Some answers skip search
- On five questions ChatGPT and Gemini answered from training, so only brands in older, widely published content appear.
PR for AI search visibility
AI search visibility is the share of AI answers in your category that name your brand.
When a buyer asks an assistant which vendor to trust, the answer lists a handful of names and a few cited sources.
If you are not in those sources, you are rarely in the answer.
Our work is to earn coverage on the sites the answers already cite.
The monthly AI search check comes with the Growth plan, from $890 a month.
Illustration
How does ChatGPT decide which sources to cite
Each engine behaves differently, even from one question to the next.
In September 2026 we put 16 PR buyer questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini with web search on.
The 48 answers carried 255 citations on 177 domains, and 130 domains appeared once, so no single site controls the category.
ChatGPT targets vendor pages
- Its search queries named vendor sites such as Clutch, so a page answering the exact question gets fetched.
Perplexity leans on listicles
- Directory-style lists such as DesignRush fed most of its agency and price answers.
Gemini names the most brands
- Up to twelve products per answer, and Reddit threads in five answers.
Why does earned media drive AI answers
Muck Rack's What Is AI Reading study, updated in May 2026 across more than 25 million cited links, shows where the answers come from.
Advertising budget does not buy a place in the answer.
What others write about you does, from a trade story to a thread on a forum.
- 84%of AI citations point to earned mediaMuck Rack
- 0.3%of AI citations point to paid or advertorial contentTechIntelPro
- 96%of ChatGPT responses cite sourcesMuck Rack
- 82%of Gemini responses cite sourcesTechIntelPro
How to measure where your brand stands
Write the method down before anyone looks at results, and keep it small enough to repeat every week.
We use three engines and ten questions. Treat each answer as one sample, because the same question asked twice can return different brands.
Write ten questions a buyer would type
Mix best-of questions with problem, comparison and price questions, and keep your brand name out of the best-of and problem ones. For a payroll firm, best payroll software for startups in Germany. Freeze the list for a quarter.
Run each question on three engines
Use web search on, a clean session each time, and your buyers' language. That gives 30 answers.
Log what each answer says
Whether you are named and in what position. Then note which competitors appear, quote the words used about you, and copy every cited URL.
Compare the answer with your homepage
Put each engine's description of you next to the first screen of your own site. Where they differ, open the cited pages and look for the same wording, such as an old price or a dropped product. A cited page that repeats the error goes to the top of the outreach list. A difference you cannot trace gets flagged, not guessed. The free AI visibility audit runs a three-question version of this by hand.
Score it
- Mention rate, the answers naming you out of 30.
- Average position when named.
- Cited-source overlap, cited domains that have written about you.
- Description match, answers that describe you the way your homepage does.
- Sentiment. Gemini named some vendors only as too expensive, a mention but not a win.
Keep the numbers honest
- Report a four-week rolling trend, not a single day.
- Keep questions and settings fixed for a quarter.
- Save full answers and citations so anyone can recount.
What is AI share of voice
AI share of voice is your mentions divided by all brand mentions across the answers to your question set.
If 30 answers name brands 90 times and you appear 9 times, your AI share of voice is 10%.
Unlike a raw count, it shows how crowded the answer is. The full method is on share of voice.
How do you improve AI search visibility
Once the baseline lists the cited domains, the fixes are practical. None of them tricks the model.
They make the independent record about you larger and more accurate.
- Earn coverage on cited trade and business sites. The fastest single lever.
- Get onto fair comparison listicles. Send editors current facts with a named contact. Skip any listicle that charges for unlabelled inclusion.
- Publish a plain definition and price page. Answer the question in the first paragraph.
- Keep facts identical everywhere. Your founding year and prices must match on your site and in every directory listing.
- Join the forums where your category is discussed. Honest answers under a real name are part of what Gemini reads.
Which AI visibility tracker should you choose
Trackers automate this method.
They count mentions well and leave the work of changing them to you, so a tracker is enough only if a PR team acts on the data.
Otterly
- Entry price found $29 a month
- What the entry plan covers 15 prompts on four engines, Gemini as a paid add-on
Peec
- Entry price found €85 a month
- What the entry plan covers Starter plan for marketing teams
Profound
- Entry price found free 7-day trial, then enterprise on quote
- What the entry plan covers 50 prompts daily during the trial
Our free check
- Entry price found no charge
- What the entry plan covers 3 questions on 3 engines, read by a person, see the AI visibility check
How long does it take to appear in AI answers
Answers built from live search can change within days of a cited page being updated, so check a quarter after the first fixes.
Answers from model memory move slowly, because they reflect content old enough to be learned in training. Give steady coverage a year.
What the first quarter looks like
Ten questions, three engines, one baseline
We agree ten buyer questions with you and run them on the three main engines with web search on. The log shows who gets named and which sites the answers cite.
Pitch the sites the engines already trust
The cited domains become the outreach list, from trade titles to the independent listicles that feed agency and tool answers.
Re-run every month
The same questions run every month and each run is compared with the baseline, so one noisy answer never drives a decision.
A B2B software firm missing from its own category answer
- Situation
- Asked for the best tools in its niche, all three engines named four rivals and never the firm, although it had more customers than two of them.
- What we do
- The baseline showed the answers leaned on two comparison listicles and one trade site. The team sent the listicle editors current product facts and pitched the trade site a data story.
- Outcome
- Illustrative. A realistic target is an appearance in one engine's answer within the quarter once one listicle updates, with the trade story following later.
Anastasiia Bratkova
Chief Brand, Marketing & Communications Officer, RSE
Signs every pitch
Questions
What founders ask about AI answers
What is AI search visibility?
How often and how favourably AI assistants name your brand when people ask about your category, and which sources they cite when they do.
How do I check my AI visibility?
Write ten questions a buyer would ask and run each on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini with web search on. Record whether you are named and which sites get cited.
How can I increase my AI visibility?
Get mentioned on the third-party pages the engines already cite. On your own site, answer category questions plainly and keep the facts the same as everywhere else.
Is SEO dead now with AI?
No. Engines that search the web still rely on pages that rank and match the question. SEO covers your own pages, PR covers what others say.
What is the best agency for generative engine optimization?
Choose one that shows you the cited sources for your questions before it sells anything and measures a trend, not a single screenshot. Walk away from anyone selling placed mentions. Google treats bought mentions like paid links.
Is Google visibility the same as AI visibility?
Partly. Google's AI Overviews cite only pages that are indexed in Google Search, so ranking still matters there. ChatGPT and Perplexity run their own searches and cite a different mix, such as directory lists and vendor pages.
Next step
Get a 15-minute PR diagnosis
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