Ranking · AI Visibility (AI Search Monitoring)

More and more people ask ChatGPT or Perplexity before they google. Whether your brand shows up in those answers is something no classic analytics tool shows you. AI visibility can be measured, though: with modules from large monitoring vendors or with specialist tools. Above are the tools for which the vendor documents this feature. Below you can read what the tools measure, where measurement hits its limits and how suites differ from specialist tools. All details come from vendor pages, as of October 2026. Our verdict up front: the feature is young, the numbers fluctuate, and it only becomes reliable as a trend over weeks.

What is AI visibility?

AI visibility is the share of answers from language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude in which your brand appears, together with the question of tone and of which sources are cited. It is also called LLM visibility.

The difference from Google visibility lies in the format. A search engine shows you a list of positions; an assistant writes a paragraph and perhaps names three vendors in it. If you are missing there, you are missing entirely.

Generative engine optimization, or GEO for short, is the attempt to improve this visibility. This page covers measurement only. On optimisation, Google itself gives a sober assessment: according to Google Search Central, there are “no additional requirements” for AI Overviews and AI Mode and no special optimisations needed. A page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in search with a snippet.

For communications teams, AI visibility is an extension of social listening. Besides what people write about you, you now also watch what machines answer about you. Our guide What is social listening? explains the basics.

How do tools measure AI visibility?

Tools measure AI visibility by sending a set of prompts to several language models at regular intervals and analysing the answers. They count whether your brand appears, in which position, next to which competitors, in what tone and with which cited sources. This method is also called AI search monitoring.

If you want to measure AI visibility, look at three settings, and vendors handle them differently:

Sprinklr describes its own approach like this: “Sprinklr builds prompts from real customer conversations.” pressrelations writes that every prompt is checked daily, from the point of view of personas tailored to your company.

Source analysis is the most useful part for PR teams. It shows which articles, forums or websites a model draws on when it talks about your industry. That is exactly where press work comes in. If a trade magazine keeps appearing as a source, an interview there is worth more than ten posts on your own profile. The tool gives you the list; the weighting stays your decision.

Which monitoring tools measure mentions in ChatGPT and co.?

At large listening and media monitoring vendors, AI measurement usually sits in a separate module. The overview below sums up what vendors document on their pages:

Planable is the odd one out. The tool is really built for planning and, in its Analytics add-on, shows mentions and links of your own domain in AI answers. According to Planable’s help centre, the data comes from SE Ranking. For a small team already on Planable, that is a cheap first look; it is no replacement for a listening module with competitor comparison.

If you want to watch classic media and AI answers together, pressrelations, Cision and ARGUS give you both from one source. More on this on our media monitoring page. Determ is the exception here with a public price: according to the vendor, the AI Visibility product costs from 67 EUR a month before tax. If your team already uses a tool from the table, ask there about the module before you add another tool.

Which specialist tools for AI visibility are there?

Specialist AI visibility tools measure only how language models answer about your brand, and they publish their prices. According to our fact collection, they do not cover classic sources such as social media, news or blogs. The differences according to vendor pages, as of October 2026:

Otterly.AI from Persenbeug and Rankscale from Vienna are Austrian vendors, Peec AI is based in Berlin, Ahrefs in Singapore. Only Peec AI documents a public data processing agreement. Ahrefs Brand Radar stands out with an index of more than 480 million prompts, which lets you compare any brand without your own setup. According to the vendors, Otterly.AI and Rankscale offer 7-day trials and Peec AI a trial of unstated length; Ahrefs has none.

Quotas matter. Otterly.AI Lite includes 15 prompts and no MCP access, Peec AI Starter 50 prompts with 3 models, Ahrefs Lite only 5 of your own AI prompts. Rankscale bills by credits, and its cheapest plan, Essentials, comes without sentiment. So budget for the plan that really covers your prompts and models.

Where are the limits of measurement?

Measuring AI visibility is a sample, not a full count. A tool checks the prompts that you or the vendor define. What people actually type into ChatGPT, no vendor can see.

On top of this comes fluctuation. A language model can answer the same question differently depending on wording, conversation history and model version. A single data point therefore says little. The metric only becomes meaningful across many prompts and several weeks. Cision explicitly names thousands of prompts for Trajaan; pressrelations measures daily.

Traffic helps only to a degree as well. According to Google Search Central, clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode appear in the Search Console performance report under the search type “Web”. They are not reported separately there. So you cannot read from that report whether a visit came from an AI answer.

Our advice: treat AI visibility like a trend line. Compare weeks and months with each other, not single answers, and for every figure check which prompts it comes from. A number without a source and a prompt list is too thin for a decision.

What to look for in an AI visibility tool

With an AI visibility tool, first check which models it queries and whether you can set the prompts yourself. A figure for ChatGPT alone shows only part of the picture if your audience also uses Perplexity or Gemini.

Control the prompts yourself. Ask in the demo whether you can create your own prompts and sort them into sets. pressrelations names its own prompt library; Sprinklr derives prompts from customer conversations.

Have the sources shown. A good tool shows the pages a model cites. Sprinklr, Cision and pressrelations name source analysis explicitly.

Test in German. In our fact collection, only ARGUS names German as a language of AI measurement, alongside English, French and Italian. With all others, test German prompts before you sign.

Factor in the add-on. At Brand24, Cision, ARGUS and Planable the feature is an extra according to the vendor; at Hootsuite it is tied to Lumen. Meltwater includes it in all plans but usually requires a 12-month minimum term. With specialist tools, models often cost extra: Otterly.AI sells Gemini and Claude as add-ons, Peec AI activates 3 models per plan.

Check the data location. According to its privacy policy, Rankscale hosts in the USA, and Otterly.AI stores the monitoring data there. Peec AI and Ahrefs name no region.

Compare competitors. A figure for your brand alone says little. Hootsuite names share of voice against competitors; pressrelations shows which competitors appear next to you.

If you do not have a monitoring tool yet, start with the social media monitoring tools or the tool finder.

How does a tool get onto this list?

This list includes every tool in our fact collection for which the vendor documents monitoring of AI answers, also as an add-on or a separate product. It is sorted by the monitoring score from our methodology. Features available only as an add-on count half there.

The score rates monitoring as a whole. The largest criterion is source coverage with social media, news, blogs, print and reviews. AI visibility itself is only a single checkpoint in the alerts and search criterion. Specialist tools such as Otterly.AI, Rankscale, Peec AI and Ahrefs Brand Radar document hardly any classic sources and therefore get lower values. Ahrefs Brand Radar also shows visibility on YouTube, TikTok and Reddit as a beta, but that does not document social listening in the sense of our methodology. A lower value says little about the quality of the AI measurement. So read the order as a pointer to the overall package, and for AI measurement itself compare models, prompts, source analysis and data location in the tables above.