How to track visibility across AI platforms

AI has changed how people search – and what it means to be “visible” in results. 

Links and rankings still matter, but they’re no longer the full picture.

Now, it’s about mentions, citations, and whether your brand even shows up in the conversation.

Most SEO tools haven’t caught up. This makes tracking that kind of visibility hard – but not impossible. 

Here’s how to rethink visibility in the age of AI.

Why tracking AI visibility is so tricky

Remember when SEO was (relatively) simple? 

People typed in short phrases like:

• “Best project management tool or SEO tips 2020.” 

You knew how they searched, what they were probably looking for, and how to optimize for it.

Fast-forward to today, and that same user might type: 

• “Act as a SaaS expert and give me the top 3 project management tools for remote teams with a $50/month budget.”

Welcome to the era of conversational search – where queries sound more like DMs to a colleague than keyword strings. 

Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude have normalized full-sentence prompts and pushed search behavior into a new territory. 

We’ve seen glimpses of this shift before with voice search, but AI has made it feel seamless, fast, and dangerously convenient.

That’s great for users – until it’s not. 

AI-generated answers don’t always cite their sources. 

Even when they do, the links might be missing, vague, or tossed in like an afterthought. 

As a result, people often end up back on Google to double-check facts, dig deeper, or figure out if the AI just hallucinated an entire case study. 

Still, many users are happy to take the shortcut – even if it means missing context or nuance – because who wants to read 20 blog posts when ChatGPT gives you an instant TL;DR?

This has created a hybrid search habit: start with AI, fact-check with traditional search, and hope the truth lives somewhere in between. 

Or at least, this is the current situation. There is no guarantee it will be the same in six months. 

But even now, for SEOs, it’s chaos. Visibility is no longer just about ranking in Google’s top 10.

Your brand might be mentioned in a Perplexity answer or your website cited in Google’s AI Overviews. 

And the tools we’ve relied on? 

They’re still stuck in the exact-match keyword era, blissfully unaware of how users are actually searching in these new environments.

The result: SEO teams are flying blind. 

You can’t optimize for what you can’t see – and right now, most of what’s happening in AI-driven search is happening in the dark.

It doesn’t sound great, right?

So, what’s the next move?

We can’t just sit and hope for the best. 

We should start from somewhere. The first step is to understand what matters in the AI era.

Dig deeper: Answer engine optimization: 6 AI models you should optimize for

Capabilities that matter in the AI era

When it comes to tracking AI visibility, your needs will depend on your business size, market focus, and available resources. 

A small team may get by with basic tracking or even manual checks (something we have tried and I won’t recommend). 

But if you’re operating at mid-size or enterprise level – especially in a competitive niche – you’ll need more advanced features to get real value.

Here’s a checklist of potential capabilities to look for when evaluating tools or building a solution in-house.

Custom prompt tracking

You should be able to import your prompts, not just rely on a default list. 

Without this, you’re measuring performance on queries your customers may never actually use. 

AI tools are smart, but your team knows the audience better. 

Multi-country and language support

AI answers can vary widely by region and language. 

If you work on a website with multiple languages without localization, your visibility data might be incomplete or even wrong. 

For example, when you search in English, results in the U.S. and the UK might be completely different.

Cross-platform tracking

Your audience doesn’t live on one AI tool. A proper solution should cover ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and others. 

Otherwise, you’re only seeing part of the picture. 

Especially if you are a B2B business, some of your potential customers might be already “married” to Microsoft’s or Google’s ecosystem and unwilling to pay for another platform.

Competitor identification

You need the ability to set your known competitors and discover others based on how often they’re mentioned in the answers to the prompts. 

If you miss this, you might not realize who’s gaining ground.

Historical data access

AI results change fast. 

You’re not the only one optimizing your website – your competition is not sleeping. 

Tracking historical performance is essential for spotting trends. No history means no real benchmarking.

Topic and platform breakdowns

Not all mentions are equal. 

You should be able to slice your visibility data by topic, category, or platform. Without this, your reporting stays surface-level.

Exportable answer sets

Make sure you can export the full AI responses tied to your prompts. 

This is critical for internal analysis, validation, and documentation. If you can’t export it, you don’t own it.

Visual dashboards

To make sense of your data and communicate it effectively, you’ll need clear visualization by time, prompt, platform, or topic. 

Otherwise, you’re stuck sifting through raw tables and spreadsheets.

Most tools on the market don’t do all of this perfectly, or if they promise that they can do it – their features come with a high price. 

Unfortunately, building something in-house also takes time and technical expertise. 

The key here is to prioritize based on your team’s goals – whether that’s: 

• Improving brand presence.
• Monitoring competitors.
• Understanding how AI tools are shaping the customer journey. 

Also, be mindful of your own resources

Buying a tracking tool won’t increase your capacity for optimizations, and it will just show you partly the right path.

Once you’ve defined the right capabilities, the next step is knowing what to actually measure.

Dig deeper: AI optimization – How to optimize your content for AI search and agents

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What to measure when rankings don’t matter

In AI-driven search, you’re no longer measuring rankings or CTRs – you’re measuring brand exposure. 

Traditional SEO metrics still matter, but they won’t tell you how often your brand is mentioned or cited in AI-generated answers.

Many of the metrics SEOs now need to track look more like PR KPIs: 

• Mentions.
• Citations.
• Share of voice. 

Visibility is less about position and more about presence – and whether you’re being referenced as an authority.

Here’s a list of metrics that can help you understand and track your AI visibility. 

You likely won’t need (or be able) to track all of them – especially early on. 

However, knowing what’s possible can help you prioritize based on your goals and resources.

Brand mentions

The number of times your brand or the brand of your competitors is referenced in AI-generated responses, regardless of whether a link is included.

• Why it matters: Mentions are the new impressions – a signal of awareness and authority. If your competitors are mentioned more often, you’re losing visibility at the top of the funnel.

Citations (linked references)

The number of times your website and the websites of your competitors are actually linked in AI answers.

• Why it matters: Mentions are good, but links are better. They offer validation and can drive traffic (depending on how the platform displays links). Tracking citations helps identify which content AI models consider authoritative.

Prompt-triggered visibility

Which prompts lead to your brand being mentioned or cited? 

Which prompts trigger the same for your competitor?

• Why it matters: It helps you understand the user intent that surfaces your brand. This is especially valuable for optimizing messaging and identifying new positioning angles.

Context of mentions

Are you listed as the top recommendation? One of 10 options? 

Are you described positively, neutrally, or vaguely?

• Why it matters: The quality of the mention shapes user perception. Being “mentioned” isn’t always a win if you’re buried in a list or framed as a secondary option.

Share of voice (SOV)

What percentage of relevant AI answers include your brand vs. competitors?

• Why it matters: SOV gives you a benchmark to measure your presence relative to others in your category. It’s useful for spotting gains and losses in competitive positioning.

Dig deeper: How to monitor brand visibility across AI search channels

Link destination and depth

Are the links going to your homepage, product pages, blog posts, or support content?

• Why it matters: Shows which content is earning trust – and what type of pages you should prioritize to increase citations.

Visibility over time

Mentions and citations aren’t static. You need to track changes over time to understand trends.

• Why it matters: It helps you measure the impact of SEO and content work, PR activity, or product updates on your AI presence.

Platform-specific performance

How does your brand visibility compare across different tools – ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.?

• Why it matters: AI models pull from different data sources and respond differently to prompts. Tracking platform-specific visibility can help prioritize where to focus next.

Not every team needs to track all of these, and most tools don’t cover all of them. 

Start with the metrics that align more closely with your goals and upgrade when needed.

And now, for the fun part: finding tools that can track these metrics.

Dig deeper: Your 2025 playbook for AI-powered cross-channel brand visibility

Where to start with AI visibility tools

The good news is that the landscape of AI visibility tools is evolving rapidly. 

The bad news is that most platforms currently don’t do it all. 

Most tools are still maturing and focusing on specific aspects of the visibility puzzle, such as just one or two of the main AI platforms. 

That makes tool selection less about finding “the best” solution and more about choosing the right fit for your needs and resources.

Here are a few tools currently on the radar of SEO teams exploring AI visibility:

• Profound: Tracks brand visibility across AI platforms like Perplexity and ChatGPT.
• Peec AI: Designed for prompt monitoring, brand detection, benchmarking, and historical trendline.
• Otterly: Offers prompt research, similar to the keyword research process, and tracking of selected prompts.
• Goodie: Combines SEO data with generative AI monitoring across different models.
• Adsmurai: Originally ad-focused, now expanding into AI visibility and performance insights.
• RankRaven: Built for tracking brand mentions and share of voice in AI-generated answers.
• seoClarity: The enterprise suite now offers tools to monitor visibility in AI-driven search results.

Many others are emerging – and more are launching every month. 

Some tools may eventually cover everything you need, but the price quickly becomes a factor. 

The reason is simple. For most SEO teams, this means adding yet another platform to an already crowded stack. 

Something that rarely excites stakeholders, whether you’re in-house or agency-side.

Building your own system is also an option – and it might seem cost-effective on paper. 

However, maintaining a reliable AI tracking setup requires engineering time, constant testing, and a high tolerance for platform changes. 

Depending on your scale, it may cost more in time than it saves in budget.

Some teams may end up using a combination of tools:

• One external tool for broad coverage.
• One internal for deeper tracking.

Whatever direction you choose, set aside time to explore, test, and watch demos. 

Most of these platforms are still evolving, and what works for your team today might need rethinking in six months. 

A flexible mindset and a willingness to experiment are just as important as the tools themselves.

Tracking AI visibility in a changing search landscape

Tracking AI visibility isn’t about figuring it all out today – it’s about laying the groundwork. 

• Define the signals that matter.
• Pick the tools that fit.
• Be ready to pivot as the landscape changes.

This is an exciting time to rethink what visibility means. Take the opportunity to think outside of the box and experiment. 

Dig deeper: 6 easy ways to adapt your SEO strategy for stronger AI visibility