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Blog > The 14 Best AI Optimization Tools (Mentions & Citations)
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Generative AI is fundamentally changing how people discover brands.
When someone asks ChatGPT about the “best project management software for small businesses,” for example, the brands mentioned in that response gain a big advantage over those not mentioned.
But if you’re a business owner, the challenge is:
How do you know if your brand is appearing in AI search results? Are you there, or are you absent? And what is the AI saying about you?
Unlike traditional Google search results pages where you can easily open an Incognito tab to check your rankings, AI visibility requires specialized tracking with an AI visibility optimization tool. You can try checking some manually, but that would be pretty difficult and time-consuming.
In this guide, I'll give you an in-depth tour of the top tools and technologies for tracking and optimizing your AI search presence.
I'll cover everything from budget-friendly monitoring solutions to enterprise platforms with advanced large language model (LLM) optimization features.
Here are the top 14 software tools for monitoring brand mentions in LLMs:
The best AI visibility optimization tools can do more than monitor mentions of your brand.
Some offer competitive benchmarking, source attribution analysis, and specific recommendations for improving your brand’s presence in AI search results.
Let's explore some of my top recommendations in some detail.
Semrush Enterprise AIO is the first enterprise-grade solution specifically designed for brand tracking on AI search platforms. The platform provides comprehensive monitoring across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude, with additional AI platforms being added continuously.
You can use it to track prompts just like you track keywords. Add them to your account and the tool will prompt each platform and analyze the results for you.
Key Features
Why use Semrush Enterprise AIO? A few things that make Enterprise AIO stand out amongst competitors is its unparalleled data accuracy, its AI platform coverage, and its power when combined with the entire Semrush SEO platform.
The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit is designed for SEOs and marketers who want to monitor how their site and competitors are positioned across AI systems.
Priced at $99 per month, it offers all the AI visibility tracking you need without enterprise-level complexity.
Key Features:
Why use Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit? Whether you’re already a Semrush user or not, the AI Visibility toolkit uses Semrush’s proven data infrastructure and is fully integrated into its well-loved SEO dashboard set of reports. Compared to competitors, its daily prompt tracking updates, competitor tracking, and sentiment analysis features are hard to beat.
Read our full Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit vs SE Ranking AI Search Toolkit review.
Clarity ArcAI is an end-to-end platform for AI search optimization.
It's designed specifically for enterprises needing comprehensive AI search visibility tracking, mention monitoring, and content optimization tools plus advanced analytics and compliance features.
Key Features:
Why use Clarity ArcAI? It's the only platform that provides hands-on, step-by-step guidance for creating content that wins AI visibility. You can also use the ArcAI Insights tool to get guidance on exactly what changes to make to content to get it to show up in LLMs for specific queries.
Ahrefs Brand Radar is the SEO tool giant's entry into AI visibility optimization and mentions tracking, designed to help brands track their presence across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot.
Key Features:
Why use Ahrefs Brand Radar? Similar to Semrush, the Brand Radar dashboard integrates seamlessly with Ahrefs' existing SEO toolset. AI tracking via Brand Radar is included on all paid Ahrefs plans as an add-on at $199/month for each AI platform you want to monitor.
Profound is an AI visibility optimization platform that processes over 100 million AI search prompts per month to help businesses understand and control how they appear in AI-generated answers.
It’s focused on enterprise-level monitoring with advanced analytics and optimization features.
Key Features:
Why use Profound? Profound has really strong reporting capabilities in the enterprise space and provides a "god-view" for agencies managing multiple clients. Also, the platform's Conversation Explorer tool is a breakthrough innovation that reveals previously invisible AI search volume data.
Surfer’s AI Tracker monitors brand mentions across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, and Perplexity. It captures the real AI responses that users see, not just scraped data.
This new tool is available as an add-on starting at $95/month for 25 prompts, with Scale plan users getting 5 credits included and daily automatic updates.
Key Features:
Why use Surfer’s AI Tracker? AI Tracker refreshes daily and offers transparent source attribution, making it easy to understand exactly where AI platforms pull information about your brand. The integration with Surfer's content optimization tools creates a complete workflow from monitoring to action.
SE Ranking's AI Search Toolkit helps you track LLM mentions, visibility, and competitors across the major AI platforms.
Integrated with the full SE Ranking SEO Toolkit, it’s priced at $207.20 per month (paid annually) plus any add-ons.
Key Features:
Why use SE Ranking AI Search Toolkit? AI Search Toolkit offers great AI mention coverage with its four-part suite. SE Ranking was early to start developing their AI search tracking tool, beginning development in January 2024. This head start provides more reliable data and deeper understanding of AI search metrics compared to newer competitors.
Athena is a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform designed to help brands optimize their visibility across AI-driven search platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Google's AI Overviews.
Priced from $295 and up per month, it’s super focused on comprehensive GEO analytics.
Key Features:
Why use Athena? It's positioned as "the one-stop shop for everything AI search" with particularly strong analytics. Athena is super focused on GEO analytics along with some optimization suggestions and it does both of these things very well.
Scrunch is a platform designed to help businesses understand and optimize how their brand appears in generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Meta AI.
Starting at $300 per month for 350 custom prompts and three personas, it focuses on brand mention monitoring and AI-driven insights.
Key Features:
Why use Scrunch AI? Scrunch will soon release their newest tool, Scrunch Agent Experience Platform (AXP). Scrunch describes it as creating “a parallel AI-ready version of your site—served invisibly to AI agents, optimized for LLMs, and mapped to your sources of truth.”
Otterly.ai is an AI search monitoring platform that tracks brand and content visibility across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and more.
If you grab Premium at $422 per month (paid annually) you’ll get 400 search prompts, daily tracking, and 500 GEO audits per month.
Key Features:
Why use Otterly? Otterly provides thorough AI visibility monitoring with a particularly strong citation analysis feature. Use its daily reporting and clear, understandable insights as a jumping off point into GEO.
Rankscale AI is a next-generation platform for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) designed to help brands dominate visibility in AI-driven search engines like ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, and more.
The credit-based model starts at $20 per month for 120 credits and goes up to $780 for 12,000 credits per month.
Key Features:
Why use Rankscale AI? Rankscale provides the lowest-cost entry point for AI visibility tracking while still offering features fit for enterprises like full LLM visibility dashboards and detailed AI readiness audits.
LLMrefs is a more basic AI Visibility keyword rank tracker designed to help businesses optimize their content for AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Priced at $79 per month for the Pro plan with 50 keywords, it focuses on tracking LLM keyword rankings and identifying top cited sources across major AI models.
Key Features:
Why use LLMrefs? The proprietary LLMrefs Score is really helpful in measuring how well your website is ranking in LLMs for specific keyword prompts.
Peec AI is a specialist GEO analytics platform built for AI search visibility tracking.
Starting at €89 per month (approximately $95), it monitors brand visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Key Features:
Why use Peec AI? Peec offers enterprise-grade analytics at accessible pricing with a streamlined, intuitive dashboard that’s super clean and easy to use.
Writesonic GEO is a Generative Engine Optimization platform designed to help businesses track, analyze, and optimize their visibility across all major AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity.
Starting at $16 per month with a free plan available, it combines monitoring with content optimization tools.
Key Features:
Why use Writesonic GEO? Writesonic offers a really complete solution by combining monitoring with optimization capabilities in a single platform. Unlike competitors that only provide data, Writesonic includes content creation and SEO tools, allowing you to immediately act on insights without switching platforms.
Your organic visibility is about how often your brand and/or your content is mentioned or cited in traditional search results, AI Overviews, and LLM responses.
Just in the past year or so, AI majorly changed what it means to be visible. AI-powered platforms now use massive datasets, sophisticated predictive models, and real-time analytics to determine which brands get mentioned or cited. These systems analyze millions of web pages, user interactions, and content signals to decide what to recommend at any one moment.
It’s massively important to start monitoring your AI brand visibility now because increasing your AI visibility creates a direct path to business growth.
When your brand appears in AI responses, you see increased, extra-qualified traffic. This traffic typically shows higher engagement rates because users arrive with specific intent, having already asked the AI their entry-level questions.
Higher engagement then leads to improved conversion rates, giving your business a leg up. That’s how consistent AI visibility gives you a significant competitive edge over brands that aren't optimizing for AI search.
Companies that ignore AI visibility risk becoming invisible to an entire generation of searchers who rely on AI for recommendations.
So, what are the best ways to monitor and analyze AI brand mentions or citations?
With AI visibility optimization tools like the ones on this list.
The leading platforms monitor responses across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and other AI engines. They track mention frequency, sentiment, context, the sources that influence AI recommendations, and more.
Especially if you’re new to tracking AI visibility, it can be tricky to figure out which features you actually need.
Here’s a look at the features you’ll find in AI visibility optimization tools.
The first, most necessary feature for any AI optimization tool is, of course, brand visibility tracking across the top AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, Google’s AI overviews, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and more.
Different tools handle and report on AI visibility differently, but in general it’ll be a measure of how often your brand appears in AI generated answers compared to a median of your top competitors.
Beyond basic mention counting, advanced tools might also include features like:
Find out how many clicks you're losing to Google's AI Overviews
It’s crucial to understand which pages are cited in LLM responses.
The best tools track both owned content (your website, blog posts, press releases) and third-party sources (news articles, reviews, industry reports) that show up in AI citations.
These reports reveal which pieces of content consistently get cited by AI, helping you identify content that’s really working for your brand and gaps where writing more content could improve your visibility.
It would be hard to draw conclusions about and optimize your AI visibility if you had only your own numbers to look at. Great AI visibility tools provide competitive analysis and benchmarking so that you can see how your presence in AI answers compares to your key competitors.
This includes mention frequency, ranking positions in AI responses, and share of voice across different queries.
So your content has some visibility in AI. Great!
But now what?
Some AI visibility tools go beyond monitoring to provide specific, actionable suggestions for improving your AI search presence. This might include content gap analysis, AI-optimized content creation assistance, and recommendations for optimizing existing content.
It can be really hard these days to prove the ROI of your marketing efforts. To help, look for mention tracking tools that integrate with Google Analytics 4 to track traffic, conversions, and revenue specifically from AI search sources.
For businesses operating in multiple markets, multi-country and multi-language monitoring capabilities are essential. Look for tools that provide regional performance comparisons and track how your brand appears in AI responses across different geographic markets and languages.
Users rely on quite a few different AI platforms for different needs, so your tool’s monitoring capabilities should include all top and emerging platforms, rather than focusing on just one or two.
E-commerce businesses need specialized features like ChatGPT Shopping optimization, product placement tracking, and keyword trigger analysis. These tools help ensure your products appear when AI makes product recommendations. This is especially important amid the launch of Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which enable users to authorize AI agents to make purchases directly from retailers.
For enterprises or businesses with complex optimization challenges, look for platforms that offer expert human guidance and dedicated account strategists.
When there are multiple tools to choose from, it can be tricky to pick the right one for you. Here’s what to think about before making your choice:
What matters most to your business? What are your priorities to track?
You want to see your brand mentions, but how about the prompts that are mentioning you? Do you have competitors to track? Or maybe you just need a general overview of your AI visibility?
Match your tool not only to your needs, but also to your organization’s size and goals. Enterprises, for example, typically need advanced AI mention tracking features like multi-brand tracking, detailed attribution, and dedicated support.
AI visibility optimization tools range dramatically in price, from $20 to over $3,000 per month. Before setting a budget, check the feature set in your existing SEO tools to see if an add-on for GEO is more affordable than a totally separate platform.
Of course, your chosen tool needs to monitor the AI platforms your audience actually uses. Look for comprehensive coverage across your priority platforms.
I recommend that most brands check ChatGPT. You can then decide which other LLMs you want to look at: Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Grok, or Google AI Overviews.
Refresh rates vary significantly between platforms. Some tools like Surfer update weekly, for example, while others like Rankscale require manual refreshes.
Look for tools that clearly explain how they collect data, their update frequency, and their citation capture methods.
Measuring your success and proving your team’s ROI is a big challenge right now. Without direct conversions from organic traffic, measuring marketing’s effect on your business can be tough.
Here’s what to measure with your AI visibility optimization tool and analytics to help prove your ROI:
Organic search visibility is still fundamental, but AI visibility adds a whole new dimension to it. Track how often your brand appears in AI responses across different queries and platforms. Monitor your mention frequency, your position within responses, and context.
Get More Search Traffic
Use trending keywords to create content your audience craves.
Use trending keywords to create content your audience craves.
Keyword ranking changes also take on new meaning in AI search. Unlike traditional rankings, AI responses vary based on context, user persona, and user intent. Track how consistently you appear for target keywords and monitor your "share of response" for key queries.
Click-through rate improvements from AI mentions often lead to even more conversions because users arrive at your website with higher intent. Monitor traffic quality from AI referrals and track how these visitors engage with your content compared to other sources.
Share of voice vs. competitors gives you crucial competitive context. Measure what percentage of relevant AI responses mention your brand compared to key rivals.
Custom KPIs tailored to your goals are also necessary to monitor. Different businesses need different success metrics based on their industry, audience, and objectives. E-commerce companies might focus on product mention frequency and purchase intent signals. B2B software companies, on the other hand, might prioritize thought leadership mentions and solution comparisons.
AI visibility optimization is one of the best investments you can make today to grow your brand. Research shows that AI search could drive more traffic than traditional organic search by 2028, with LLM visitors already worth 4.4 times more than traditional organic search visitors.
And AI visibility optimization tools will keep getting better and better.
So, it’s time to start exploring them today.
For the best mix of tracking and optimization tools, Semrush Enterprise AIO remains the industry gold standard. Its storied data accuracy, AI platform coverage, and integration with proven SEO tools make it the best platform not just to monitor and grow your AI presence.
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Exploding Topics is owned by Semrush. Our mission is to provide accurate data and expert insights on emerging trends. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
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Written By
Jolissa Skow
Senior Content Writer
Jolissa Skow is a senior content writer and content strategist with a background in SEO, Google Analytics, and WordPress. She's be… Read more
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