When an assistant recommends a business, it usually leans on a handful of pages: review sites, directories, comparison articles, forums and your own site. The agent records which pages appear for each of your tracked questions and groups them by type, so you can see the shape of the sources and not just a long list of links.
It then compares that map with your own presence. A directory that is cited often but has no listing for you becomes a gap. A listicle that names three competitors and leaves you out becomes a target. Each gap is written up plainly so a person can judge whether it is worth the effort.
The map feeds the other agents. The content agent plans pages around the gaps, and the outreach agent drafts approaches to the sites that matter most. Your team still chooses which gaps to close, because some sources will not suit your brand or budget.
Source mapping tells you where answers come from. It does not tell you why an editor included one business and not another. Judging whether a source suits your brand, and whether a link or a mention is worth chasing, stays with your team, with our suggestions as a starting point. Maps are also snapshots. Assistants change which sources they favour over time, so the agent re-runs the mapping regularly and highlights new entrants and sources that fade. That way you are not working from last quarter's picture.
ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot, with more added as they matter.