How do you track your visibility in AI search engines?
Quick answer
Tracking AI search visibility is a category of tools, not one tool. GEO tools like Profound and Peec report whether a brand was cited and how often. Reputation tools like AIQ show what the engines actually say, which sources they draw on, and what sentiment comes through, across the eight engines AIQ currently tracks.
Tracking is a category of tools, not one tool, because different teams need different reads. The right instrument depends on whether the team that owns the output is measured on presence (was the brand cited?) or on narrative (what did the engines say about it?).
| Tool category | What it measures | Primary audience | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visibility / GEO tools | Whether the brand was cited, and how often, across defined prompt sets | Marketing teams measured on share-of-voice and citation presence | Profound, Peec |
| AI reputation / narrative tools | What the engines say about the brand, which sources they draw on, sentiment, and how the picture moves over time across the leading AI engines | Comms and corporate affairs teams measured on narrative and perception | AIQ (the eight engines AIQ currently monitors: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Grok, Claude, Google AI Mode) |
Which tool do you need?
- If the question is “Are we being cited?” a visibility-focused GEO tool is the right instrument. It polls defined prompts and reports citation frequency.
- If the question is “What is the AI saying about us, and why?” a reputation monitoring tool is what you need. It captures the full response, identifies the sources the engine relied on, and tracks sentiment and narrative drift over time.
- The two categories work together rather than compete. Some organizations run both: the GEO tool feeds marketing dashboards; the reputation tool feeds the comms and corporate affairs function. The choice comes down to which question the team that owns the output needs answered.
Last reviewed: 19/05/2026
