Measuring AI visibility: do ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini mention your business?
By Vibeking · Published 30 September 2026 · Facts checked on 30 September 2026
Whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini mentions your business varies from attempt to attempt, from person to person and from language to language. A single test therefore tells you little.
So measure with a fixed set of questions, ask each question several times per assistant and count how often you are mentioned. Supplement that with the traffic from AI assistants in GA4 and with the AI reports in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Why a single test tells you little
In November and December 2025, SparkToro had 600 volunteers put 12 questions to ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI Overviews (or AI Mode if no AI Overview appeared), 2,961 times in total. The chance of getting the same list of brands twice was less than 1 in 100; the same order came up about 1 in 1,000 times.
Ahrefs observed that an AI Overview for the same query changed in 70% of measurements. Of the pages that AI Mode and AI Overviews cited for the same query, only 13.7% appeared in both.
Answers are also personal. ChatGPT rewrites your question, can infer your general location from your IP address and can use saved memories; Google's AI Mode can take previous searches into account. A preprint from September 2025 also shows that results differ more between languages than between differently worded questions. None of these studies tested in Dutch.
How assistants choose their sources
- ChatGPT searches partly through third-party search services and uses its own search bot. Your site must allow that search bot, OAI-SearchBot, including in your hosting or CDN. OpenAI does not disclose how it ranks results and states that placement is not guaranteed.
- AI Overviews and AI Mode have no additional requirements, according to Google: a page must be indexed in Google Search and be allowed to show a snippet. The two features may use different models and techniques, which is why answers and links differ.
- The Gemini app can use content from the Google Search index to support its answers. With the Google-Extended token you can opt out of this, without affecting Google Search. Not every answer contains links.
- Perplexity adds numbered citations to every answer and uses PerplexityBot. Perplexity does not publish criteria for how it selects sources.
How to measure it yourself, in five steps
- Check access. Your robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot, your pages are indexable and your CDN does not block these bots.
- Draw up a fixed list of questions. Choose 10 to 20 questions in your customers' language, phrased the way they ask them: about your brand, your category, your region and comparisons with competitors. According to SparkToro, a mention rate across dozens to hundreds of questions, each asked several times, is a reasonable metric. So 10 to 20 questions give you a sense of direction.
- Repeat every question. Ask each question 3 to 5 times per assistant, every week or every two weeks, and add up the results over several weeks. SparkToro asked each question 60 to 100 times. Keep the conditions the same: logged out or with memory off, the same language and location, and note the date and model.
- Record three things for each answer. Whether you are mentioned, which competitors are mentioned and which pages are given as sources: your own site or someone else's.
- Calculate a mention rate. That is the share of answers in which you are mentioned, per assistant and per question. SparkToro calls this a reasonable metric and warns against tools that report a ranking position in AI.
A simple log is enough:
| Date | Assistant | Question | Attempt | Mentioned | Competitors | Cited pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [date] | ChatGPT | [question 1] | 1 of 3 | yes or no | [names] | [URLs] |
Measuring traffic from AI assistants
- GA4 has had a default channel, AI Assistant, since 13 May 2026 for visitors from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok, among others. GA4 recognises them by the referring site; Google only gives examples, not a complete list. AI Overviews and AI Mode are not counted in it; they fall under Organic Search. Perplexity is not mentioned, so to be safe, also filter on the source perplexity.ai.
- ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links that bring visitors to your site.
- Search Console has a report for generative AI with impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, date and device. It does not include clicks; according to Google, it has been rolled out worldwide since 31 August 2026, but the report may be missing if there are few impressions. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode do count in the regular Performance report, under search type Web.
- Bing Webmaster Tools has offered AI Performance since February 2026, showing how often your pages are cited as a source in Microsoft Copilot, in Bing's AI summaries and at selected partners (preview).
What to do with the results
If a competitor is mentioned and you are not, look at which pages are given as sources. These are often external sources such as media, review sites and comparison sites: a preprint from September 2025 found that AI search engines cite these more often than a brand's own site.
In addition, improve your own page: a direct answer at the top, concrete facts and sources. In the GEO study (KDD 2024), adding quotations, statistics and source citations yielded 30 to 40% more visibility in a simulated AI search engine, while keyword stuffing did not help.
That study used a model from 2023, so treat it as guidance rather than a guarantee. After every change, measure again with the same questions.
Measuring automatically with Vibeking
From the Monitor plan upwards, Vibeking asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode your fixed questions every week, and tracks Google's AI Overviews daily for each keyword. You see whether you are mentioned and which competitors are, and every gap becomes a task with a proposed answer block.
Start with the free SEO check to review the technical basics first.
Sources
- SparkToro: AIs are inconsistent when recommending brands (27 January 2026)
- Ahrefs: how often AI Overviews change (11 November 2025) and AI Overviews versus AI Mode (15 December 2025)
- OpenAI: ChatGPT search (updated August 2026) and FAQ for publishers (updated August 2026)
- Google: AI features and your website (updated 10 December 2025), sources in the Gemini app, personalisation in AI Mode and Google-Extended among Google's crawlers (updated 14 July 2026)
- Perplexity: how Perplexity works and crawlers
- Anthropic: Anthropic's crawlers
- Google Analytics: default channels, including AI Assistant and release notes (13 May 2026)
- Search Console: generative AI report and clicks and impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode
- Bing: AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools (10 February 2026) and new insights, including Citation Share (June 2026)
- GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, Aggarwal et al. (KDD 2024)
- Chen et al., preprint on source selection by AI search engines (10 September 2025, not yet peer-reviewed)