AI Visibility Tracking: A Practical Tutorial

Google rankings are no longer the only metric that matters. With a huge chunk of purchase research now shifting to AI assistants, the real question is: does ChatGPT actually recommend your brand when a user asks for the "best" tool in your category?

Unlike traditional SEO, AI visibility isn't about keywords; it's about how the model perceives your brand's authority across Reddit, GitHub, and review sites. If you're mentioned but not cited, you have visibility but lack authority. If you're cited but not mentioned, you're essentially providing evidence for a competitor's recommendation.

Manual Benchmarking

Before automating, you need a baseline. I suggest picking 3–5 high-intent queries—the kind of questions your actual customers ask—and running them across ChatGPT (with web search), Perplexity, and Gemini.

For example, if you sell a project management tool, try:

• "What project management software should a 20-person startup use?"
• "Best free project management tool for remote teams"
• "Alternatives to Jira for small teams"

Track whether your brand appears, its position in the list, and if your URL is in the citations. Doing this manually is tedious and doesn't scale, which is why a structured AI workflow is necessary for weekly tracking.

Automating Visibility with Apify

To move from spot checks to a real-world data stream, you can use an Apify actor to scrape these responses. This allows you to track "Share of Voice" (your mentions vs. competitor mentions) and a "Position Score" (how high up in the response you appear).

The output is delivered in a structured JSON format, making it easy to pipe into a dashboard:

{
 "brand": "Asana",
 "engine": "chatgpt",
 "query": "best project management tool for small teams",
 "brand_mentioned": true,
 "mention_count": 2,
 "position_score": 9,
 "share_of_voice": 0.4,
 "competitor_mentions": { "Trello": 2, "Monday.com": 1, "ClickUp": 0 },
 "cited_domains": ["g2.com", "blog.asana.com"],
 "response_snippet": "For small teams, Asana offers a generous free tier..."
}

To set this up:
1. Locate the AI Brand Visibility Tracker on Apify.
2. Input your brand name and up to 5 primary competitors.
3. Schedule the actor to run weekly to monitor shifts in LLM recommendations.

This approach turns vague "AI presence" into a measurable KPI, allowing you to see exactly where your brand stands in the eyes of the major LLMs.