You can track how often ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini mention your brand without paid tools. Write a fixed set of buyer questions, run each one several times on each assistant every month, record whether you are mentioned, where, with which links and alongside which competitors, and add an analytics report for visits referred by AI tools. The runs give you share of voice in AI answers; the analytics report shows whether that visibility turns into visits.
Why one test tells you almost nothing
AI answers are not fixed. The same question asked twice can return different companies, in a different order, with different sources. Answers also vary by user, because assistants can use earlier messages and saved preferences. A single screenshot of ChatGPT naming you, or not, is an anecdote. Tracking works only when the same questions are run the same way, several times, over months.
Step 1: build the question set
Start with 15 to 25 questions that real buyers ask before choosing a company like yours. Take them from sales calls, enquiry forms, support emails and the “People also ask” boxes for your main topics. Keep the wording natural, as a person would type it.
| Group | Share of questions | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Category (“who offers…”) | About 40% | Which agencies in India offer generative engine optimisation? |
| Problem (“why is…”, “how do I…”) | About 30% | Why has our organic traffic dropped since AI Overviews appeared? |
| Comparison and selection | About 20% | What should we look for when hiring an AEO agency? |
| Brand (“what does X do”) | About 10% | What does Brilad do? |
Do not change the questions between months. If you want to add new ones, add them as a separate group, so your trend lines stay comparable.
Step 2: decide how to run the tests
- Use a logged-out or fresh session where possible, with memory and personalisation turned off, so earlier chats do not influence the answer.
- Make sure web search is on in ChatGPT, since that is the mode your website can influence.
- Run each question at least three times per assistant per month. Five runs gives steadier numbers.
- Test the same assistants every time: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews or AI Mode if they appear for your questions.
- Note the location settings if your market is local, since answers can differ by country.
Step 3: record every run
Use one row per run. These columns cover what matters:
Date,Assistant,Question group,Question,Run,Mentioned (1/0),Position,Our URLs cited,Competitors named,Description accurate (1/0),Notes
“Position” is the order in which your brand appears among the companies named: 1 if you are first, 2 if second, and blank if not mentioned. “Description accurate” catches the answers that mention you but get something wrong, such as an old service or location.
Step 4: calculate share of voice
Share of voice is the percentage of runs in which you are mentioned. In Google Sheets, with the data in columns A to K, this formula gives your share for ChatGPT:
=AVERAGEIFS(F:F, B:B, "ChatGPT")
Do the same for each competitor by counting how often each name appears in column I. The example below shows how the results can look. The numbers are illustrative, not real data.
Example: share of runs in which each company is mentioned
Illustrative numbers for a question set of 20 questions, 5 runs each, on one assistant
- Competitor A46%
- Competitor B31%
- Your company12%
Illustrative example to show the calculation. Your own results will differ.
Split the result by question group. Brands often do well on brand questions and poorly on category questions, which is where new buyers are.
Step 5: track visits from AI assistants
Mentions matter most when they send people to your site. OpenAI’s publisher FAQ notes that sites can track ChatGPT referral traffic in analytics tools such as Google Analytics, and ChatGPT adds a utm_source=chatgpt.com parameter to many links. Other assistants appear as referring domains.
In Google Analytics 4, create a custom channel group with a channel called “AI assistants” whose rule matches the session source against this pattern:
chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|perplexity\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com|claude\.ai
Place it above the “Referral” channel so these visits are not counted twice. Then compare conversions from this channel with organic search.
Step 6: act on what the data shows
| What you see | Likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Never mentioned on any assistant | Crawler access or weak search visibility | Run our AI crawler access checker and check rankings for the sub-questions |
| Mentioned on brand questions only | No page answers the category questions | Write sections that answer each category question directly |
| Mentioned, but described wrongly | Outdated facts somewhere on the web | Trace and correct the source (guide) |
| Competitors cited from review sites you are not on | Missing third-party mentions | Get listed and reviewed on those sites |
For a structured way through these causes, see our 7-point checklist for when ChatGPT does not mention your company.
When a paid tool makes sense
A spreadsheet works well up to about 25 questions and three or four assistants. Beyond that, running the tests by hand takes too long, and a paid AI visibility tool that runs prompts automatically becomes worth it. The method is the same; only the data collection changes. Whatever tool you use, check that it runs each prompt several times and shows the raw answers, not only a score.
Frequently asked questions
How many runs are enough?
Three per question per assistant is a practical minimum. With fewer, a single unusual answer changes the result too much.
Can Search Console show AI mentions?
Search Console reports Google Search performance, and Google has said AI Mode activity is included in the totals. It does not show mentions in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini.
How often should we report?
Monthly. AI answers change too much from day to day for weekly numbers to mean much.
Sources
- OpenAI Help Center, “Publishers and Developers FAQ”
- Google Analytics Help, “Custom channel groups”