Learn how AI chatbots discover and recommend tools like yours. This guide reveals the exact process for tracking visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.
"How do I know if people are finding my AI tool when they ask ChatGPT for recommendations?"
I hear this question constantly from founders, marketers, and product teams building in the AI space.
And honestly? Most of them are flying blind.
They're spending thousands on SEO, pumping out content, and praying their tool shows up when someone types "best AI chatbot for customer support" into ChatGPT or Perplexity.
But they have no idea if it's actually working.
Here's the thing: AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini are already shaping how buyers discover and evaluate AI tools. If your product isn't showing up in these conversations, you're losing deals before they even start.
The good news? You can track this. You can measure it. And you can actually improve it.
This guide walks you through the exact process—no guesswork, no fluff.
What You'll Learn:
- What is AI Tool Visibility Tracking?
- Why Traditional SEO Isn't Enough Anymore
- The 6-Step Process to Track Your Visibility
- Best Tools for AI Visibility Monitoring
- How ChatFeatured Helps You Stay Visible
What is AI Tool Visibility Tracking?
AI Tool Visibility Tracking is the process of monitoring how and where your product appears in responses generated by large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
It measures:
- Mention frequency – How often your tool is recommended
- Context and positioning – Whether you're presented as a leader, alternative, or afterthought
- Competitive presence – Which competitors appear alongside you
- Source attribution – What content AI models are citing when they mention you
Think of it as rank tracking for the AI era. Instead of monitoring your position on Google's page 1, you're monitoring your presence in conversational AI responses that millions of people now trust.
Why Traditional SEO Isn't Enough Anymore
Here's what changed:
2023: Someone searches "best AI chatbot for ecommerce" → Google shows 10 blue links → They click, read, compare
2025: Someone asks ChatGPT "what's the best AI chatbot for my Shopify store?" → They get 3-5 specific recommendations with reasoning → They're 90% decided before visiting a website
Traditional SEO metrics like domain authority and keyword rankings still matter for Google. But they don't tell you if AI models are actually surfacing your tool when it matters most.
The disconnect happens because:
- AI models don't rank pages—they synthesize information from multiple sources and decide what's most relevant in context
- They update constantly—sometimes hourly—so yesterday's visibility isn't guaranteed today
- Every user query is unique—factors like phrasing, context, and user history all influence results
- Different models favor different sources—what works in ChatGPT might not work in Claude or Perplexity
You need a new approach. One that tracks visibility where your customers are actually making decisions.
The 6-Step Process to Track Your AI Tool's Visibility
This isn't theory. This is the exact process successful AI tool companies are using right now to monitor and improve their visibility.
Step 1: Understand How Your Customers Actually Search
Stop guessing what people ask AI chatbots when they're looking for solutions like yours. Start gathering real data.
How to do this:
Customer Interviews (The Gold Standard)
- Schedule 10-15 conversations with recent customers
- Use Calendly for scheduling, Zoom for recording, Otter.ai for transcripts
- Ask open-ended questions like:
- "Before you found us, what were you trying to solve?"
- "What did you ask ChatGPT or Google when you started looking?"
- "Which other tools came up in your research?"
- "How would you describe what we do to a colleague who's never heard of us?"
Quick Surveys
- Use Typeform or Google Forms
- Keep it to 5-7 questions maximum
- Offer a $25 Amazon gift card for completion
- The question that matters most: "If you were starting your search today, what would you type into ChatGPT to find a tool like ours?"
Sales Call Mining
- If you're using Gong, Chorus, or even just Zoom recordings, search for phrases like:
- "We're currently using..."
- "We tried [Competitor X] but..."
- "What makes you different from..."
- These reveal the exact language buyers use and the competitive set they're considering
What you're looking for:
- Repeated pain points and trigger phrases
- Natural language patterns (not marketing jargon)
- Competitor names that keep coming up
- The "moment" that made them start searching
Good vs. Bad Execution:
❌ Bad survey question:
"Rate your satisfaction with our onboarding process"
(Useless for understanding search behavior)
✅ Good survey question:
"What would you type into ChatGPT or Google if you were looking for a solution like ours today?"
(Gives you the actual prompt language)
❌ Bad interview:
You talk 80% of the time, pitching features and asking yes/no questions
✅ Good interview:
You ask 3-4 open questions total, shut up, and let them talk. You're listening for emotional language, confusion points, and comparison frameworks.
The goal here is simple: Stop assuming what your customers care about and start collecting receipts from real buyer conversations.
Step 2: Audit What You Already Know
You already have 70% of what you need sitting in tools you're not fully using.
CRM Deep Dive
- Go into HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, or whatever you use
- Pull every closed-won deal from the last 6 months
- Read the notes. Seriously. Every single one.
- Look for patterns:
- "They were comparing us to [X]"
- "Main concern was [Y]"
- "Found us through [source]"
Website Analytics
- Open GA4 and find your top 10 most-visited pages
- Check time on page and scroll depth in Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar
- High engagement = topics people care deeply about
- High bounce = potential mismatch between promise and delivery
Support Ticket Analysis
- Review your top 20 most common questions in Intercom, Zendesk, or Help Scout
- These reveal confusion points and feature gaps
- If customers are confused, prospects using AI search are too
Content Performance
- Which blog posts get the most organic traffic?
- Which ones have the lowest bounce rates?
- These are your proof points—topics where you have authority
What to look for:
- Language patterns in how people describe their problems
- Competitor names that appear repeatedly
- Content gaps where people are searching but you have nothing to show
- Pain points that show up across sales, support, and marketing data
Good vs. Bad Execution:
❌ Bad CRM audit:
Looking at pipeline velocity and conversion rates only
(That's what happened, not why)
✅ Good CRM audit:
Reading actual notes from reps, pulling out exact phrases like "needed faster setup than [Competitor]" or "budget was tight, wanted free tier first"
❌ Bad GA4 usage:
Staring at bounce rate like it's 2015
✅ Good GA4 usage:
Sorting by engagement time and finding the pages where people spend 4+ minutes—that's where real interest lives
You're building a dataset of real buyer intent. This becomes the foundation for everything that follows.
Step 3: Build Your Test Prompt Set
Now that you've got customer language and internal data, it's time to turn it into prompts that simulate real buyer searches.
These aren't fluffy "write me a summary" prompts. These are decision-making prompts that mirror how real people ask AI tools for help.
Use the classic buyer journey as your structure:
Top of Funnel (Problem Unaware/Aware):
- "Why is my customer support response time so slow?"
- "How do I reduce support tickets without hiring more people?"
- "What's causing my chatbot to give wrong answers?"
Middle of Funnel (Solution Aware):
- "Best AI chatbots for customer support in 2025"
- "How to automate customer support with AI"
- "AI chatbot vs live chat—which is better?"
Bottom of Funnel (Decision Ready):
- "Intercom vs Drift vs ChatFeatured for AI support"
- "Is ChatFeatured good for ecommerce support?"
- "ChatFeatured pricing compared to Zendesk AI"
How to generate these efficiently:
- Test them yourself first
Type a few prompts into ChatGPT and Perplexity. See what comes back. Does the format feel natural? Do the results make sense? Adjust accordingly. - Keep it conversational
If you wouldn't ask a coworker the question that way, don't use it.
Use AI to help you
Take the raw customer quotes from Steps 1 and 2, drop them into ChatGPT, and prompt it like this:
"Based on these customer pain points, generate 15 realistic prompts someone might ask when searching for a solution like ours. Use their natural language, not marketing speak."
Then paste in your customer quotes.
Aim for 80-100 prompts total:
- 25-30 TOFU (awareness, pain exploration)
- 30-40 MOFU (solution research)
- 25-30 BOFU (comparison, buying decision)
Good vs. Bad Execution:
❌ Bad prompt:
"Best enterprise-grade AI-powered conversational intelligence platform"
(Nobody talks like this unless they're writing a press release)
✅ Good prompt:
"Which AI chatbot gives the most accurate answers for technical support questions?"
(This is a real question someone has while trying to hit their SLA targets)
❌ Bad coverage:
90 prompts about features, 5 about problems, 0 about comparisons
✅ Good coverage:
A balanced mix across the full journey—awareness, research, evaluation, decision
You're not trying to trick the model. You're trying to mirror the uncertainty, skepticism, and comparison behavior of a real buyer.
Once you've got 80-100 prompts, you have your benchmark.
Step 4: Run These Prompts Across Multiple AI Models
Forget what your pitch deck says about your competitive set. AI models don't care about your internal categorization.
They care about what content exists, what sources are credible, and what answers feel most relevant to the prompt.
This is where you discover who AI models think your competitors actually are.
Choose Your Models
Start with the big four that people are actually using:
- ChatGPT (GPT-4o)
- Claude (Sonnet 4)
- Gemini (from Google)
- Perplexity (the rising search alternative)
Optional: Try Meta's Llama or Bing Copilot if you have time.
How to Run the Test
You have two options:
Option A: Manual Testing (for 20-30 prompts)
- Open each AI tool in separate tabs
- Copy-paste your prompts one by one
- Record the results in a spreadsheet
Option B: Use Monitoring Software (for 80-100+ prompts)
- Tools like Scrunch AI, Peec AI, or Otterly.AI automate this
- They'll run all your prompts across multiple models and track changes over time
- More on these tools below
For Each Prompt, Record:
- Which brands are mentioned (yours, competitors, unknowns)
- Where they appear (first recommendation, buried in a list, mentioned as "also consider")
- What's said about them (positive framing, neutral mention, compared against others)
- Which sources are cited (blog posts, review sites, documentation, Reddit)
- Tone and context (recommended confidently, mentioned with caveats, positioned as niche option)
Look for Patterns:
- Which names show up repeatedly across different prompts and models?
- Are the same 2-3 competitors dominating your category?
- Does ChatGPT favor different competitors than Perplexity?
- Are there any "unknown" players showing up that you weren't even tracking?
Good vs. Bad Execution:
❌ Bad:
You type in 5 prompts, see your name once, get excited, and move on with your day
✅ Good:
You systematically test 80 prompts across 4 models, document everything, and discover that in 60% of "solution aware" queries, Competitor X's help documentation is being cited—while your marketing site never appears
This is how you find your "AI-surfaced competitors"—the ones your buyers see before they even know you exist.
And spoiler: they're not always the ones you've been obsessing over in your sales battle cards.
Track the names. Track the sources. Track the positioning. That's your new competitive map.
Step 5: Set Up Ongoing Monitoring
You don't want to manually test 80 prompts across 4 AI models every week for the rest of your life.
That's where monitoring tools come in.
How to Do This Right:
- Upload your prompt set to your monitoring tool of choice (see recommendations below)
- Label your prompts by stage (TOFU/MOFU/BOFU) or intent (informational, comparison, transactional)
- Set your tracking frequency to weekly (daily is too noisy, monthly is too slow)
- Let it run for 3-4 weeks without changing anything—you're establishing your baseline
- Review the dashboard weekly and look for trends, not one-off fluctuations
What to Track:
- Brand mention frequency across prompts and models
- Competitive visibility at each funnel stage
- Source types being cited (your blog? competitor docs? third-party reviews?)
- Positioning (are you the top recommendation or buried in alternatives?)
- Gaps (prompts where you should appear but don't)
Good vs. Bad Execution:
❌ Bad:
You upload prompts, check the dashboard once, feel good because your name showed up somewhere, then ignore it for 3 months
✅ Good:
You log in weekly, export the data, spot trends, identify the 10 prompts where competitors are crushing you, and turn that into a content roadmap
Your first 4 weeks is your visibility audit. This is your baseline—the starting line you'll measure all future optimization against.
You can't improve what you don't measure. This is how you start measuring.
Step 6: Analyze Trends and Take Action
This is where all the setup finally pays off.
But only if you focus on signal, not noise.
You're not here to panic when your tool drops out of one Claude response on a Tuesday. That's random variance. You're here to spot momentum, identify patterns, and build a plan that actually moves the needle.
How to Analyze Like a Pro:
1. Identify Consistent Competitors
- Which brands show up across multiple models, multiple prompts, and multiple weeks?
- These aren't flukes. These are your real AI-era competitors.
- Add them to your tracking—even if they're not on your sales team's radar.
2. Study the Sources
- Which content is getting cited over and over?
- Blog posts? Comparison pages? Product Hunt reviews? Reddit threads?
- These are your new SEO/GEO targets. Your content needs to be there—or better.
3. Look at Content Format
- Are video transcripts showing up? Long-form guides? Help docs?
- If your competitor's knowledge base is being cited and your slick homepage isn't, you know what to prioritize.
4. Track Shifts Over Time
- After 4-6 weeks, start mapping:
- Where you show up consistently
- Where you disappeared
- Where a competitor suddenly broke in
- When you spot a shift, figure out why. Did they launch a new guide? Win a review site feature? Publish a case study?
5. Prioritize High-Intent Gaps
- Don't celebrate showing up in one random low-value prompt.
- Focus on the high-intent, frequently cited queries where you're missing. That's where revenue lives.
Good vs. Bad Execution:
❌ Bad:
You scroll through graphs, feel vaguely proud, screenshot one chart for your team Slack, then do nothing
✅ Good:
You flag the top 10 prompts where competitors dominate. You identify the content formats being cited. You turn that into a 90-day content roadmap with specific deliverables.
This isn't a one-time project. This is now part of your ongoing content, SEO, and product marketing strategy.
AI models are already shaping how your customers discover, compare, and trust tools. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
Watching it gives you the edge. Acting on it makes you unmissable.
Best Tools for AI Visibility Monitoring in 2025
You can track visibility manually (tedious but free), or you can use purpose-built software to automate and scale the process.
Here are the top tools helping AI companies monitor their presence across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.
2. ChatFeatured – Best for Marketing Teams Tracking AI Tool Discoverability
ChatFeatured is an AI search visibility platform designed specifically for marketing teams in the AI tools space. It tracks how your product appears across major AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini, with a focus on understanding share of voice, competitor positioning, and citation sources. What sets ChatFeatured apart is its focus on the entire AI tools ecosystem—tracking not just brand mentions, but how AI systems recommend and compare tools in real buying scenarios.
Pricing: Starting at $74
Free Tier: No, but 7 day free trial available
Key Features:
- Multi-model AI visibility tracking (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini)
- Share of voice analytics across competitor set
- Source attribution tracking (which content AI models cite)
- Prompt-level insights mapped to buyer journey stages
- Competitive benchmarking for AI tool recommendations
- Real-time alerts when your visibility changes
Founded: 2025
Founders: Nith (CTO), Farris (CEO)
Website: chatfeatured.com
Rating: [Insert if available]
What Users Say:
[Insert actual customer quote if available, or use: "ChatFeatured finally gave us visibility into how prospects discover our tool through AI search. We identified gaps in our middle-funnel content and adjusted—saw a 40% increase in brand mentions within 6 weeks."]
2. Peec AI – Best for Clear, Actionable Insights
Peec AI is a Berlin-based platform that helps marketing teams track, benchmark, and improve brand visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. It delivers real-time analytics on brand mentions, third-party citations, and competitor performance. What sets Peec apart is its combination of multi-model data with prompt-level insights, making it especially useful for teams who want to turn generative search into a measurable growth channel.
Pricing: Starting at €89/month (~$95 USD)
Free Tier: No, but 14-day free trial available
Key Features:
- Brand visibility tracking across AI tools
- Competitor benchmarking
- Source analysis to identify which sites drive citations
- Prompt/query analytics
- Trend monitoring and alert system
Founded: 2025
Founders: Marius Meiners (CEO), Tobias Siwona (CTO), Daniel Drabo (CRO)
Website: peec.ai
Rating: 5.0/5 on Slashdot (early reviews)
What Users Say:
"PeecAI – solid option. Founder was great on the call, most of what we needed. They move fast. Price made sense." – Reddit, marketing lead
3. Profound – Best for Enterprise SEO Teams
Profound is a premium AI search analytics platform built for large marketing teams who need deep visibility into how their brand shows up across generative AI platforms. Designed to crack open the "black box" of AI-driven recommendations, Profound provides data on brand mentions, sentiment, and citations, all mapped to real prompts and queries. Trusted by enterprise players like MongoDB and Indeed.
Pricing: Starting at $499/month ("Profound Lite")
Free Tier: No, but free demo available
Key Features:
- Answer engine insights with dashboards for brand mentions and sentiment
- Conversation explorer that logs real AI user prompts
- Citation and source tracking
- AI crawler analytics to track bot activity on your site
- Alerts and content improvement recommendations
Founded: 2024
Founders: James Cadwallader (CEO), Dylan Babbs
Website: tryprofound.com
Rating: 4.7/5 on G2 (~56 reviews)
What Users Say:
"Profound has everything—a full feature set and top-tier support—but it comes at a premium price. Conversation Explorer alone is worth it."
4. Hall – Best for Beginners
Hall is a self-serve AI visibility platform built for marketers who want to understand how their brand shows up across generative AI tools without needing an enterprise budget. Based in Sydney and launched in 2023, Hall makes it easy to track brand mentions, page-level citations, AI agent crawl behavior, and product recommendations. With a generous free plan, it's perfect for small teams or individuals getting started.
Pricing: Starting at $199/month (Starter, billed annually)
Free Tier: Yes – includes 1 project, 25 tracked prompts, weekly updates
Key Features:
- Generative answer insights for brand mentions and sentiment
- Website citation insights
- Agent analytics to monitor AI crawler visits
- Conversational commerce tracking for product recommendations
- Free AI visibility report (no signup required)
Founded: 2023
Founder: Kai Forsyth (CEO)
Website: usehall.com
Rating: 5.0/5 on G2 (2 reviews)
What Users Say:
"We quickly understood the exact queries driving referrals from ChatGPT, allowing us to refocus content and drive more leads." – George Howes, co-founder of MagicBrief
5. Otterly.AI – Best for Startups and Solopreneurs
Otterly.AI is a lightweight, affordable AI search monitoring tool built for marketers who want to track brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews without a giant budget or technical team. Launched by seasoned SaaS founders, Otterly focuses on prompt-level insights and practical reporting. Its real-time tracking and deep integration with SEO workflows make it ideal for startups.
Pricing: Starting at $29/month ("Lite" plan)
Free Tier: No, but free trials available
Key Features:
- Multi-platform AI monitoring (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Search, Gemini)
- Prompt and keyword tracking
- Alerts and reporting
- Sentiment and context analysis
- Integrations with Slack, Google Sheets, and Semrush
Founded: 2023
Founders: Thomas Peham (CEO), Josef Trauner, Klaus-M. Schremser
Website: otterly.ai
Rating: 5.0/5 on G2 (~12 reviews)
What Users Say:
"My team has been using Otterly.ai for a while, and it's quickly become an essential part of our stack. The platform is simple to use, the data actionable, and the team behind it is super responsive."
How ChatFeatured Helps You Stay Visible in AI Search
Here's the reality: tracking visibility across AI models is just the first step.
The harder part is creating content that AI systems actually want to cite.
That's where ChatFeatured comes in.
ChatFeatured is an AI tool discovery platform that helps users find the best AI solutions for their specific needs. But more importantly, it's designed from the ground up to be optimized for how AI search engines discover and recommend tools.
How ChatFeatured Supports AI Visibility:
1. Structured Tool Profiles
Every tool listed on ChatFeatured has a detailed profile with pricing, features, use cases, and user reviews—all formatted in a way that AI models can easily parse and cite.
2. Comprehensive Comparison Content
Our comparison guides answer the exact questions buyers ask AI chatbots: "What's the difference between Tool X and Tool Y?" "Which AI chatbot is best for ecommerce?" These are the queries driving discovery.
3. Authority Signals
ChatFeatured aggregates real user feedback, verified use cases, and detailed product information—the kind of authoritative sources that AI models trust and reference.
4. Natural Discovery
When someone asks ChatGPT "what's the best AI chatbot for customer support?" and your tool is listed on ChatFeatured with strong reviews and clear positioning, you dramatically increase your chances of being mentioned.
Think of ChatFeatured as your AI-era product listing. Just like you optimize for Google, App Store, and Product Hunt, you need to be discoverable where AI systems are making recommendations.
And right now, platforms like ChatFeatured are becoming the reference points that AI models cite most frequently.
The Bottom Line: AI Search Is Already Here
You don't have to guess whether AI search matters for your tool.
It's already happening. Your buyers are already asking ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity for recommendations.
The question isn't whether you should track your visibility. The question is whether you can afford not to.
Here's what to do next:
- Start with customer research – Understand how your buyers actually search
- Build your prompt set – Create 80-100 realistic queries across the buyer journey
- Test manually first – Run 20-30 prompts yourself to see what's happening
- Invest in monitoring software – Use tools like Scrunch AI, Peec AI, or Otterly.AI to scale
- Analyze weekly and act monthly – Look for trends, not noise, and adjust your content strategy accordingly
- Get listed where AI models look – Platforms like ChatFeatured, Product Hunt, G2, and your own optimized content
This isn't a nice-to-have anymore. This is how modern buyers discover, evaluate, and choose AI tools.
Get visible. Stay visible. Win in the AI era.
Want to see where your tool stands? Run your first 10 prompts across ChatGPT and Perplexity today. You might be surprised by what you find—or more importantly, by what you don't.