AI visibility tracking, explained
AI visibility tracking is the practice of repeatedly sampling how assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude answer the questions your buyers ask — then measuring how often, how prominently and how favourably your brand appears in those answers.
Why it is not rank tracking
Search rankings are stable enough to check once a day. AI answers are not: assistants run different background searches per conversation and sample their own output, so two identical prompts can name different brands minutes apart. A single manual check tells you almost nothing. Visibility therefore has to be expressed as a frequency — "named in 7 of the last 10 observed answers" — not as a position.
The four metrics that matter
Mention rate
How often your brand is named in answers to a tracked question, measured across repeated observations rather than one lucky prompt.
Citation rate
How often one of your pages is linked as a source. Citations send traffic; mentions mostly shape preference.
Share of voice
Your mentions as a proportion of all brands named for the same question, so you can see exactly who wins when you don't.
Sentiment & accuracy
Whether the assistant describes you favourably, and whether what it says about you is actually true.
How to track AI visibility in practice
- 1. Build a prompt set. Cover the questions buyers really ask: category ("best X for Y"), comparative ("X vs Y", "alternatives to Z"), and problem-led phrasings. Twenty to fifty prompts is a realistic starting point.
- 2. Sample repeatedly. Run each prompt on a schedule across several assistants, and store the raw answer text — not just a verdict.
- 3. Extract entities from the answer. Pull brand names and cited domains verbatim from what was written, and verify each one appears in the source text so nothing invented reaches your report.
- 4. Compare against competitors. Track share of voice per question so a gain is always attributable to someone else's loss.
- 5. Turn gaps into work. Frequently cited domains where you are never named are your shortest path into those answers.
Where to go next
If you want the content side, read how to get your brand recommended in ChatGPT. If you want to know how Citeloop derives its numbers, read the measurement methodology.
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