Key takeaways
- Track prompts (the questions people ask AI) alongside keywords.
- Measure brand mention rate and share of voice in AI answers.
- Watch citation presence, whether your URL is linked as a source.
- Sample regularly; AI answers vary between runs.
Tracking AI visibility means measuring how often AI assistants mention or cite your brand in response to relevant prompts, not just where your pages rank for keywords. The core metrics are brand mention rate, share of voice versus competitors, and citation presence, sampled repeatedly because AI answers vary.
Why keywords aren't enough
When an AI answers directly, a user may never see, or click, a ranked link. So a page can “rank” yet get little traffic, while a brand that's frequently named in answers wins attention. That's why AI-era measurement shifts toward prompts and mentions.
The metrics that matter
- Mention rate: across a set of prompts, how often is your brand named?
- Share of voice: your mentions vs. competitors for the same prompts.
- Citation presence: is your URL linked as a source?
- Sentiment: is the mention positive, neutral, or negative?
- Coverage: which sub-questions do you show up for?
How to build a simple AI visibility report
- List 20-50 prompts your customers would ask across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
- Run each prompt on a schedule and record: mentioned? cited? sentiment? competitors named?
- Roll up into mention rate and share of voice; track the trend over time.
- Feed gaps back into content, prompts where you're absent are your roadmap.
Dedicated AI SEO tools can automate this, but a spreadsheet works to start.
Close the loop: turn gaps into content using the AI SEO checklist, and revisit AEO to improve the pages that aren't getting cited.