How AI visibility tools can help your business rank in ChatGPT
The evolution of AI has significantly transformed how businesses used to grab the attention of audiences and potential customers towards their products and services through digital platforms.
Earlier, it was just about ranking in the Search Engine Results Page. But now, it is more about ranking and getting cited across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Since it is not a cup of tea to get cited or recommended by these platforms, AI visibility tools can help you rank your business.
If you are not sure about how these tools work, what they measure and what they mean for you as a business owner, then this article will give you an overview of the same. Besides the basics, it also highlights how to track AI search visibility using the free trial offered by some tools.
What is an AI brand visibility tool?
An AI visibility tool allows you to run a set of prompts through different AI assistants on a schedule so that business owners can know whether their brand is cited as a source or not and how they compare with competitors.
With the rise of AI in marketing, leading SEO suites like Ahrefs, Semrush, and SE Ranking now feature AI tracking capabilities. Besides that, there are some dedicated tools like Profound AI, Otterly, and Peec AI that focus completely on tracking AI visibility.
However, one important thing to note here is that answers across various tools and multiple runs may vary, and this is the reason why it is crucial to look at trends over many prompts, instead of relying on single results. AI assistants also keep adding small, easy-to-miss features (the Meta AI hidden features in WhatsApp are a good example), so the same prompt can behave differently from one week to the next.
What AI visibility tools measure?
Now that you have a brief understanding of what an AI visibility tool is, the next step is to take a look at what it measures. Take a look at this table to learn more:
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Mentions | Through this metric, businesses can measure how often their brand name appears in AI-generated answers. |
| Citations | This metric measures how often business pages are linked as a source. |
| Share of voice | By using this metric in the AI visibility tool, you can check your brand mentions compared with competitors for the same prompts. |
| Sentiment and positioning | This allows you to check whether you are described positively by AI platforms and for the right situations. |
| Cited sources | This metric tracks which third-party sites are trusted by AI in your niche and the opportunities to get mentioned. |
Comparison of some popular AI visibility tools
Here we are going to compare some of the most prominent AI visibility tools so that you can make an informed decision and choose the right tool to rank in AI searches:
| Tool | Type | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Part of an SEO suite | Choose this tool if you are looking to get brand mentions across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and regular SEO data. |
| Semrush (AI toolkit) | Part of an SEO suite | This tool is apt for those teams that are already on Semrush and want AI visibility next to rankings. |
| SE Ranking | Part of an SEO suite | Using SE Ranking, businesses can track AI Overviews and AI answers along with rank tracking, that too at a lower price point. |
| Profound | Dedicated | Perfect for larger brands that are looking for detailed AI answer analytics. |
| Peec AI | Dedicated | Through Peec AI, you can track prompts, cited sources, and competitor share of voice. |
| Otterly.AI | Dedicated | This tool allows simple monitoring of brand mentions and links present in AI search. |
Note: The features as well as pricing of these tools in this category may change from time to time. This is why you should check each tool’s site and use its free trial first so as to make an informed decision.
How to track AI visibility?
Most tools offer free trials. On these tools, you can take the following steps to track AI visibility for free:
- Within one of the tools, you can write 20-40 prompts that your customers would ask. For example, you can compare your brand with competitors. Clear wording matters here, and these practices for training AI models with prompts carry over well to writing good tracking prompts.
- Now, run them on a monthly basis, which keeps the routine short and easy to repeat.
- You can log the results in a sheet with yes or no mentioned against it, along with the cited URL and a list of competitors. Some lesser-known Google Sheets hidden functions can make that monthly tally much quicker.
- Next up, you can check the referral traffic from perplexity.ai, chatgpt.com, and gemini.google.com in your analytics.
- Lastly, look at the cited sources, and you’ll have the sites to get listed on.
To get fuller results, you can then switch to paid plans of these tools once you know how the process works and where your time is best spent.
How to improve AI visibility?
There are a few tips and tricks you can take into account if you wish to improve your AI visibility for your business:
- The first thing you can take into account is ranking for related searches first because AI search tools lean on search results.
- On your platform, you can also publish clear comparisons and “best for” content with some facts that AI can quote.
- Another way to improve AI visibility is to get mentioned on the platforms that AI already cites in your niche.
- Lastly, keep your facts consistent everywhere. These facts include pricing, features, and locations. On a Mac, you can set up a keyboard shortcut phrase to paste the same description every time, which also saves time.
It is high time that businesses start using AI visibility tools and focus on AI marketing to get mentions and recommendations across AI platforms because this is where most potential customers are nowadays getting to know about your business, product(s), or service(s).
