ChatGPT answers, unedited

For tracking when AI assistants mention your company and which sources they cite, look at AI visibility / GEO tracking tools rather than traditional SEO tools. Viali AI

• Profound — Best for enterprise teams needing deep prompt-level analysis, citations, and competitive intelligence. Viali AI
• Otterly.ai — Good for ongoing brand mention tracking across AI answers with simpler dashboards. Pixelmojo
• Citevis — Focused on tracking mentions, competitors, and cited sources across major AI assistants. Citevis
• Viali AI — Useful if you want both citation tracking and source-intelligence workflows. Viali AI
• Semrush / Ahrefs — Better if you also need traditional SEO; dedicated AI citation tools generally go deeper for LLM answers. Viali AI

Key features to prioritize:

• Exact prompts that triggered your mention
• AI engine coverage (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity)
• Source URLs/domains cited
• Competitor comparisons
• Historical tracking and alerts
• Ability to export evidence for PR, SEO, or content teams Tracemetry

For most companies, I’d shortlist Profound (enterprise), Otterly.ai (mid-market), and Citevis/Viali AI (focused AI visibility teams). Pixelmojo Citevis Viali AI

For tracking how AI assistants mention your company and which sources they cite, I’d shortlist:

• tryprofound.com — strongest fit if your priority is citation/source intelligence. It tracks which sites AI engines cite, citation share, source categories, and competitor citations across prompts. Profound Profound Help Center
• peec.ai — particularly good for brand mentions + citations together. It tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI results and others, including the URLs/domains influencing answers. Peec AI Peec AI
• getmentioned.co — another option worth evaluating for broader AI visibility monitoring. GetMentioned

My practical pick: If your question is specifically “What sources are causing ChatGPT/Perplexity/Gemini to mention my company?”, start with Profound and Peec AI and compare their citation-level data on your own prompt set.

If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, and what sources/citations are they using?”, you’re looking for an AI visibility / AEO / GEO monitoring platform, rather than a traditional SEO rank tracker.

Based on current 2026 capabilities, I’d shortlist these:

• tryprofound.com — strongest fit if you’re an enterprise or want deep source/citation intelligence. It tracks AI answers, citations, competitors, prompt demand, and broader AI-search analytics. Current comparisons put its entry pricing around $99/month, with deeper multi-engine coverage at higher tiers. TechnologyAdvice Lectern
• otterly.ai — probably the one I'd investigate first for a smaller marketing team. It explicitly tracks every cited domain and URL, alongside brand mentions, sentiment, share of voice, competitors, and the underlying answers. It currently advertises a $29/month entry tier. Otterly Otterly
• peec.ai — good middle ground for monitoring AI visibility and competitors across multiple engines, particularly if you want analytics rather than an enterprise-heavy platform. Baarely
• scrunch.com — interesting if you care not only about what AI says about you, but also how AI agents crawl and consume your website. It combines citation/visibility monitoring with an agent-experience layer. TechnologyAdvice Baarely
• semrush.com — worth considering if you already use Semrush for conventional SEO and want AI visibility added to the same stack. TechnologyAdvice
• ahrefs.com — similarly useful if you're already an Ahrefs customer; Brand Radar adds AI-visibility, mention, and citation analysis to the existing SEO workflow. TechnologyAdvice

What I'd measure

Don't just track “Did ChatGPT mention us?”. I'd want the software to distinguish:

That last one is particularly important: different AI-visibility platforms can produce different numbers because they use different prompt sets, sampling methods, models, and surfaces. Austin Heaton

My practical shortlist: I'd demo Otterly + Profound + Peec. If you're a smaller company, start by seeing whether Otterly gives you enough citation-level detail; if you're running a serious enterprise GEO program, investigate Profound; Peec is a useful comparison point.

If you tell me your company size, approximate monthly budget, and which assistants matter most (ChatGPT / Gemini / Claude / Perplexity / Google AI Overviews), I can narrow this to 2–3 options and compare their actual citation-tracking capabilities and pricing. TechnologyAdvice Baarely

If you mean tracking when AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, etc.) mention your company and which sources they rely on, you’re looking for an AI visibility / answer engine optimization (AEO) monitoring tool, not a traditional citation manager. The category is still developing, but these are some of the strongest options: Unite.AI Dageno AI

Best overall options

My shortlist by company type

Startup / SaaS company

Pick:

• citeprism.com
• mentionscout.com

You’ll usually want:

• “When does ChatGPT recommend us?”
• “Who gets recommended instead?”
• “Which pages are being cited?”
• “Which comparison pages/reviews influence answers?”

Enterprise brand or regulated industry

Pick:

• reputably.net
• siftly.ai

Important features:

• historical tracking
• evidence snapshots of answers
• misinformation/hallucination alerts
• competitor monitoring

SEO team already paying for tooling

Pick:

• semrush.com
• ahrefs.com

The advantage is connecting AI mentions with:

• rankings
• backlinks
• content gaps
• authority signals

Features I would require before buying

A good tool should show:

1. Exact prompt tested

• Example: “What are the best CRM tools for startups?”
• Exact AI answer

• Not just a visibility score.
• Citation/source list

• Which URLs, reviews, forums, or publications influenced the answer.
• Competitor comparison

• Who appears when you don’t.
• Trend history

• Whether your visibility is improving or declining.
• Action recommendations

• “Create a comparison page,” “earn a review mention,” “update documentation,” etc.

A practical setup

For many companies, I’d combine:

• one AI visibility tracker (CitePrism, MentionScout, Reputably, etc.)
• Google Search Console + analytics
• a spreadsheet of 50–200 buyer prompts you care about

Track prompts like:

• “best [category] software”
• “[competitor] alternatives”
• “[your product] vs [competitor]”
• “tools for [industry/problem]”

That gives you a much clearer picture than simply searching your company name in ChatGPT occasionally. CitePrism MentionScout

If you tell me your company size, industry, and whether you care more about ChatGPT/Claude mentions vs AI search traffic, I can narrow this to 2–3 best fits.

• “best [category] software”
• “[competitor] alternatives”
• “[your product] vs [competitor]”
• “tools for [industry/problem]”

That gives you a much clearer picture than simply searching your company name in ChatGPT occasionally.

If your goal is specifically “When an AI assistant talks about my company, what sources did it use, and how often is my company cited?”, you’re looking for an AI visibility / AEO / GEO monitoring platform, not traditional backlink monitoring.

My shortlist for 2026

My pick for most companies: OtterlyAI. It tracks the actual answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude, and its citation reporting shows the URLs/domains being cited—not merely whether your company name appeared. Otterly Otterly

That's an important distinction: a brand mention ≠ a citation. An assistant might say “Acme is a good option” without linking to Acme. Or it might cite a review, Reddit thread, analyst report, competitor comparison, or your own documentation while discussing Acme. The latter tells you which information sources are actually influencing the answer. Austin Heaton

What I'd track

For your use case, I'd make these the core metrics:

• Mention rate — % of relevant prompts where your company appears
• Citation rate — % where your domain gets cited
• Citation URLs — exactly which pages are being referenced
• Third-party sources — reviews, publications, Reddit, directories, comparison sites, etc.
• Competitor citations — which sources AI uses for competitors instead
• Position/prominence — whether you're #1 recommendation or buried at the bottom
• Sentiment/claims — what the AI actually says about you
• Prompt-level history — whether visibility is improving or declining over time

Peec, for example, explicitly tracks the sources ChatGPT uses to construct answers, while Otterly has expanded its citation reporting to include individual cited URLs and changes over time. Peec AI Otterly

One important caveat

Don't choose based simply on the number of AI models a vendor claims to monitor. AI answers are probabilistic, and different platforms can get different results from the same prompt. A good system should preserve the underlying answer and citation evidence so you can audit why it gave you a particular visibility score. Austin Heaton

If you tell me your company type (SaaS, agency, ecommerce, local business, etc.) and roughly your budget, I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually trial, including current pricing and exactly what each one reports.

If your goal is specifically “When an AI assistant mentions my company, what sources caused it, and which sources are winning against me?”, I’d shortlist these:

1. scrunch.com — my top pick

Scrunch is unusually focused on the citation layer, not just whether your company was mentioned.

It can show:

• Which domains and exact URLs AI assistants cite.
• Whether the cited page mentions your company or a competitor.
• Which prompts produced each citation.
• Citation frequency and consistency over time.
• Which third-party sources are most influential.
• Citation differences across AI platforms. Scrunch Scrunch

This is particularly valuable because you can answer questions like:

“ChatGPT keeps recommending Competitor X. What websites is it using to make that recommendation?”

Scrunch can then identify the sources and URLs behind those answers. Its citation documentation also explicitly distinguishes your own site's citations from third-party and competitor sources. Scrunch

2. peec.ai — best all-around dashboard

Peec tracks brand mentions, position, sentiment, share of voice, and the sources influencing AI answers across platforms including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI experiences. Peec AI Peec AI

A particularly useful distinction is that Peec separates:

• Mention: AI explicitly names your company.
• Source citation: your content is used as a source, even if the AI doesn't name you.

It can also expose source usage at the domain/URL level and provide API, Looker Studio, and MCP integrations. Peec AI

I'd choose this if your marketing team wants a broader AI-search analytics product, rather than primarily a citation intelligence system.

3. tryprofound.com — strongest enterprise option

Profound's citation tooling tracks which sources AI answer engines pull from, how you compare with competitors for citations, the types of pages being cited, and the publishers/authors driving citations. Profound

It's a good fit if you're building a larger GEO/AEO program involving content strategy, competitive intelligence and publisher outreach.

What I'd pick

If citations and sources are the #1 requirement → Scrunch.

If you want citations + overall AI visibility/share-of-voice analytics → Peec.

If you're an enterprise marketing/SEO organization → Profound.

One important thing: don't just track “Did ChatGPT mention us?”. I'd track a four-layer funnel:

Prompt → AI answer → cited sources → brand/competitor presence in those sources

That's much more actionable. For example, discovering that 8/10 AI answers cite a particular industry publication where your competitor is mentioned but you aren't gives you a concrete GEO/outreach opportunity.

Also, the importance of third-party sources appears substantial: Scrunch's published analysis of 442M+ citation events found 87.2% of citations came from third-party sources, versus 5.95% from brands' own sites. Scrunch

If you tell me your company size, industry, and whether you're mainly interested in ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity/Google AI, I can narrow this to the best 1–2 tools and compare pricing, model coverage, API access, citation tracking, and reporting.

If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, what do they say, and which websites/URLs are they citing?”, you want an AI-search visibility / citation-monitoring platform, rather than a traditional SEO rank tracker.

My shortlist for 2026:

1. OtterlyAI — best overall

OtterlyAI is probably where I'd start.

It tracks your brand mentions, share of voice, sentiment, and individual website citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude. It can show the actual URLs AI systems use as sources, including whether those sources mention your company. Otterly Otterly AI

The particularly useful part for your use case is its citation report: you can see which domains and URLs repeatedly appear in answers for your target prompts, then compare those sources with competitors. Otterly AI Otterly AI

It also offers an API, so you can potentially pipe the data into your own reporting stack. Otterly

otterly.ai

2. Peec AI — best for figuring out who's influencing AI answers

Peec AI has a particularly nice distinction between brand mentions and source citations.

It tracks which sources are most frequently cited for your prompts and lets you compare visibility, position, sentiment and share of voice against competitors. It also distinguishes content that was used by the AI from URLs that were explicitly cited. Peec AI Peec AI

That's valuable if your question is:

“AI keeps recommending my competitor. What sources are causing that, and how do I get my company represented in those sources?”

peec.ai

3. Profound — best for enterprise GEO

Profound is more oriented toward teams building a serious answer-engine optimization (AEO/GEO) program.

Its citation tooling shows which answer engines cite your content, how often, which publishers/authors drive citations, and how you compare with competitors. Profound Profound

The publisher/outreach intelligence is particularly interesting if you're trying to turn the data into a PR/content strategy rather than merely monitor mentions.

tryprofound.com

What I'd choose

For most companies: OtterlyAI.

I'd set up ~50–200 prompts representing the questions your prospective customers actually ask, such as:

• “Best [category] software”
• “[Category] software for enterprise”
• “Alternatives to [competitor]”
• “[Your category] companies worth considering”
• “[Problem] solutions”
• “Is [your company] worth it?”
• “[Competitor] vs [your company]”
• “Best tools for [specific use case]”

Then track four things separately:

1. Mention rate — does the AI mention you?
2. Recommendation/rank — where do you appear relative to competitors?
3. Citation rate — does the AI actually cite your website/content?
4. Source ecosystem — which third-party sites are being cited when AI talks about your category?

That last one is arguably the most strategically useful. You're not merely asking “Does ChatGPT mention us?” You're discovering “What information ecosystem is causing ChatGPT to mention companies like ours?”

For your exact use case, I'd rank them OtterlyAI → Peec AI → Profound. If you tell me your company type, approximate size, and whether you're mainly interested in ChatGPT/Perplexity or all AI search, I can narrow this down to the best one and compare pricing + features + API/reporting capabilities.

It also offers an API, so you can potentially pipe the data into your own reporting stack. Otterly

otterly.ai

2. Peec AI — best for figuring out who's influencing AI answers

Peec AI has a particularly nice distinction between brand mentions and source citations.

It tracks which sources are most frequently cited for your prompts and lets you compare visibility, position, sentiment and share of voice against competitors. It also distinguishes content that was used by the AI from URLs that were explicitly cited. Peec AI Peec AI

That's valuable if your question is:

“AI keeps recommending my competitor. What sources are causing that, and how do I get my company represented in those sources?”

peec.ai

3. Profound — best for enterprise GEO

Profound is more oriented toward teams building a serious answer-engine optimization (AEO/GEO) program.

Its citation tooling shows which answer engines cite your content, how often, which publishers/authors drive citations, and how you compare with competitors. tryprofound.com tryprofound.com

The publisher/outreach intelligence is particularly interesting if you're trying to turn the data into a PR/content strategy rather than merely monitor mentions.

If you mean tracking when AI assistants (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, etc.) mention your company, recommend competitors, or cite your website/sources, you’re looking for an AI visibility / AI citation tracking platform (also called AEO/GEO monitoring). The category is still developing, but these are some of the strongest options. AuthorityTech TechnologyAdvice

Best overall AI citation tracking tools

My picks by company size

Startup / SMB

Start with:

• citations.io
• ahrefs.com (if you already use Ahrefs)
• rank.ai

You mainly need:

• “Does ChatGPT mention us?”
• “Which competitors appear instead?”
• “Which pages are being cited?”

Marketing team at a growing company

Look at:

• otterly.ai
• peec.ai
• semrush.com

You’ll want:

• tracked customer prompts
• competitor share of voice
• citation sources
• content recommendations

Enterprise / Fortune 1000

Consider:

• tryprofound.com
• meltwater.com (especially if PR/media monitoring matters)
• conductor.com

You’ll likely care about:

• brand safety
• regional differences
• thousands of prompts
• reporting to executives
• integration with SEO/PR analytics

Features I would require before buying

Look for tools that capture:

• Prompt-level tracking

Example: “What does ChatGPT answer when someone asks ‘best software for X?’”

• Source attribution

Not just “you were mentioned,” but “the model cited these URLs.” Ahrefs

• Competitor comparison

Who is winning the answer when you’re absent?

• Historical trends

AI answers change; a single snapshot is not very useful.

• Raw answer storage

You should be able to see the actual AI response, not only a score.

One caution

No tool can see every real user conversation inside ChatGPT or other assistants. Most products work by repeatedly running representative prompts and analyzing the resulting answers, because AI platforms generally do not expose a complete “all user queries mentioning my brand” feed. citeflow.io

If you tell me your company size, industry (B2B/B2C), and which assistants matter most (ChatGPT vs Google AI vs Perplexity, etc.), I can narrow this to 2–3 tools.

If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, what sources do they cite, and how does that change over time?”, you’re looking for an AI visibility / AEO (answer-engine optimization) tracker, rather than traditional brand-monitoring software.

As of 2026, I’d shortlist these:

These platforms generally run a defined set of buyer/customer prompts against AI systems and record whether you're mentioned, whether your site is cited, which URLs/sources appear, competitors mentioned, sentiment/context, and changes over time. Austin Heaton MentionsAPI

My recommendation

For an enterprise company: Profound.
It has particularly strong source-level citation intelligence and is designed for larger-scale AI visibility programs. SEO Counselors Indexable AI

For a normal marketing/SEO team: Peec AI.
I'd put it at the top of the evaluation list if you want detailed citation/mention analytics without necessarily buying an enterprise platform. Austin Heaton Conbersa

For a startup or smaller company: Otterly.AI.
It's one of the easiest ways to start systematically tracking prompts and citations; current comparisons put its entry tier around $29/month. Marqeable UX Continuum

One important distinction

Don't buy a tool just because it gives you an “AI visibility score.” I'd specifically require it to show the underlying evidence:

• The exact prompt asked
• The actual AI answer
• Whether your company was mentioned
• Which URL/domain was cited
• The cited source's position/context
• Which competitors appeared
• The result by AI engine (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI, etc.)
• Historical changes
• Export/API access if you want to build your own reporting

That's important because a score without the underlying answer and citations doesn't tell you why the AI is recommending someone else. Several current comparisons specifically highlight the difference between tools that expose the underlying AI response and those that mainly provide aggregate scores. Austin Heaton

If you tell me your company size (startup / mid-market / enterprise) and roughly what you want to spend per month, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options and compare their actual citation-tracking capabilities.

For an enterprise company: Profound.
It has particularly strong source-level citation intelligence and is designed for larger-scale AI visibility programs. seocounselors.com indexableai.com

For a normal marketing/SEO team: Peec AI.
I'd put it at the top of the evaluation list if you want detailed citation/mention analytics without necessarily buying an enterprise platform.

Yes. What you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility tracking, AI search monitoring, or AEO/GEO software. These tools repeatedly run the kinds of questions your prospects ask in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, etc., then record whether your company is mentioned, whether your site is cited, which competitors appear, and which sources the AI relies on. Austin Heaton The Best Marketing Tool

My shortlist

Current comparisons consistently put Profound, Peec and Otterly among the leading dedicated platforms, with the main distinction being depth of analytics, breadth of engines, and price. Conbersa Aelo

If citations and sources are your priority

I'd rank them:

1. Profound — If you want to answer questions like “When ChatGPT recommends us, exactly what sources is it using, how often are competitors cited instead, and how is this changing?” Profound is the one I'd investigate first. It is positioned toward enterprise-level AI-search analytics. Geodocs Indexable AI

2. Peec AI — Probably my pick for a normal marketing/SEO team. It emphasizes citation rate, visibility/share of voice, competitors and the underlying AI-answer data without requiring an enterprise-scale deployment. Geodocs

3. Otterly.AI — Great if you want to start cheaply and monitor mentions/citations across multiple AI engines without buying an enterprise platform. Recent comparisons put its entry pricing around $29/month, though pricing/features change frequently. AEO Labs KITLabs

One important distinction

Don't buy a tool merely because it says it tracks "AI mentions."

You want it to separately track:

• Brand mention — Does the AI say your company name?
• Citation — Does it link to your website/content as a source?
• Citation source — Which URLs/domains does the AI rely on?
• Share of voice — How often are you mentioned versus competitors?
• Prompt-level results — What exact questions produce/lose your visibility?
• Sentiment/positioning — What does the AI actually say about you?
• Engine-by-engine results — ChatGPT vs. Perplexity vs. Gemini vs. Google, etc.
• Historical snapshots — Can you prove that citations/mentions changed over time?

That distinction matters because an AI can recommend your company without citing you, while citing a third-party review, Reddit thread, comparison article, or publication instead. The latter is often the more actionable information. The Best Marketing Tool arbling.com

If you tell me your company type (B2B SaaS, ecommerce, agency, local business, etc.) and roughly your monthly budget ($50 / $500 / $5k+), I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually buy and compare their current pricing and citation-reporting capabilities.

I'd rank them:

1. Profound — If you want to answer questions like “When ChatGPT recommends us, exactly what sources is it using, how often are competitors cited instead, and how is this changing?” Profound is the one I'd investigate first. It is positioned toward enterprise-level AI-search analytics. geodocs.dev indexableai.com

If by “tracking citations and sources” you mean seeing when ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews, etc. mention your company, which URLs they cite, and how you compare with competitors, you’re looking for an AI visibility / AI citation tracking platform. This category has matured quite a bit in 2026. Refine AI Nadia Mohamed

My shortlist

These are among the commonly compared platforms for AI mentions/citations in 2026. The Rank Masters Minineo

What I'd choose

For most companies: start with Otterly or Peec.

• Otterly is attractive if you primarily want to know: “When prospective customers ask AI about our category, are we mentioned, what competitors appear, and what sources are being cited?” It has relatively low-cost entry pricing and broad engine coverage. Baarely
• Peec AI is better if you're building a more serious marketing measurement program and care about benchmarking visibility and analyzing the URLs being used/cited. The Rank Masters
• Profound is the one I'd investigate for a larger company where AI visibility is becoming a significant marketing channel and you need deeper enterprise reporting. Lyra
• Scrunch is particularly interesting if you want to go beyond measurement into making your site more accessible to AI agents and monitoring crawler activity. Baarely

One important distinction

Don't buy a tool just because it says “AI visibility.” There are actually several different things you may want to measure:

1. Mention: Does the AI mention your company?
2. Recommendation: Does it actually recommend you?
3. Citation: Does it link/cite your website?
4. Source: Which third-party websites caused the AI to mention you?
5. Citation share: How often is your domain used versus competitors' domains?
6. Sentiment/accuracy: Is what the AI says about you correct?
7. Prompt-level tracking: Which customer questions produce the mention?
8. Change over time: Are you gaining or losing AI visibility?

That's particularly important because being mentioned isn't the same as being cited; different assistants also expose sources differently. CiteFlow

If your specific goal is “show me every source AI assistants use when talking about my company”

I'd prioritize Profound, Peec, and Otterly, and during trials I'd test them with ~30–100 real buyer questions rather than generic prompts like “What do you know about [Company]?”

For example, you'd want to monitor questions such as:

“What are the best [category] platforms for a 500-person company?”
“What alternatives to [competitor] should I consider?”
“Which [category] vendors integrate with Salesforce?”

Then you can see whether your company appears, where it ranks, what URLs the assistant cites, which competitors beat you, and which independent publications/sites are influencing the answer.

If you tell me your company type/industry and roughly your budget (e.g. <$100/mo, $100–500/mo, or enterprise), I can narrow this to the 3 best tools and compare their current pricing, AI engines, citation-level reporting, and APIs/export capabilities.

If you mean tracking when ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, etc. mention your company, recommend competitors, or cite your website, you’re looking for an AI visibility / answer engine optimization (AEO) monitoring tool rather than a traditional brand-monitoring platform. These tools run your important customer prompts repeatedly and record mentions, citations, competitors, and source URLs. Prefer

Here are some of the strongest options:

My shortlist by company size

• Startup / small marketing team: CitePrism, Sightivo, or Citations.io. They focus specifically on “are we showing up in AI answers?” rather than overwhelming you with SEO data. CitePrism Citations.io
• B2B SaaS / enterprise: Semrush, MentionScout, or Hypado if you need competitor benchmarking and reporting workflows. MentionScout hypado.com
• SEO team expanding into AI search: Semrush or similar suites may fit better because AI visibility becomes another channel alongside organic search. TechRadar

Features I would require before buying

Look for:

• Prompt tracking — not just searches for your company name. You want queries like “best CRM for startups” or “alternatives to [competitor].”
• Citation extraction — the exact URLs AI assistants relied on.
• Competitor tracking — who gets recommended when you don’t.
• Historical trends — AI answers fluctuate, so one-off checks are misleading. Prefer
• Export/API access — useful if you need reporting for executives or clients.

One important distinction: a mention is not the same as a citation. An AI assistant might name your company without citing your site, or cite your content without recommending your brand. The best tools track both. Prefer

If you tell me your company size (startup, mid-market, enterprise), industry, and whether you care more about PR monitoring, SEO/content strategy, or sales visibility, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options.

Yes. What you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility tracking, GEO/AEO monitoring, or AI citation intelligence. The good tools repeatedly run the kinds of questions your customers ask, then record whether your company is mentioned, which competitors appear, what sources are cited, and how those metrics change over time. AI Visibility Software Built In

My shortlist

• tryprofound.com — Best for enterprise/deep citation intelligence.

Strong choice if you want serious analytics around why AI assistants are mentioning you, which sources influence answers, prompt volumes, competitors, and AI visibility. It’s the one I’d investigate first for a larger marketing/SEO/PR operation. AI Visibility Software Built In

• otterly.ai — Best overall for most companies.

Tracks mentions, citations, sentiment and share of voice across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude. Its citation report specifically shows the URLs being used to support AI answers. Otterly Otterly

• peec.ai — Best if you want to turn citations into PR/content opportunities.

Particularly interesting because it identifies external sources influencing ChatGPT answers—e.g. review sites, Reddit, Wikipedia and publications—so you can figure out where your company needs to be mentioned, rather than simply measuring whether it was mentioned. Peec AI

• citations.io — Best simple citation-focused option.

Very directly aligned with your question: it shows which answers mention you, which cite you, who gets cited instead, and the actual sources behind those answers. Its current pricing starts at $39/month. Citations.io

• ahrefs.com — Best if you're already an Ahrefs customer.

Makes sense if your SEO team already lives in Ahrefs and wants AI visibility added to its existing workflow. It tracks AI mentions/citations alongside traditional search intelligence. AI Visibility Software

What I'd choose

The important distinction is that “AI mentions” and “AI citations” aren't the same metric. For example, an assistant might say “Company X is a good option” without linking to Company X at all. Another answer might cite a review article that discusses Company X. The latter tells you something extremely valuable: which third-party sources are actually influencing the AI's recommendation. KITLabs Otterly

If your goal is specifically “I want to know every time ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Perplexity mentions my company and exactly what sources caused it to mention us,” I'd narrow the evaluation to Profound vs. OtterlyAI vs. Peec AI vs. Citations.io.

If you tell me your company size, approximate monthly budget, and whether you're mainly B2B, SaaS, ecommerce, or local, I can give you a much more specific recommendation and a feature-by-feature comparison of the top 4.

If you mean tracking when ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI assistants mention your company, what sources they cite, and why competitors appear instead, you’re looking for an AI visibility / GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) monitoring tool rather than a traditional SEO rank tracker. The category is still emerging, but several tools now specifically track AI answers, citations, prompts, and competitors. Unite.AI Citation Hawk

Here are strong options by use case:

Best overall AI citation tracking platforms

tryprofound.com

Best for: Enterprise brands and marketing teams

• Tracks brand presence in AI-generated answers.
• Useful for understanding which queries trigger mentions and how AI systems describe your company.
• Better fit for larger organizations with dedicated SEO/content teams.

Semrush

Best for: Teams already doing SEO + AI visibility work

• Combines traditional search intelligence with newer AI visibility features.
• Good if you want one platform for keyword research, competitors, content, and AI monitoring. TechRadar

citations.io

Best for: Straightforward AI citation monitoring

• Tracks whether AI assistants mention your brand.
• Shows cited sources, competitors, and prompts where you appear or are missing. Citations.io

citeprism.com

Best for: Teams wanting transparency into raw AI answers

• Captures the actual assistant responses.
• Shows mentions, competitors, and the sources behind answers. CitePrism

Good options for startups and smaller companies

mentionscout.com

Best for: Founder-led monitoring

• Tracks prompts, mentions, competitors, sentiment, and citation sources.
• Focuses on turning findings into actionable content/PR tasks. MentionScout

hypado.com

Best for: Marketing teams experimenting with AI search optimization

• Tracks prompts, brand mentions, and citation sources across AI engines. hypado.com

mymentions.org

Best for: Lightweight AI visibility analytics

• Covers prompts, competitors, sources, and recommendations. MyMentions

What I would measure (regardless of tool)

A good dashboard should answer:

• Mention rate: How often does AI name my company?
• Citation rate: How often does AI link to or rely on my owned content?
• Source breakdown: Which websites does AI trust when discussing my category?
• Competitor share of voice: Who gets recommended instead?
• Prompt coverage: Which buyer questions produce wins/losses?
• Sentiment/position: Is AI describing the company accurately and favorably?

My shortlist by company size

• Startup / small marketing team: CitePrism, Citations.io, MentionScout
• Growth-stage SaaS: Semrush + a dedicated AI tracker
• Enterprise brand: Profound or a larger AI visibility platform
• Technical team wanting data access: Look for API/export capabilities (some newer platforms are building around this). Unite.AI

One caveat: no tool can guarantee that an AI assistant will mention your company. The best tools measure patterns over many prompts and help identify which content, reviews, documentation, and third-party sources are influencing AI answers. Unite.AI

If you tell me your company type (SaaS, ecommerce, local business, agency, etc.) and which assistants matter most (ChatGPT only vs. ChatGPT + Perplexity + Gemini), I can narrow this to 2–3 choices.

Yes. What you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility / GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) tracking: software that repeatedly runs the kinds of questions your prospects ask and records whether your company is mentioned, whether your site is cited, which competitors appear, and which sources the AI relies on. AI Visibility Software CiteFlow

My shortlist

For example, Ahrefs' current AI visibility checker reports total AI mentions, platforms, triggering topics, and the domains/pages cited alongside your brand. Ahrefs Citations.io similarly exposes citation counts, cited pages, competitors and individual prompts. Citations

What I'd choose

If you're a mid-market company: I'd start with Otterly or Peec.

If you're an enterprise brand and this is becoming a serious marketing KPI: Profound is probably the strongest choice. Multiple current comparisons put it at the enterprise end of the market, with deeper source-level intelligence and broader engine coverage. AnswerManiac SEO Counselors

If your specific question is "Which websites are AI assistants using to talk about/cite my company?" I'd put extra weight on the citation/source-level features, rather than merely looking at an "AI visibility score." That's important because being mentioned isn't the same thing as being cited; ChatGPT, for example, doesn't attach external sources to every answer. CiteFlow

The metrics I'd insist on

Whatever you buy, make sure it can show you:

• Brand mention rate — % of relevant prompts where you're mentioned
• Citation rate — % where your website/content is actually cited
• Citation URLs — the exact pages being cited
• Source domains — third-party sites AI trusts when discussing your category
• Share of voice vs. competitors
• Prompt-level results — the actual AI answer, not just an aggregate score
• Engine-by-engine results — ChatGPT vs. Gemini vs. Perplexity vs. Claude, etc.
• Historical tracking — whether your visibility/citations are improving
• Competitor displacement — who gets cited when you don't

The last point is particularly valuable: you don't just want to know "we weren't cited." You want to know "ChatGPT cited G2, Reddit, Forbes and Competitor X instead of us." That turns AI monitoring into an actionable content/PR/SEO program.

If you tell me your company size, industry, approximate budget, and which AI assistants matter most, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options and compare their current pricing/features.

If you're a mid-market company: I'd start with Otterly or Peec.

If you're an enterprise brand and this is becoming a serious marketing KPI: Profound is probably the strongest choice. Multiple current comparisons put it at the enterprise end of the market, with deeper source-level intelligence and broader engine coverage. answermaniac.ai seocounselors.com

If your specific question is "Which websites are AI assistants using to talk about/cite my company?" I'd put extra weight on the citation/source-level features, rather than merely looking at an "AI visibility score." That's important because being mentioned isn't the same thing as being cited; ChatGPT, for example, doesn't attach external sources to every answer.

The metrics I'd insist on

Whatever you buy, make sure it can show you:

Yes — what you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility tracking, AI search monitoring, or GEO/AEO tracking. These tools repeatedly run the kinds of prompts your customers ask and record whether your company is mentioned, which competitors appear, what sources/citations the AI uses, and how your visibility changes over time. Kitbase NeuralGen

My shortlist

• Profound — best for enterprise teams. Strong reporting and competitive intelligence, with deeper analysis of how AI engines discover and cite brands. Good choice if this is becoming a serious marketing KPI. Geodocs Refine AI
• Peec AI — best overall for a marketing/SEO team. Focuses heavily on prompt-level visibility, citations, competitors, and share of voice. NeuralGen Conbersa
• Otterly.AI — best affordable starting point. Designed around monitoring mentions/citations across major AI search engines without the enterprise complexity. NeuralGen Meridian15
• Ahrefs / Brand Radar — best if you already use Ahrefs. Adds AI visibility to an existing SEO workflow rather than requiring another standalone platform. Sona
• Semrush — similar logic: attractive if Semrush is already your SEO/marketing system and you want AI visibility incorporated into it. Sona

What I'd measure

Don't just track "does ChatGPT mention us?" I'd set up ~50–200 real buyer prompts and monitor:

1. Mention rate — % of relevant prompts where your company appears.
2. Citation rate — how often your website/content is actually cited.
3. Citation sources — which pages/domains AI assistants rely on when discussing you.
4. Share of voice — your presence vs. competitors.
5. Position/recommendation — whether you're the first recommendation, one of several, or merely mentioned.
6. Sentiment/description — how the AI characterizes your company.
7. Engine-by-engine results — ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Perplexity vs. Gemini/Google AI Overviews.

That distinction between mention and citation is particularly important: a model can recommend your company while citing someone else's review, comparison, Reddit thread, or industry publication. Current AI-visibility platforms increasingly expose both signals. Viali AI Sightivo

My recommendation

If you're a company trying to understand "Why does AI mention/cite us, and what should we do to get mentioned more?", I'd start with Peec AI or Otterly.

If you're an enterprise marketing/SEO organization, I'd shortlist Profound vs. Peec.

And if you're already heavily invested in Ahrefs or Semrush, I'd test their AI-visibility products before buying another platform.

One caveat: this market is changing extremely quickly. Even the underlying citation patterns can change substantially after model updates—for example, recent reporting found a dramatic change in Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations—so I'd prioritize tools that retain actual answer/citation evidence, rather than giving you only a proprietary "AI visibility score." Business Insider

If you tell me your company size, approximate monthly budget, and which AI assistants matter most (ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity/Gemini), I can narrow this to the best 2–3 tools and compare their current pricing/features.

If you mean tracking when ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI assistants mention your company, what sources they cite, and which competitors appear instead, you’re looking for an AI visibility / AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) monitoring platform, not a traditional citation manager. Sightivo Unite.AI

Here are the strongest options by use case:

My shortlist by company stage

• Startup / SMB: mentionscout.com, citations.io, or otterly.ai
• B2B company with marketing team: peec.ai or semrush.com
• Enterprise / multi-brand: tryprofound.com or a larger SEO intelligence suite

Features I would prioritize

A good tool should show:

1. Prompt-level tracking

• Example: “What AI answers appear when someone asks best CRM for startups?”
• Citation source tracking

• Which URLs, reviews, publications, communities, or competitor pages are being used as evidence.
• Competitor share of voice

• How often your company appears versus alternatives.
• Sentiment and positioning

• Whether AI describes your company positively, negatively, or incorrectly.
• Historical trends

• Whether visibility improves after content, PR, reviews, or documentation changes.

One caveat: AI citation tracking is still an emerging category. Different assistants can produce different answers depending on prompts, location, model updates, and available sources, so treat these tools as directional monitoring rather than a guaranteed ranking system. Unite.AI CiteFlow

If you tell me your company size, industry (SaaS/ecommerce/local business/etc.), and which assistants matter most (ChatGPT only vs all AI engines), I can narrow this to 2–3 best fits.

If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, and exactly which sources/citations are they using?”, you want an AI visibility / AEO / GEO tracking platform, rather than a traditional brand-monitoring tool.

My shortlist

The category has matured considerably in 2026: these platforms generally run a defined set of buyer prompts against multiple AI engines, then record brand mentions, citations, competitors, prompts and source URLs. MentionScout Austin Heaton

If citations are your #1 priority

I'd look particularly closely at Citations.io. Its product is explicitly organized around an evidence layer: it tracks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude, identifies cited sources, and lets you classify/analyze those sources. Citations.io Citations.io

For example, you ideally want reporting that tells you:

Prompt: “Best software for X”
ChatGPT: Company mentioned ✓
Citation: competitor.com/article/…
Your domain cited: No
Sources cited: G2, Reddit, TechCrunch, competitor blog
Competitor mentioned: Competitor A
Change: Your citation share fell 8% this month

That's much more actionable than a generic “AI visibility score.”

My recommendation by company size

• Startup / small marketing team: Otterly.AI
• Growing B2B company: Peec AI
• Enterprise / dedicated SEO or communications team: Profound
• Already paying for Semrush: Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit
• You specifically want to build a database of the sources AI systems cite: Citations.io

One important caveat: mention ≠ citation. An AI assistant can name your company without linking to your website. The better platforms distinguish brand mentions, actual citations, citation sources, share of answer, and competitor visibility. Austin Heaton

Also, these measurements are inherently sampled—the same prompt can produce different answers—so I'd favor a product that lets you inspect the underlying answers and source URLs, rather than one that gives you only a proprietary visibility score. Austin Heaton

If you tell me your company size, approximate budget, and whether you care mainly about ChatGPT vs. ChatGPT + Perplexity + Gemini + Claude, I can narrow this to the 2–3 best choices and compare their current pricing/features.

For example, you ideally want reporting that tells you:

Prompt: “Best software for X”
ChatGPT: Company mentioned ✓
Citation: competitor.com/article/…
Your domain cited: No
Sources cited: G2, Reddit, TechCrunch, competitor blog
Competitor mentioned: Competitor A
Change: Your citation share fell 8% this month

Yes. What you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility tracking, AI search monitoring, or GEO/AEO software. These tools repeatedly ask buyer-style questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, etc., then record whether your company is mentioned, which competitors appear, and—crucially—which URLs/sources the AI cited. Refine AI TechnologyAdvice

My shortlist

🥇 I'd start with OtterlyAI

Its current analytics product specifically tracks brand mentions, citations, sentiment and share of voice across seven AI engines. More importantly for your question, it stores the answers and identifies the URLs cited by the AI and whether those URLs mention your company. Otterly

Its citation report also lets you identify the sources that are "winning" in your category, which is arguably more useful than simply knowing that ChatGPT mentioned you. Otterly

And its current entry price is around $29/month, making it relatively inexpensive to validate whether this data is useful to your marketing team. Otterly

If you're an enterprise company: Profound

I'd look at tryprofound.com if you're trying to build a serious AI-search intelligence operation across many products, markets, and competitors.

It is positioned toward enterprise teams and offers deeper analytics and source-level citation intelligence. Current comparisons consistently put Profound toward the enterprise/depth end of this market. Refine AI Bloomiro

The important distinction

Don't buy a tool merely because it tells you:

"Your brand was mentioned in 37% of ChatGPT answers."

The really valuable dataset is:

Prompt → AI answer → your position → competitors → cited URLs → which cited URLs mention your company → change over time

For example:

Prompt: "Best project-management software for 200-person SaaS companies"

ChatGPT answer:

1. Competitor A
2. Your Company
3. Competitor B

Sources cited:

• G2 comparison page
• Your company's documentation
• Forbes article
• Competitor A's website
• Reddit discussion

That lets your marketing team ask a much better question:

"Why is the AI citing these five sources, and what can we do to become one of the sources it relies on?"

That's substantially more actionable than traditional brand-monitoring software.

One caveat

The AI-search landscape is changing very quickly. For example, recent data showed dramatic changes in which sites ChatGPT cites, including an 86% decline in Reddit citations over a short period. Business Insider So I'd favor a tool that stores the underlying answers and citation URLs, rather than one that only gives you a proprietary "AI visibility score."

My recommendation: if you're evaluating this for one company, trial OtterlyAI first. If you tell me roughly your company size, whether you're B2B/B2C, and your monthly budget, I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually buy and compare their pricing, AI engines, citation data, alerts, API/export capabilities, and competitor tracking.

Don't buy a tool merely because it tells you:

"Your brand was mentioned in 37% of ChatGPT answers."

The really valuable dataset is:

Yes — what you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility tracking, AI search monitoring, or GEO/AEO software. The important distinction is that you want citation-level tracking, not merely “does ChatGPT mention my brand?”

My shortlist

Otterly is particularly interesting for your use case because it explicitly tracks which URLs AI engines cite, alongside brand mentions and share of voice, across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google's AI experiences. Otterly Otterly

Profound is the one I'd investigate if this is a strategic company-level program rather than a marketing experiment. Current comparisons characterize it as the enterprise-oriented option with deeper source/citation intelligence. Citability Austin Heaton

The feature I'd prioritize

When evaluating these tools, ask:

“Can I see the exact AI answer, the exact prompt, and every URL/domain cited in that answer?”

That's much more valuable than a proprietary “AI visibility score.”

You ideally want a dashboard like:

Prompt: “Best accounting software for a 50-person SaaS company”
→ ChatGPT: Company mentioned #2
→ Your site: cited
→ Competitor A: cited
→ Competitor B: cited
→ Source that caused the recommendation: yourdomain.com/comparison
→ Previous week: you weren't cited
→ Change: +1 citation

The distinction between mention and citation matters: a model can recommend your company without linking to your site, while a citation gives you an actual source/traffic path. Citability Austin Heaton

What I'd choose

• Small/mid-sized company: Otterly
• Enterprise / dedicated GEO team: Profound
• SEO team already living in Semrush: Semrush AI Visibility
• Agency / lots of clients: Peec AI or Scrunch
• If your primary question is specifically “Who is citing my website, and why?”: I'd test Otterly and Profound side-by-side before buying.

One caveat: AI citation data is inherently noisy. Different runs of the same prompt can produce different sources, and AI engines change their retrieval/citation behavior. Recent reporting, for example, found a dramatic change in ChatGPT's Reddit citation patterns in August 2026. Business Insider So I'd favor a product that lets you inspect the underlying answers and URLs, rather than relying solely on an aggregate score.

If you tell me your company size, approximate monthly budget, and whether you care about ChatGPT specifically or all AI assistants, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 tools and compare their current pricing/features.

The feature I'd prioritize

When evaluating these tools, ask:

“Can I see the exact AI answer, the exact prompt, and every URL/domain cited in that answer?”

That's much more valuable than a proprietary “AI visibility score.”

You ideally want a dashboard like:

Prompt: “Best accounting software for a 50-person SaaS company”
→ ChatGPT: Company mentioned #2
→ Your site: cited
→ Competitor A: cited
→ Competitor B: cited
→ Source that caused the recommendation: yourdomain.com/comparison
→ Previous week: you weren't cited
→ Change: +1 citation

The distinction between mention and citation matters: a model can recommend your company without linking to your site, while a citation gives you an actual source/traffic path.

What I'd choose

Yes. What you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility / AEO / GEO monitoring: software that repeatedly asks AI assistants real buyer questions and records whether your company is mentioned, whether your site is cited, which sources the assistant used, and how you compare with competitors. Austin Heaton Otterly

My shortlist

Current comparisons put Otterly at the inexpensive end, Peec in the mid-market range, and Profound toward enterprise pricing. MentionsAPI Citation Hawk

If citations and sources are your main concern

I'd prioritize Profound or Peec AI over a generic brand-monitoring product. The important distinction is that you don't just want:

"ChatGPT mentioned Acme 37% of the time."

You want:

"For these 42 buyer prompts, ChatGPT mentioned Acme 31% of the time, cited Acme.com 18% of the time, and cited these 23 third-party domains when recommending competitors."

That source-level data lets you figure out why an AI assistant trusts competitors and what publications/content you need to get mentioned or cited by. Tools in this category increasingly expose the underlying answers and source attribution rather than just a proprietary visibility score. Austin Heaton Alignify

My recommendation:

• Small team / testing the waters: Otterly
• Marketing team serious about AI visibility: Peec AI
• Large company / enterprise GEO program: Profound
• Already paying for Semrush: start with its AI Visibility Toolkit before buying another platform

One important caveat: AI answers are probabilistic, so don't judge a tool from a handful of searches. A useful system should repeatedly run a fixed library of realistic customer prompts, preserve the answers/sources, and report results separately by AI engine. GeoHero

If you tell me your company size, approximate monthly budget, and whether you mainly care about ChatGPT vs. ChatGPT + Gemini + Perplexity, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options and compare their actual citation/source-tracking capabilities.

I'd prioritize Profound or Peec AI over a generic brand-monitoring product. The important distinction is that you don't just want:

"ChatGPT mentioned Acme 37% of the time."

You want:

"For these 42 buyer prompts, ChatGPT mentioned Acme 31% of the time, cited Acme.com 18% of the time, and cited these 23 third-party domains when recommending competitors."

That source-level data lets you figure out why an AI assistant trusts competitors and what publications/content you need to get mentioned or cited by. Tools in this category increasingly expose the underlying answers and source attribution rather than just a proprietary visibility score.

My recommendation:

If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, what do they say, and which sources/URLs are they citing?”, I’d look at AI-search/GEO monitoring platforms rather than traditional SEO rank trackers.

My shortlist

1. otterly.ai — best overall for most companies

• Tracks brand mentions and website citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude.
• Lets you define the exact prompts you care about and monitor them daily.
• Shows the specific URLs AI systems cite, competitors appearing alongside you, sentiment, share of voice, and citation changes. Otterly OtterlyAI
• Pricing currently starts around $29/month, with a free trial. Otterly

I'd start here if you're a company wanting a practical dashboard rather than an enterprise GEO program.

2. tryprofound.com — best for larger marketing/SEO teams

• Strong on analyzing how AI represents your brand, not merely whether it mentions you.
• Its citation analysis identifies which sources AI relies on, how often you/competitors are cited, source categories, and publishers/authors driving citations.
• Also provides visibility, sentiment, share-of-voice and positioning analysis. Profound Profound

I'd pick this over OtterlyAI if you're building a serious enterprise GEO/content strategy.

3. Citation Hawk — worth considering for a citation-first workflow

• Specifically oriented around tracking whether your company is mentioned/cited in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and other AI systems.
• Its differentiator is turning the raw citation data into prioritized recommendations rather than just giving you another dashboard. Citation Hawk

What I would actually track

Don't just track “Does ChatGPT mention us?” That's too crude. Set up a prompt library around your actual buying journey:

• “What are the best [category] companies?”
• “What are alternatives to [competitor]?”
• “What is the best [category] software for a 50-person company?”
• “Compare [your company] vs [competitor].”
• “What software should I use for [specific problem]?”
• “Which companies specialize in [your niche]?”
• “[Your company] reviews”
• “[Your company] alternatives”
• “[Your company] pricing”

Then measure:

Mention rate → position/rank → sentiment → citation rate → cited URLs → competitor mentions → share of voice → change over time.

The cited-URL piece is particularly valuable. It tells you not just “AI knows about us”, but “these are the pages/publications that are influencing what AI says about us.” OtterlyAI, for example, exposes the cited URLs and citation-position changes at the prompt level. Otterly OtterlyAI

One important caveat: AI citation behavior is changing quickly. Recent reporting has found substantial shifts in which sources ChatGPT cites, so I'd favor a tool that stores historical prompt/response/citation data rather than relying on occasional manual spot checks. Axios

My pick: OtterlyAI for a small/midsize marketing team; Profound for enterprise.

If you tell me your company size, website, and whether you mainly care about ChatGPT vs. Google AI Overviews vs. Perplexity, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 options and compare price, AI engines, citation depth, API access, and reporting.

Yes. What you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility tracking, AI citation tracking, or GEO/AEO monitoring. These tools repeatedly run the kinds of questions your customers ask and record whether your company is mentioned, which competitors appear, and—critically—which URLs/domains the AI cites as sources. Refine AI The Rank Masters

My shortlist

• otterly.ai — best overall for citation/source tracking

• Tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude.
• Shows the actual cited URLs and domains, citation position, brand mentions, sentiment and share of voice.
• Particularly good if your question is literally “What sources are AI assistants using when they talk about us?” Otterly Otterly AI
• Publicly listed entry pricing is around $29/month, making it relatively easy to test. Marqeable
• tryprofound.com — best for enterprise

• Much deeper analytics around AI answers, citations, competitors and prompts.
• Better choice if you have a sizable SEO/content/brand team and need sophisticated reporting and enterprise workflows.
• Generally more expensive and complex than Otterly. Refine AI SEO Counselors
• peec.ai — best for marketing teams

• Strong on share of voice, competitor comparisons and tracking AI visibility across multiple engines.
• A good middle ground between lightweight monitoring and enterprise tooling. Kitbase Refine AI
• ahrefs.com Brand Radar — best if you already use Ahrefs

• Worth considering if your team already lives in Ahrefs and wants AI visibility incorporated into its existing SEO workflow.
• I wouldn't buy Ahrefs just for AI citation monitoring, though. Kitbase

What I'd choose

If your specific goal is:

“When ChatGPT/Perplexity/Claude/etc. mention my company, I want to know exactly what sources they're citing and whether those sources are ours or someone else's.”

I'd start with OtterlyAI.

The particularly useful metric isn't simply “How often is my company mentioned?” It's “What information ecosystem is causing the AI to mention me?” For example:

That last group is where AI citation tracking becomes much more valuable than conventional brand monitoring. Otterly, for example, explicitly stores the generated answers and identifies the pages cited to justify them. Otterly

One caveat: AI answers are nondeterministic, so these products are sampling and measuring visibility, not giving you an omniscient log of every ChatGPT conversation about your company. That's an important distinction when interpreting the numbers. Marqeable

If you tell me your company size/industry and whether you're primarily interested in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI, or all of them, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options and compare their current pricing, citation-level capabilities, API access, and reporting.

Yes. The category you want is usually called AI visibility tracking, AI search monitoring, or AEO/GEO tracking. The key distinction is that you don't just want a tool that says “ChatGPT mentioned my company.” You want it to show which answer, which prompt, which competitor, and—most importantly—which websites/pages the AI cited as sources.

My picks

1. peec.ai — best overall

This is probably where I'd start.

Peec tracks your brand across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other AI surfaces, while showing visibility, position, sentiment, share of voice, competitors, and the sources being cited. Its particularly useful distinction is between brand visibility (AI mentions you) and source visibility (AI actually cites your website/content). Peec AI Peec.ai Docs

That distinction is exactly what you're asking about.

For example, you could discover:

“ChatGPT recommends Acme 42% of the time, but only 8% of those answers cite Acme's own website. Instead, it gets its information from G2, Reddit, Forbes, and industry publications.”

That's much more actionable than a simple mention counter.

2. otterly.ai — best value

Otterly is worth looking at if you don't need an enterprise platform.

It tracks prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude, and records mentions, rankings, sentiment, share of voice and the URLs cited by the engines. Otterly

It's a particularly good choice if your goal is:

• Track 20–100 important questions people ask about your category
• See whether your company appears
• See who beats you
• See what sources AI is using
• Monitor changes over time

3. tryprofound.com — best for enterprise

Profound is the one I'd investigate if this is becoming a serious marketing/brand-intelligence function rather than a side project.

It is positioned around enterprise AI-search analytics and deeper citation/source intelligence, rather than simply being an “SEO rank tracker for ChatGPT.” Current comparisons put it toward the enterprise end of the market. SEO Counselors AEO Labs

The metric I'd pay the most attention to

Don't make “number of AI mentions” your primary KPI.

I'd build a dashboard around:

1. Mention rate — % of relevant prompts where your company appears.
2. Recommendation/rank — where you appear when you're mentioned.
3. Share of voice — your visibility versus competitors.
4. Citation rate — % of answers that cite your site/content.
5. Citation share — what percentage of all cited sources in your category are yours.
6. Third-party source distribution — Reddit, G2, Wikipedia, news, review sites, competitors, publishers, etc.
7. Citation pages — the specific URLs AI is relying on.
8. Prompt-level history — whether a particular answer changed after you published/updated something.

That last part is especially valuable. Peec, for example, explicitly surfaces the sources AI platforms reference and lets you drill down into individual tracked prompts and recent AI responses. Peec.ai Docs

One important caveat

AI citations are volatile. A recent analysis found that Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations changed substantially over just a few weeks, illustrating why you want longitudinal tracking rather than manually checking ChatGPT once in a while. Axios

So if your real question is:

“When someone asks an AI assistant about my company/category, what does it say, and what evidence is it using?”

I'd shortlist Peec → Otterly → Profound, in that order for most companies.

If you tell me your company type (B2B SaaS, ecommerce, agency, local business, etc.) and roughly how many prompts/competitors you want to track, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 and compare current pricing, engines, citation-level reporting, API/export options, and whether they track ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity/Gemini separately.

Yes — the category you want is usually called AI visibility tracking, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), or GEO monitoring. These tools track whether assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews mention your company, which sources they cite, which competitors appear instead, and how that changes over time. geodocs.dev

My shortlist

Recent 2026 comparisons consistently put Profound, Peec, Otterly, AthenaHQ and Goodie among the leading dedicated platforms. citationdesk.com

If your specific question is “When an AI assistant talks about my company, what website/source did it use?”, I'd prioritize citation-level data over a generic “AI visibility score.” That's important because AI citation patterns are surprisingly fragmented: one 2026 benchmark found that 62% of cited domains appeared only once across its query set. blog.andrewbyzov.com

What I'd buy

• Small company / founder: Otterly.AI or Peec AI
• Marketing team: Peec AI
• Enterprise / multiple brands / competitive intelligence: Profound
• Already paying for Ahrefs: investigate Brand Radar before adding another platform
• PR team: Brand24 can make sense because it combines AI references with broader brand monitoring

For example, Citations.io is also worth looking at if you specifically want a live citation feed rather than a broader SEO/GEO platform.

One important caveat: don't treat an AI visibility score as equivalent to actual customer exposure. Different tools use different prompt sets and methodologies, and real-prompt tracking vs. simulated prompts is a major distinction. www.getaiso.com

If you tell me your company size, B2B/B2C, approximate budget, and which AI assistants matter most, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 tools and compare their pricing, citation tracking, API/reporting, and competitor monitoring.

If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, and what sources/citations are they using?”, you want an AI visibility / AEO / GEO monitoring platform, not a traditional brand-monitoring tool.

My shortlist for 2026:

Independent comparisons consistently identify Profound, Peec AI, and Otterly as the main dedicated options, with the major difference being depth, price, and workflow rather than whether they can detect mentions at all. Elmo AEO Labs MentionsAPI

What I'd choose

For most companies: Peec AI. It gives you the useful middle ground: track your target prompts, see whether you're mentioned, measure share of voice against competitors, and inspect the sources/citations behind answers. Geodocs Refine AI

If you're early-stage: Otterly is a very reasonable starting point. Current comparisons put its entry pricing around $29/month, making it one of the cheapest ways to establish a baseline. Marqeable

If you're an enterprise brand: Profound is the one I'd investigate first. Its emphasis is much more on granular answer-engine and source-level intelligence rather than simply giving you a “visibility score.” SEO Counselors

The important distinction

Don't just measure “Did ChatGPT mention us?”

You want the software to tell you:

• Mention rate: How often does the AI name your company?
• Citation rate: How often does it actually link/cite your site?
• Source discovery: Which third-party sites are being cited instead of you?
• Competitors: Who is being recommended when you're not?
• Prompt-level results: Which exact questions cause you to appear/disappear?
• Sentiment/positioning: What does the AI say about your company?
• Trend: Is your visibility improving month over month?
• Engine differences: Do ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI surfaces behave differently?

That source discovery piece is particularly valuable. For example, you might discover that ChatGPT repeatedly cites three review sites, Reddit threads, industry publications, or comparison pages when answering questions about your category. That gives you a concrete list of places where building legitimate third-party authority could matter. Current tools increasingly expose this citation/source layer. Geodocs Baarely

One caveat: these platforms are measuring a sample of inherently non-deterministic AI responses, so I would treat the numbers as directional trends rather than an absolute measurement of “what ChatGPT knows.” Marqeable

If you tell me your company size and roughly what you're willing to spend ($30/mo, $100–300/mo, or $500+/mo), I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually buy and compare their current features/pricing.

If you're early-stage: Otterly is a very reasonable starting point. Current comparisons put its entry pricing around $29/month, making it one of the cheapest ways to establish a baseline. marqeable.com

If you're an enterprise brand: Profound is the one I'd investigate first. Its emphasis is much more on granular answer-engine and source-level intelligence rather than simply giving you a “visibility score.”

The important distinction

Don't just measure “Did ChatGPT mention us?”

You want the software to tell you:

Yes. What you’re looking for is generally called AI visibility / AEO / GEO monitoring: software that repeatedly asks AI engines questions and records whether your company is mentioned, which sources are cited, how prominently you appear, and which competitors are winning instead. Refine AI Lil Big Things

My shortlist

🥇 If I had to pick one: Profound

tryprofound.com is particularly relevant to your question. It doesn't just tell you "your company was mentioned 37 times." It can show which websites AI systems used as sources, categorize those sources (your site, competitors, earned media, social, institutions, etc.), and let you analyze citation share by prompt/topic/platform. Profound

It also tracks the actual answers and citation sources over time across major answer engines, rather than treating AI visibility like a conventional Google ranking. Profound Profound

🥈 If you're not an enterprise: Otterly

otterly.ai is probably where I'd start if you're a smaller company or marketing team. It tracks brand mentions, website citations, position and competitors across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Otterly

The advantage is that you can get useful monitoring without buying an enterprise-grade analytics platform.

One important distinction

I'd specifically look for a product that records the source URLs behind the AI answer, not merely "brand mentions."

For example, you ideally want to be able to see:

Prompt: "What are the best payroll platforms for a 50-person company?"
AI: recommends your company
Citation: example.com/review-of-payroll-platforms
Other citations: G2, Forbes, competitor comparison, Reddit, etc.
Competitor cited instead: Competitor X
Change: Your citation appeared 12% more often this month

That information is much more actionable because it tells your marketing/SEO/PR team which external sources are influencing AI's perception of your company. Profound explicitly provides this source-level analysis. Profound

What I'd buy based on company size

• Solo / small company: Otterly
• Growth-stage marketing team: Peec or Otterly
• SEO + content + PR team: Profound
• Enterprise / multiple brands or markets: Profound
• Want the software to help fix visibility, not just measure it: Goodie

I'd also avoid choosing based purely on the number of AI models supported. Citation-level data, prompt coverage, historical answers, geographic variation, competitor comparisons, and reproducibility matter more than a vendor saying it supports "12+ LLMs."

If you tell me your company size, approximate monthly budget, and whether you mainly care about ChatGPT vs. Google AI Overviews vs. Perplexity, I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually demo and compare their current pricing/features.

It also tracks the actual answers and citation sources over time across major answer engines, rather than treating AI visibility like a conventional Google ranking. Profound Profound

🥈 If you're not an enterprise: Otterly

otterly.ai is probably where I'd start if you're a smaller company or marketing team. It tracks brand mentions, website citations, position and competitors across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Otterly

The advantage is that you can get useful monitoring without buying an enterprise-grade analytics platform.

One important distinction

I'd specifically look for a product that records the source URLs behind the AI answer, not merely "brand mentions."

For example, you ideally want to be able to see:

Prompt: "What are the best payroll platforms for a 50-person company?"
AI: recommends your company
Citation: example.com/review-of-payroll-platforms
Other citations: G2, Forbes, competitor comparison, Reddit, etc.
Competitor cited instead: Competitor X
Change: Your citation appeared 12% more often this month

That information is much more actionable because it tells your marketing/SEO/PR team which external sources are influencing AI's perception of your company. Profound explicitly provides this source-level analysis.

What I'd buy based on company size

If you mean tracking when ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI assistants mention your company, cite your website, or recommend competitors instead, you’re looking for an AI visibility / AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) monitoring tool, not a traditional citation manager. alignify.cowww.sona.com

Good options by use case:

What I’d measure (regardless of tool):

• Mention rate: How often your company appears in answers to buyer questions
• Citation rate: How often your pages are linked as sources
• Share of voice: Your visibility vs. competitors
• Source attribution: Which websites AI assistants rely on when discussing your category
• Sentiment/positioning: Whether AI describes you positively, negatively, or inaccurately
• Prompt coverage: Which customer questions you win or lose www.clearscope.io

A practical stack:

• Startup / SMB: Ahrefs Brand Radar or Citations.io + a spreadsheet of your top 50 buyer prompts
• Marketing team: Semrush or Clearscope + AI visibility monitoring
• Enterprise: Profound + BI/reporting integrations

One important distinction: AI citation tracking is not the same as web mention monitoring. Tools like Brand24, Mention, or Meltwater are good for PR/social mentions, but they generally weren’t built to answer “When someone asks an AI assistant for the best vendors in my category, does my company appear and what sources does the model cite?” alignify.cowww.sona.com

If you tell me your company size (startup, mid-market, enterprise), industry, and whether you care more about ChatGPT specifically or all AI engines, I can narrow this to 2–3 choices.

If your goal is specifically “When an AI assistant mentions my company, what source did it use, and how often does this happen?”, you want an AI visibility / answer-engine monitoring platform rather than traditional SEO rank tracking.

My shortlist

🥇 I'd start with OtterlyAI

It is unusually well aligned with your exact question. It doesn't just tell you “Company X was mentioned.” It tracks which domains and URLs were cited in AI answers, including changes in link position over time. It also lets you compare your citation/mention performance with competitors. otterly.ai

For example, you could monitor prompts like:

• “What are the best [category] companies?”
• “What software should a [target customer] use for X?”
• “Company A vs Company B”
• “Alternatives to [competitor]”
• “Who are the leading vendors for X?”

Then measure:

Prompt → AI answer → brand mention → cited source → exact URL → competitor citations → change over time

That's much more useful than simply monitoring your company's name.

🥈 Peec AI is particularly good if you care about the source vs. the mention

One distinction I really like in Peec's reporting is brand visibility vs. source visibility. A company can be mentioned without its website being cited, or its website can be cited without the company being explicitly named. Peec tracks those separately. docs.peec.ai

That's an important distinction for measuring whether your content is actually becoming an information source for AI, rather than merely whether the model knows your brand.

🏢 Profound for larger teams

Profound is worth looking at if this is becoming a serious enterprise marketing/GEO function. Its Answer Engine Insights tracks visibility, citations, sentiment, share of voice, positioning, and what websites are driving AI answers about your brand. www.tryprofound.comwww.citeflow.io

One important caveat

Don't treat these tools as if they're giving you a perfect log of every ChatGPT conversation mentioning your company. They generally work by running a defined set of prompts against AI/search systems on a schedule and analyzing the resulting answers. www.tryprofound.comwww.citeflow.io

So the real measurement is closer to:

“How does my company appear when representative customer questions are asked?”

rather than:

“Tell me every time anyone on the internet asks ChatGPT about us.”

My ranking for your use case: OtterlyAI → Peec → Profound.

If you tell me your company size, B2B/B2C, and roughly how many prompts/markets you need to monitor, I can narrow this down to the best 1–2 options and compare their current pricing/features.

If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, what sources/citations are they using, and how does that change over time?”, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: OtterlyAI

For your exact use case, OtterlyAI is probably the easiest place to start. It lets you define the questions you care about—e.g. “best [category] software,” “alternatives to [competitor],” “companies that solve X”—and automatically monitors the answers across multiple AI engines. It records both brand mentions and domain citations, plus competitors and sentiment. otterly.ai

Its newer Citations Report is particularly relevant: you can see which URLs are repeatedly cited, which prompts generated those citations, which AI engine produced them, and whether your brand appeared in the answer. help.otterly.aiotterly.ai

When I'd choose Peec instead

If the question you're really asking is:

“What external websites are influencing AI's perception of my company, and where should our PR/content team try to get mentioned?”

I'd seriously consider Peec AI. It breaks sources down by domains and URLs and identifies places where competitors are being cited but you aren't. It also tracks mention frequency, position, sentiment, and citations. peec.ai

That's particularly useful for discovering things like:

• Competitor is cited by 15 industry publications; you're cited by 3.
• Reddit is repeatedly influencing answers about your category.
• A particular review site is disproportionately responsible for AI recommendations.
• AI assistants cite an outdated page about your company.
• Your website gets cited but your brand isn't actually mentioned—or vice versa.

Profound

Profound is the one I'd investigate if you're at a larger marketing/SEO organization. Its Answer Engine Insights product explicitly combines visibility, citations, sentiment, share of voice, and positioning, and its citation tooling identifies the publishers/authors driving AI citations. help.tryprofound.com

One important distinction

Don't buy a tool merely because it says it tracks “AI mentions.”

There are really four different metrics you want:

1. Mention rate — How often does AI name my company?
2. Recommendation/ranking — Where does my company appear relative to competitors?
3. Citation rate — How often does AI link to my site?
4. Citation sources — Which third-party websites does AI use when forming the answer?

The fourth is arguably the most strategically valuable because it tells you what the AI ecosystem believes about your company and where that belief is coming from. OtterlyAI and Peec are particularly strong here. peec.aiotterly.ai

If I were evaluating them for a company today:
OtterlyAI → Peec → Profound in that order for a typical marketing team; I'd move Profound to #1 if you're an enterprise with a serious GEO/SEO operation.

If you tell me your company size, approximate monthly budget, and whether you care more about ChatGPT citations or all AI engines, I can narrow this to the best 1–2 options and compare their current pricing/features.

If you mean tracking when ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI assistants mention your company, what sources they cite, and which competitors appear instead, the category is usually called AI visibility tracking, AI search monitoring, or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) analytics. tracemetry.comahrefs.com

The best tools depend on your company size and what you need:

My practical shortlist:

• Startup / small marketing team: Otterly.AI or Citations.io
• B2B SaaS / enterprise marketing: Profound or Peec AI
• SEO team already paying for tools: Ahrefs Brand Radar or Semrush
• Agency managing many clients: Parse or Profound

Things I would make sure the product tracks:

1. Prompt coverage — the actual questions being tested (“best CRM for startups,” “alternatives to X,” etc.)
2. Mention rate — how often your company appears
3. Citation rate — how often AI links to your site or attributes sources
4. Source-level attribution — which pages, reviews, forums, and publications AI relies on
5. Competitor gaps — where competitors are cited and you are missing
6. Historical trends — whether visibility is improving or declining

One important distinction: a company can be mentioned without being cited. AI answers often name brands without linking to them, so a good tracker should separate “brand mentions” from “source citations.” tracemetry.comahrefs.com

If you share your company type (SaaS, ecommerce, local business, agency, etc.) and approximate budget, I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools most likely to fit.

Yes — this is now a distinct AI visibility / GEO / AEO monitoring category. If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, and what sources/citations are they using?”, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: OtterlyAI

OtterlyAI is probably the best fit if you want to start measuring this without buying an enterprise platform. It monitors mentions and citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude, and lets you see the URLs being referenced. Its current entry pricing is advertised at $29/month. otterly.ai

Importantly, it isn't just asking “did ChatGPT mention us?” It can tell you things like:

• Which prompts produce a mention of your company
• Which competitors appear instead
• Which URLs get cited
• Which third-party publications/sites are repeatedly cited in your category
• Whether your visibility is increasing or declining
• Which AI engines behave differently

Otterly also recently expanded its citation reporting with winner/loser analysis and detailed citation views. otterly.ai

If your real question is “what sources make AI recommend us?”

I'd look especially closely at Peec AI. Its positioning is more analytics-oriented, with source/citation analysis, competitor benchmarking and multi-model tracking. Independent comparisons also tend to put Peec toward the stronger end for citation/source analysis. fifteenthmeridian.compresenc.ai

If you're a large company

Profound is the one I'd investigate. It is designed more for enterprise-scale AI visibility/AEO programs, with deeper analytics and larger-scale query monitoring, although pricing and complexity are substantially higher. getrefine.ai

One important distinction

Don't confuse these with ordinary brand-monitoring tools.

You want a system that captures the chain:

Buyer question → AI answer → company mention → cited URL → source domain → competitor cited instead

For example:

“What are the best accounting platforms for mid-sized businesses?”

You ideally want to know:

ChatGPT: mentions your company
Position: #2 recommendation
Citation: your pricing page
Other citations: Forbes, G2, Reddit, industry publication
Competitor: #1
Competitor's citations: 3 publications you aren't mentioned in

That's much more actionable than simply counting brand mentions. AI citation tracking is specifically about monitoring the URLs AI systems use as sources, which is different from traditional backlinks or simple brand monitoring. fifteenthmeridian.compresenc.ai

If you tell me your company size and whether you're mainly interested in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or all of them, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools I'd actually pay for and compare their current pricing/features.

Yes. What you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility / AEO / GEO monitoring. The key distinction is that you want software that tracks both brand mentions and the actual URLs/sources cited by AI assistants.

My shortlist

1. OtterlyAI — my pick for most companies.
It tracks brand mentions and website/domain citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and others. Its prompt-level reports let you see the actual AI response and the URLs used as sources. It also has a public API if you eventually want to pipe the data into your own dashboard. otterly.ai

A particularly useful feature is its citation report, which shows which URLs are winning citations in your category—not merely whether your company was mentioned. otterly.ai

2. Peec AI — best for a serious marketing/SEO team.
Peec separates mention rate from citation rate, which is important. An AI can recommend your company without linking to you, or cite your site without explicitly naming you. It also tracks position and sentiment and updates data daily. peec.ai

3. Scrunch — best for enterprise-level analysis.
Its citation system goes particularly deep: you can see the domains and individual URLs being cited, which prompts cite them, how consistently they appear, and an Influence Score for identifying sources that have the greatest impact on AI answers. scrunch.com

4. Profound — enterprise choice.
I'd look at it if you're a large brand with PR, SEO, content, and brand teams that need sophisticated AI-search reporting and integrations. Current market comparisons generally put Profound in the enterprise tier. attrifast.com

The metric I would actually monitor

Don't just ask "Does ChatGPT mention us?"

Build a dashboard around:

1. Mention rate — % of relevant prompts where your company appears.
2. Citation rate — % where your website gets cited.
3. Citation share — how much of the category's citations belong to you vs. competitors.
4. Source share — which third-party sites AI is using to make recommendations.
5. Prompt-level results — exactly what ChatGPT/Perplexity/etc. said.
6. Competitor mentions — who gets recommended when you don't.
7. Citation changes over time — whether your visibility is actually improving.
8. Unbranded prompts — e.g. "best [category] software" rather than "What is [Company]?"

That last one is particularly important. A company can have excellent branded visibility while being essentially invisible when a potential customer asks an AI assistant for recommendations.

What I'd choose

• Startup / SMB: OtterlyAI
• Growing marketing team: Peec AI
• Enterprise / multiple brands or markets: Scrunch or Profound
• You want raw data/API rather than another dashboard: OtterlyAI is particularly interesting because it exposes reports, prompts, citations and workspace data through its API. otterly.ai

If your specific goal is "I want to know every time ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity mentions my company, what source caused the mention, and which third-party sites I should get mentioned on", I'd start with OtterlyAI and Peec AI and compare the same 50–100 customer prompts in both. That's a much better test than comparing feature lists.

Yes. What you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility / answer-engine optimization (AEO/GEO) tracking. The important distinction is that you want software that tracks both mentions of your company and the sources/citations AI assistants use to make those claims.

My shortlist

If your specific question is “Why did ChatGPT say this about us?”

I'd lean toward Profound or OtterlyAI.

You want a workflow roughly like:

Prompt: “What are the best [category] companies?”
↓
AI answer: Your company is mentioned
↓
Citations: AI cites 7 websites
↓
Analysis: 3 of those sites mention your company, 2 mention competitors, 2 don't mention either
↓
Action: Identify which sources are influencing the answer and improve your presence there.

That's considerably more useful than simply counting how many times your brand appears.

OtterlyAI is particularly interesting for this use case: it monitors prompts daily and reports both brand mentions and domain citations, with response-level citation details. www.tryprofound.comahrefs.comhelp.otterly.aiwww.tryprofound.comhelp.otterly.ai

Profound looks stronger if you're building a more sophisticated enterprise AEO/GEO program, particularly because it adds source categorization and outreach intelligence—i.e., identifying publishers/authors that are disproportionately driving citations in your category. www.tryprofound.comwww.tryprofound.com

One important caveat: AI answers aren't deterministic. The same prompt can produce different answers depending on the session, location, account and other factors, so these platforms should be treated as trend/benchmark measurement, not an absolute record of what every user sees. www.tryprofound.comahrefs.comhelp.otterly.aiwww.tryprofound.comhelp.otterly.ai

My pick:

• Enterprise / serious brand intelligence → Profound
• SMB or lean marketing team → OtterlyAI
• Marketing analytics + share of voice → Peec
• Just want to investigate your brand immediately → Ahrefs

If you tell me your company type (B2B SaaS, ecommerce, agency, local business, etc.) and roughly how much you'd spend/month, I can narrow this to the 2–3 best options and compare their current pricing/features.

If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, what sources/citations did they use, and how is that changing?”, I’d look at AI visibility / GEO platforms, not traditional brand-monitoring software.

My shortlist

1. Otterly.AI — my default recommendation

Otterly is particularly well aligned with what you're asking for. It tracks brand mentions, brand coverage, and domain citations, and can monitor individual URLs cited by AI search experiences. It covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude. otterly.ai

Its prompt-level reporting actually gives you the useful forensic detail: the AI response + the URLs used as citations, alongside competitor rankings and changes over time. help.otterly.ai

I'd choose it if:

“I want a dashboard that tells me where my company is mentioned and what websites AI is using to substantiate the answer.”

2. Peec AI — strongest citation-oriented alternative

Peec makes an especially useful distinction between:

• Brand visibility — AI explicitly mentions your company
• Source visibility — your website/content is actually used as a source

That distinction is important. You can be cited without being mentioned, or mentioned without your own site being cited. Peec tracks both, plus source-level and URL-level analysis. docs.peec.ai

It also specifically analyzes which sources influence AI results and provides citation intelligence for Google AI Mode. peec.ai

I'd choose it if:

“I care less about vanity mention counts and more about which sources are influencing AI's perception of my company.”

3. Profound — enterprise choice

Profound is worth considering if you're building a substantial GEO/AEO program rather than simply monitoring mentions. It is used by larger marketing teams to understand how AI systems perceive brands and which sources influence those answers. Recent reporting also identifies Profound among the platforms major brands are using for AI-search optimization. www.businessinsider.com

I'd expect it to make more sense for an enterprise team than a small company just wanting a citation tracker.

One important thing: track the sources, not just your mentions

This is probably the biggest strategic distinction.

Suppose someone asks ChatGPT:

“What's the best software for X?”

You might get:

Company A — mentioned
Company B — mentioned
Company C — mentioned

But the more interesting question is:

Why did the AI choose those companies? What websites did it read/cite?

For example, AI may repeatedly cite industry publications, Reddit, comparison sites, Wikipedia, review sites, LinkedIn, or competitors' pages. Recent research suggests that third-party sources are particularly important: one 2026 analysis of 167,551 AI citations found 85.7% pointed to third-party sites rather than the brands' own sites. arxiv.org

That's why I'd prioritize a platform with citation/source-level reporting over a conventional “brand mentions” monitor.

What I'd buy

Small/medium company: → Otterly.AI

SEO/GEO-focused marketing team: → Peec AI

Enterprise / agency / sophisticated AI-search program: → Profound

Already paying for Semrush: → Semrush AI Visibility

And I wouldn't rely on a single tool's overall “AI visibility score.” I'd want these raw metrics:

1. Mention rate — % of tracked prompts where you're mentioned
2. Position/rank — where you appear in the answer
3. Citation rate — % of answers citing your domain
4. Citation URLs — exact pages being cited
5. Third-party citation sources — publications/sites influencing your visibility
6. Competitor share of voice
7. Prompt-level response history — ideally the actual response, not just a score
8. Engine/model breakdown — ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Perplexity, etc.
9. Geography/language breakdown
10. Change over time

If you tell me your company type, approximate size, and whether you're mainly interested in ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity or Google AI search, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 options and compare their current pricing/features.

If you mean tracking when ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, or AI search engines mention your company and which sources they cite, you’re looking for an AI visibility / AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) monitoring tool, not a traditional citation manager. These tools typically track:

• whether your brand appears in AI answers
• the exact prompts that triggered mentions
• competitors mentioned alongside you
• URLs/sources cited by AI systems
• sentiment and positioning
• share of voice across AI engines citationlab.ai

Some of the strongest options:

My practical shortlist:

• Enterprise / large brand: Profound or Semrush
• SEO + AI visibility team: Ahrefs or Semrush
• You mainly care “does ChatGPT recommend us, and why?”: Peec AI, Surva.ai, or Otterly.AI
• You want a lightweight dashboard: CitationLab or similar AI mention trackers www.reddit.comcitationlab.ai

A good setup usually tracks a fixed prompt set, for example:

• “What are the best [category] companies?”
• “Compare [your company] vs [competitors]”
• “What software should a [buyer persona] use?”
• “Who are the leaders in [industry]?”

Then measure:

1. mention rate
2. rank/position in the answer
3. cited domains
4. competitor share of voice
5. whether the cited sources are your own website, reviews, news, or third-party references auditae.app

If you tell me your company size (startup, SMB, enterprise), industry, and whether you care more about ChatGPT mentions or AI citations back to your website, I can narrow this to 2–3 best fits.

If you mean tracking when AI assistants (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, etc.) mention your company, recommend competitors instead, or cite your website/third-party sources, you’re looking for an AI visibility / GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) monitoring platform rather than a traditional SEO tool. dageno.ai

Here are some of the stronger options:

My shortlist by company size

Startup / SaaS team

• Start with Peec AI, Otterly.AI, or Citations.io. They’re closer to the core problem: “When someone asks an AI assistant about our category, do we appear?” www.surva.aicitations.io

Mid-market marketing team

• Semrush or Ahrefs make sense if you already pay for SEO tooling and want AI visibility folded into your workflow. www.techradar.com

Enterprise / brand reputation

• Look at Profound, MentionGEO, or similar enterprise platforms where you need many prompts, markets, competitors, and reporting. mentiongeo.ai

Features I would require before buying

Make sure the tool can answer:

1. Which prompts cause my company to appear?
   • “Best CRM for startups”
   • “Alternatives to [competitor]”
   • “Who are the leaders in [category]?”

2. Was my company merely mentioned, or actually cited?
   • Mention ≠ source attribution. Citation tracking is usually the more valuable signal. www.surva.aicitations.io

3. Which URLs and sources are AI systems relying on?
   • Your blog?
   • Reviews?
   • Wikipedia?
   • Industry publications?
   • Competitor pages?

4. Can it compare against competitors?
   • Share of AI answers won
   • Citation share
   • Sentiment/positioning

One practical approach: track a fixed set of 50–200 buyer questions monthly, not just your company name. AI assistants often recommend brands without being directly asked about them, so prompt-based monitoring gives a much better picture of market visibility. www.tryhikoo.com

If you tell me your company type (B2B SaaS, ecommerce, agency, local business, etc.) and approximate budget, I can narrow this to 2–3 best fits.

If your goal is specifically “Which AI assistants mention my company, what sources/citations are they using, and how is that changing over time?”, I’d shortlist these:

🥇 My pick: Scrunch

Scrunch is particularly well matched to your question because it doesn't stop at “was my company mentioned?”

Its Citations functionality shows:

• which websites/domains AI assistants cite
• the specific URLs being cited
• whether the source belongs to you, a competitor, or a third party
• which prompts generated those citations
• citation trends over time
• citation share by source/owner scrunch.com

That's important because there's a big difference between:

“ChatGPT mentioned my company.”

and

“ChatGPT mentioned my company because it cited this particular review/comparison/article, while competitors are being supported by these five other domains.”

The second one gives you something actionable to work on.

🏢 Profound for enterprise

Profound is probably the one I'd evaluate if you're running a larger SEO/content/brand team. It sits more in the enterprise AI visibility / AEO category rather than being merely a mention-monitoring tool.

💰 OtterlyAI for a lighter-weight setup

OtterlyAI is attractive if you want to get monitoring running without buying an enterprise platform. It tracks mentions and citations across major AI/search platforms and provides API access to prompts, citations, reports, and workspace data. otterly.ai

🔎 One important caveat

Don't treat an AI-visibility score as an exact measurement of reality. AI answers are nondeterministic: the same prompt can produce different answers and citations at different times. Recent research specifically finds substantial variability in citation visibility, meaning trends across repeated measurements are more meaningful than a single “visibility = 37%” number. arxiv.org

So I'd prioritize a product that lets you inspect the actual prompt → AI answer → cited URLs → competitor sources chain.

If I were evaluating three today, I'd trial: Scrunch + Profound + OtterlyAI and give each the same 50–100 commercially important prompts. Scrunch would be my first choice if source/citation intelligence is the primary requirement; Profound if you need enterprise reporting; Otterly if cost and simplicity matter most. A recent 2026 comparison similarly puts these three among the leading options, with different positioning by company size. getrefine.ai

If you tell me your company size, industry, and approximate budget ($50/mo, $500/mo, $2k+/mo), I can narrow this to the 2–3 tools I'd actually buy and compare their pricing, AI-engine coverage, citation-level data, API, and alerts.

If your goal is specifically “When an AI assistant talks about my company, what did it say, and which sources did it use?”, you’re looking for an AI search visibility / AEO / GEO monitoring platform, not a traditional brand-monitoring tool.

My shortlist

🥇 If citations are the priority: Profound

Profound's citation tracking is probably the closest match to what you're describing.

It lets you see:

• Which AI engines cite you
• Which exact URLs are being cited
• How often you're cited
• Which competitors receive citations instead
• Which third-party publishers are influencing AI answers
• Citation share by topic, prompt, and platform
• Whether citations come from your site, competitors, media, social, institutions, etc.

It also lets you identify the publishers and authors that repeatedly influence AI answers in your category, which is particularly useful if you're trying to increase citations rather than merely measure them. www.tryprofound.com

Profound currently covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Grok and others. www.tryprofound.com

I'd choose this if you're building an actual AI-search intelligence program.

🥈 Ahrefs Brand Radar — best if you already use Ahrefs

Ahrefs Brand Radar is unusually strong because it connects AI citations to its enormous traditional search dataset.

It currently analyzes hundreds of millions of search-backed prompts and tracks AI Overviews/AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and other surfaces. help.ahrefs.com

One feature I particularly like for your use case is the distinction between:

Mention → Citation → “Found but not cited.”

That last category matters: an AI system can retrieve your page while ultimately choosing somebody else's page as the visible citation. Ahrefs explicitly tracks this distinction. help.ahrefs.com

That gives you a much more useful funnel:

AI knows about us → AI retrieves us → AI actually cites us

Ahrefs also lets you identify the specific pages and domains being cited alongside your brand. ahrefs.com

🥉 Otterly — probably the easiest place to start

Otterly AI is a good choice if you don't need an enormous enterprise platform.

It monitors brand mentions and domain citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude, and gives you competitor comparisons. otterly.ai

Its citation reporting has also become substantially more granular, including URL-level citation details and winner/loser analysis. otterly.ai

I'd pick Otterly if your main question is:

“Give me a dashboard every week showing where my company appears, where competitors appear, and what URLs the AIs are citing.”

The metric I'd pay most attention to

Don't just track brand mentions.

I'd build your dashboard around these five:

1. AI mention rate — % of relevant prompts where your company appears
2. Citation rate — % where your own site is actually cited
3. Third-party citation share — which outside sites are shaping the AI's answer about you
4. Competitor share of voice — who gets recommended instead of you
5. Citation accuracy — whether the cited information about your company is actually correct

That distinction is important because being mentioned doesn't necessarily mean being cited. Ahrefs' research, for example, found that AI assistants mention brands substantially more often than they link to them. ahrefs.com

And third-party sources can be extremely important: AI may cite a review, comparison article, Reddit discussion, directory, or publication rather than your own website. ahrefs.com

What I'd buy

• Small/medium company: Otterly
• SEO team already using Ahrefs: Ahrefs Brand Radar
• Enterprise / PR + SEO + AEO team: Profound
• Very granular citation investigation: Scrunch
• Already heavily invested in Semrush: Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

If you tell me your company size, industry, approximate budget, and whether you care more about ChatGPT specifically or all AI search engines, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 and compare their current pricing/features.

If you mean “which tools tell me when ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, etc. mention my company and what sources they cite”, you’re looking for AI visibility / AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) monitoring, not traditional brand monitoring. The strongest options are:

My shortlist by company size

Enterprise / PR / brand team

• Choose Profound. It is built specifically around “how AI talks about your brand,” including cited sources and competitive visibility. www.tryprofound.com

Marketing team already using SEO tools

• Choose Semrush or Ahrefs so AI visibility sits alongside rankings, backlinks, and content analytics. www.techradar.comwww.techradar.com

Startup / smaller team

• Start with Otterly.AI or Peec AI for a narrower, cheaper monitoring layer. www.reddit.com

Features I would require before buying

Make sure the product can:

• Save the exact AI answer text (not just “you appeared”)
• Show which URLs were cited
• Track competitors in the same answers
• Run the same prompts repeatedly (AI answers vary between runs) arxiv.org
• Separate:
  • brand mention
  • recommendation/ranking
  • factual citation
  • negative/incorrect claims

A practical setup is usually:

1. Pick 50–200 customer-intent prompts (“best X software,” “alternatives to X,” “who provides Y service”).
2. Monitor weekly across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and AI search experiences.
3. Track whether your company is mentioned, whether your own pages are cited, and which third-party sources influence answers.

If you tell me your company size, industry, and whether you care more about reputation monitoring or getting more AI recommendations, I can narrow this to 2–3 choices.

If your goal is to know when AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.) mention your company and which sources they cite, there isn't a single tool that does everything perfectly yet. The best choice depends on whether you want SEO insights, AI visibility, or brand monitoring.

Here's how the current landscape breaks down:

If you specifically care about AI citations

The most valuable metrics are:

• Which prompts trigger mentions of your company
• Whether you're recommended or omitted
• Which websites the AI cites
• Which competitors are cited instead
• Changes in visibility over time
• Citation share across different AI assistants

The newer AI-focused platforms (such as Profound, Goodie AI, and Peec AI) are designed around these questions rather than traditional keyword rankings.

For a smaller budget

You can build a surprisingly effective workflow using:

• Google Alerts for new web mentions.
• Semrush or Ahrefs to identify authoritative pages about your company.
• A scheduled script (or an automation platform) that regularly queries multiple AI assistants with a fixed prompt set and stores:
  • the full answer,
  • whether your company was mentioned,
  • the cited URLs,
  • the date,
  • the model used.

This creates a historical record that's often more actionable than checking manually.

If you're an enterprise

If AI search is a major acquisition channel, I'd shortlist:

1. Profound
2. Goodie AI
3. Peec AI

These are among the most focused on measuring visibility and citations across generative AI systems rather than conventional search engines.

If you tell me:

• your company name,
• whether you're B2B or B2C,
• and whether your priority is ChatGPT, Google AI Mode/AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity,

I can recommend the platform that's the best fit and suggest a monitoring strategy tailored to your goals.

The category you’re looking for is usually called AI visibility tracking, LLM visibility monitoring, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), or Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). These tools monitor whether assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and AI search experiences mention your company, recommend competitors instead, and what sources they cite. www.elmohq.com

My shortlist:

A practical way to choose:

• Large company / PR / brand team: start with Profound or Peec AI.
• SEO team already using a suite: look at Ahrefs or Semrush.
• Need dashboards for executives: HubSpot may fit better if you already use its marketing stack.
• Want control and lower software cost: Elmo is worth evaluating. www.elmohq.com

When evaluating vendors, I’d prioritize:

1. Prompt-level evidence — can you see the exact question asked and the answer returned?
2. Citation tracking — does it show which websites AI assistants relied on?
3. Competitor comparison — who appears when your company does not?
4. Historical trends — can you measure improvement over months?
5. Coverage — which AI systems and regions/languages are included?

One caveat: these tools measure visibility; they generally do not have a direct way to force an AI assistant to mention your company. The useful output is identifying which prompts, pages, and third-party sources influence whether your company appears. www.reddit.com

If you tell me your company size (startup, SMB, enterprise) and whether you care more about ChatGPT mentions, AI search traffic, or PR/reputation monitoring, I can narrow this to 2–3 choices.

If you mean tracking when AI assistants mention your company, which sources they cite, and whether competitors appear instead, you’re looking for an AI visibility / GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) monitoring platform, not a traditional citation manager.

Good options:

My shortlist by situation:

• “I just need to know: does ChatGPT mention us, and what sources does it cite?” → Otterly.AI
• “We need executive reporting, competitor benchmarking, and a GEO program.” → Profound
• “Our SEO team already lives in a platform.” → Ahrefs or Semrush

When evaluating, I’d prioritize these features:

1. Exact prompt tracking — not just “brand sentiment.”
2. Source/citation capture — which pages, domains, reviews, or publications are being referenced.
3. Competitor comparisons — who appears when your company does not.
4. Historical trends — whether visibility is improving or declining.
5. Export/API access — useful if you want to combine AI visibility data with analytics or PR reporting.

A practical setup for most companies is to track 50–200 customer questions (for example, “best [category] software,” “alternatives to [competitor],” “how to solve [problem]”) and monitor which companies and sources appear over time. help.otterly.ai

If you tell me your company size (startup, mid-market, enterprise) and whether you care more about ChatGPT specifically or all AI assistants, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 choices.

If your goal is specifically tracking when AI assistants mention your company and which sources they cite, you're looking for the emerging category of AI visibility or Answer Engine Optimization (AEO/GEO) tools rather than traditional SEO software.

Here's how I'd group the best options:

If you're a startup or SMB

I'd lean toward:

1. Surva.ai — strongest emphasis on citations and the exact URLs AI models reference.
2. Mention.se — easiest dashboard and lower learning curve.
3. SEORav — particularly good if you want to monitor a defined set of customer questions over time.

If you're an enterprise

Consider:

• DeepSmith
• EvidentlyAEO
• HubSpot AEO (if you're already using HubSpot's CRM ecosystem) www.techradar.comwww.techradar.com

Features worth prioritizing

The best tools should track:

• AI assistants: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode
• Exact prompt used
• Whether your brand was mentioned
• Whether your website was cited
• Which third-party sources were cited instead
• Competitor share of voice
• Historical trends
• Alerts when visibility changes

A practical workflow

Many teams don't rely on one dashboard alone. They combine:

• an AI visibility platform,
• analytics (to see referral traffic from AI),
• and a custom list of 50–200 important customer prompts that are checked daily or weekly.

That gives a much clearer picture than only monitoring your brand name, because most valuable mentions happen in category questions like "best CRM for small businesses" rather than direct searches for your company. www.techradar.com

If you tell me:

• your company size,
• your industry (e.g. SaaS, ecommerce, local business, healthcare),
• and your approximate budget (free, <$100/mo, $500+/mo),

I can narrow this down to the two or three tools that fit best.

If your goal is specifically to track when AI assistants mention your company, what sources they cite, and how that changes over time, a new category of "AI visibility" or "Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)" tools has emerged.

Here's how I'd break them down:

If you're a startup or SMB

I'd start with:

1. Citations.io – one of the strongest products focused on AI citations rather than traditional SEO. It shows:
   • Which prompts mention you
   • Which URLs AI cited
   • Competitors cited instead
   • Recommended actions to improve visibility. citations.io

2. DeepSmith – useful if you want scheduled monitoring across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode with clear separation between "mentioned" and "cited." deepsmith.ai

If you're an enterprise

Look at:

• Siftly
• Profound
• Semrush AI Visibility
• Ahrefs Brand Radar

These are designed for larger marketing teams and competitive intelligence rather than just notification of mentions. Industry reviews frequently group them among the leading enterprise AI visibility platforms. www.techradar.com

Features worth prioritizing

Not every tool measures the same thing. The most useful platforms include:

• Monitoring across multiple AI assistants (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI)
• Exact prompt history
• Source URLs cited by the model
• Competitor comparison
• Alerts when visibility changes
• Historical snapshots of responses
• Share of voice by prompt category

Keep expectations realistic

This area is still evolving. Different platforms often report different results because they sample different prompts, use different model versions, and test under different conditions. Many SEO professionals still supplement automated tracking with a small set of manually repeated prompts for consistency. www.reddit.com

If you tell me:

• your company size,
• your monthly budget (e.g. <$100, $500, enterprise), and
• whether you're mainly interested in ChatGPT, Google AI, or all AI assistants,

I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools that are the best fit.