Some sites AI cites aren't what they seem: a copy of your site, a fake shop, a fake support page, or a page that collects logins. Impersonation detection finds these among the sites AI cites for your prompts. You decide what each one is. For a site you want taken down, Scrunch prepares the takedown reports, and you send them yourself. Scrunch sends nothing for you.
What Scrunch checks
Scrunch looks at every site AI cites for your tracked prompts whose name looks like yours. That means your name in the domain or a subdomain, a misspelling, or look-alike characters. For each one it checks who registered the domain and when, reads the page, and compares it with your own site.
When it's turned on, Scrunch checks your last 180 days of citations within a day. Until it finds a site, the Possible impersonations view says how many sites are still to check. After that, new citations are checked as AI cites them.
Each site has one of two verdicts, shown in its side panel:
Confirmed fake: the page poses as you. For example, it copies your pages, calls itself your official site, or offers your login or support.
Likely fake: the name and the registration point to a fake, but the page couldn't prove it, often because the site was down. Scrunch checks it again each week. A site whose registry never answers stays a Likely fake at most.
Scrunch only checks the sites AI cites, not the whole web.
Find possible impersonations
When Scrunch finds new possible impersonations, the line at the top of Citation Optimization counts them since you last looked, in red. Click See impersonations to open the Possible impersonations view of the citations table. You can also choose it in the View menu. When Scrunch confirms new fakes, a notification shows in the bell, once a day. It opens the same view.
The view lists every site still in play, the most-cited first. Each row is a page AI cites, so a site with several cited pages has several rows. The columns:
Source URL: the page AI cites on the site.
Impersonation: why the site looks fake, in up to two lines. Hover a cut-off reason to read all of it. Click a row to open the site's side panel.
Status: where the review of the site stands (see below).
Prompts and Responses: the prompts and responses that cite the page, in the page's date range.
The last column, with no title, has the buttons for the site's next step: Prepare takedown and Dismiss, Send reports, or Clear.
Each site has one of these statuses:
To review: a new site for you to decide on.
To report: you prepared the takedown. The reports wait to be sent.
Reported: you sent the reports. Scrunch checks every day whether the site is down.
Taken down: the site was down on two days in a row.
No action: the site wasn't confirmed down, so Scrunch stopped checking.
A site that AI didn't cite in the page's date range stays in the list. It shows at the bottom, marked Not cited in this window, with no counts. It isn't listed when another filter, such as a platform or Status, is set.
In any other view, you can turn on the Impersonation column from Columns. It flags a page on a site to review as Possible impersonation, in red, and shows the status of any other flagged site. Click it to open the site's side panel.
Look at a site
Click a site's row to open its side panel. Why we flagged it lists the evidence:
How it's named: how its name looks like yours, for example Your name, misspelled.
Registered: when the domain was registered, and through which registrar. Couldn't be read means the domain's registry never answered.
Page title, and Its form sends to when a form on the page sends what people type to another site.
Copied pages: how many of your pages it copies.
Hosted by: the hosting provider, for a site you may report.
Prompts that cite it lists the prompts whose responses cite the site. Download report saves the evidence as a PDF. Visit site opens the page AI cites most, after a warning (see Visit a flagged site, below).
Decide what it is
Every site To review needs a decision. Use the buttons on its row or in its side panel:
Prepare takedown: it's a fake, or you think it is, and you want it taken down. Every site To review has it, a Confirmed fake or a Likely fake.
Dismiss, then It's not a fake: a partner or distributor, a review or news site, an unrelated business, or another reason.
Dismiss, then It's fake, but leave it: it closes without a takedown.
It's our site (also in the Dismiss menu): it closes as yours. Its hint says whether Scrunch also adds it to your websites in Configure, or only closes it, for example for a subdomain of another company's domain.
Dismiss, It's our site and Clear show Undo for a few seconds. Prepare takedown has no Undo.
Look at Registered before you prepare a takedown. If the look-alike was registered before your own domain, it may be an older, real business. Talk to your lawyers before you act, and dismiss it if it isn't a fake.
To decide on several sites at once, select their rows. The selection bar offers Prepare takedown and Dismiss for the selected sites. Several pages on one site count as one site. Scrunch skips the sites the action doesn't apply to, and the message says how many.
Undo a dismissal
Set the Impersonation filter to Dismissed. The view then lists every site marked It's not a fake, It's fake, but leave it or It's our site, whatever the dates. The Status column says which: Not a fake, Fake, left alone or Your site.
Click Undo on a row to move the site back to To review. If Scrunch added the site to your websites in Configure, Undo takes it off again.
Send the takedown reports
Prepare takedown moves the site to To report. Click Send reports to see a report for each party that can act on the site, up to three:
Registrar: the company the domain was registered through.
Hosting provider: the company that serves the site.
Browser warning: Google Safe Browsing, which can warn people before they open the site.
Each report has its message ready, and each email has a subject. The reports call the site a suspected fake. Send an email report with Copy email or Open in email, and attach the evidence report (Download the evidence report). Send a form report through Open form. When the registrar's email isn't known, Look up the abuse email opens ICANN's lookup, which lists it.
After you send a report, click Mark as sent. When every report is marked sent, the site moves to Reported.
Follow the takedown
Scrunch checks a reported site every day. When it's down on two days in a row, it moves to Taken down. If it isn't confirmed down in time, it moves to No action and Scrunch stops checking. Follow up with the registrar or Google Safe Browsing, as the side panel says.
When you're done with a site that's Taken down or No action, click Clear on its row or in its side panel. Clear takes it out of Possible impersonations.
Visit a flagged site
A link to a flagged site opens a warning first: Are you sure you want to visit this site? Visit site in the side panel always shows it. The link on a table row and the links in the citation details panel, in its header and its contacts, show it too, unless the site is marked It's our site or It's not a fake.
On the site, don't sign in or type anything, don't download files or pay, and don't call the numbers or email the addresses it shows.
Links inside AI responses open without the warning.