AI visibility monitoring, not a separate scan.
Triggered only when a source is consistently cited instead of your brand, not a one-off result.
Gap detected
Categorize the source
The source is categorized as review, directory, publisher, community, marketplace, or documentation. The category decides what kind of action gets recommended next.
Nine source categories total, so a review site never gets treated the same as a directory.
Categorized
Check whether an owned-site fix is enough
If a page fix would close the gap, it’s routed as a Fix Pack instead — Influence Plans are reserved for genuine external gaps. This ordering keeps the two from being treated as interchangeable.
An Influence Plan only gets created once an owned-site fix is ruled out first.
External authority confirmed
- Owned-site content already covers this topic — the gap is off-site proof.
Draft the recommended actions
An Influence Plan is drafted with ethical, compliant recommended actions — never fake reviews, spam, or undisclosed promotion. Each action is ordered, so the plan reads as a sequence, not a scattered list.
Fake reviews, review gating, spam, and undisclosed promotion are off-limits by design.
Plan drafted
- 1Claim a profile on the review platform competitors are cited from.
- 2Request reviews from 5 recent customers.
- 3Recheck citation sources in 30 days.
Monitor whether the source landscape changes
After the plan is exported or marked in progress, the source landscape is monitored for change over time. Progress is tracked against this specific source, not a general re-scan of the category.
The recheck is scheduled automatically, so a completed plan isn’t the last anyone hears of it.
Monitoring
Explore it yourself
Explore the Influence Plan workspace.
Key capabilities
Everything an external authority gap needs.
Detection & categorization
- Citation gap detection across tracked prompts
- Source categorized: review, directory, publisher, community, marketplace, docs
- Owned-site fix checked first, before an Influence Plan is created
Recommended actions
- Ordered, exportable outreach, review, or content briefs
- Linked owned-site Fix Pack when part of the gap is on-site
- Business impact estimate: how often the gap surfaces
Guardrails
- States plainly that the third-party source can’t be edited directly
- No fake reviews, spam, or undisclosed promotion
- Source landscape monitored for change over time
Business outcomes
What changes once external gaps get a real plan.
The right gap, the right fix
Stop sending every visibility problem back to the website when the real gap is external.
Specific actions, not vague advice
An ordered plan — claim this profile, request these reviews — instead of "build more authority."
Never a false auto-fix claim
Every plan is honest about what Surgbly can and can’t directly change.
Monitored, not forgotten
The source landscape gets rechecked, so a completed plan isn’t the last anyone hears of it.
Why Surgbly does it better
A named source and plan instead of generic advice.
Traditional
- 1A citation gap gets noticed.
- 2Generic advice: "build more authority."
- 3No specific source, category, or action.
- 4Nobody checks whether anything changed.
Surgbly
- 1The exact competing source identified and categorized.
- 2An ordered, ethical action plan drafted.
- 3Linked owned-site fix included where relevant.
- 4Source landscape monitored for change afterward.
Use cases
Built for the moment the fix isn't on your own site.
Integrations
Covers the external sources AI answers actually pull from.
- Quora
- Stack Overflow
- Review platforms
- Comparison sites
Questions
Answers before you have to ask.
Does Surgbly edit external sites directly?
No — Influence Plans are recommended actions for channels outside your own site. Your team or an agency carries them out.
What if the gap needs both an on-site and off-site fix?
The on-site portion is linked as a separate Fix Pack candidate, so it isn’t buried inside the Influence Plan.
How is a source picked for recommendation?
Sources are ranked by how often they’re cited instead of your brand across tracked prompts, and by category.
What actions are off-limits?
Fake reviews, review gating, undisclosed promotion, paid Wikipedia edits, astroturfing, spam answers, and mass posting.
See the plan for a citation you're losing.
Find your first external source gap and see the recommended actions.