Privacy & Data Handling
Understand our data sources, accuracy standards, and privacy practices. We're transparent about what we collect, how we use it, and how we protect it.
How does Optiview collect citation data?
We use multiple methods to measure AI visibility:
- Direct API integrations: Brave AI, Perplexity (where available)
- Public query sampling: We run targeted queries against AI assistants and analyze which sources they cite
- Structured output parsing: Extracting citation metadata from AI-generated responses
- Crawl log analysis: Monitoring which AI training bots visit your site
Important: We never scrape or violate terms of service. All data collection respects rate limits and API guidelines.
Do you store my site data?
We store audit results, not private content.
What we store:
- Page URLs and titles (publicly accessible information)
- Audit scores and diagnostic results
- Citation counts and sources
- Structured data presence (yes/no, not the actual schema)
- Technical check results (H1 count, meta tags present, etc.)
What we DON'T store:
- Full page HTML or content
- User personal information (PII)
- Proprietary business data
- Analytics or behavioral data beyond audit requests
Data retention: Audit results are stored for 90 days. You can delete them anytime from your dashboard. After 90 days, they're automatically purged.
Is Optiview GDPR compliant?
Yes. Our privacy-first design ensures compliance:
- Minimal data collection: We only collect what's necessary for audits
- No tracking cookies: We don't use third-party analytics or tracking pixels
- EU data residency: Infrastructure runs on Cloudflare's global edge network with EU data centers
- Right to deletion: Users can delete all audit data via dashboard
- Transparent processing: Full disclosure of data collection in our Privacy Policy
For site owners: Running an Optiview audit on your site doesn't require consent banners, as we only analyze publicly available data.
Are visibility scores 100% accurate?
No measurement is perfect, but we're highly accurate within known constraints.
What we measure reliably:
- Technical foundations (titles, schema, canonicals): 99%+ accuracy
- Structural analysis (headings, links): 98%+ accuracy
- Citation detection for queries we test: 95%+ accuracy
Known limitations:
- We sample a subset of possible queries (not exhaustive coverage)
- AI models evolve; scores reflect current behavior, not future changes
- Citation attribution can be ambiguous (indirect vs. direct)
- Some AI models don't expose citation metadata publicly
Accuracy improves over time: As AI models expose more metadata, our measurements become more precise. We continuously update our methods.
How does Optiview respect robots.txt?
We strictly follow robots.txt rules.
Our audit bot (OptiviewAuditBot/1.0):
- Checks robots.txt before crawling any page
- Obeys all
Disallowdirectives - Respects
Crawl-delaysettings - Rate-limited to 1 request per second (maximum)
- Clearly identifies itself via User-Agent
To block our bot: Add to robots.txt:
User-agent: OptiviewAuditBot Disallow: /
Note: Blocking our bot prevents audits but doesn't affect your AI visibility to other crawlers (GPTBot, Claude-Web, etc.).
Do you share data with third parties?
No. We never sell or share user data with third parties.
The only exceptions:
- Cloudflare (infrastructure provider): Handles data storage and delivery. They're GDPR-compliant and don't access user data.
- AI model APIs: We send queries to Brave AI, Perplexity, etc., but only generic test queries, never your proprietary information.
- Legal requirements: If required by law (e.g., valid subpoena), though this has never happened.
Your data is yours. We're a tool for measuring AI visibility, not a data broker.