AI tools for SEO now do two jobs. The first is classic SEO work done faster: keyword research, briefs, content scoring, audits and reports. The second is new: checking whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews mention your brand, and fixing the pages they skip. Below are 20 AI SEO tools grouped by the job they do.
Short answer. For one platform that covers classic SEO and AI visibility, start with Semrush or Ahrefs. For content optimization, use Surfer or Clearscope. For AI visibility tracking, Profound and Conductor fit enterprise teams; Otterly AI and Rankscale fit small budgets. For a free start, use Google Search Console’s Generative AI report plus ChatGPT or Claude.
Prices and plans are as listed on vendors’ sites on 27 October 2026.
What Is AI Search Engine Optimization?
AI search engine optimization (AI SEO) covers two practices: using artificial intelligence to do SEO work, and optimizing a website so AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews cite and recommend it.
The second practice goes by several names:
- GEO (generative engine optimization): getting cited inside answers that generative AI writes.
- AEO (answer engine optimization): structuring content so assistants pick it as the direct answer.
- LLMO or LLM SEO: the same idea, named after the large language models behind the answers.
The differences between these terms are smaller than the vendors’ marketing suggests. Our comparison of AEO, GEO and SEO goes through them one by one, and the GEO guide covers tactics.
More searches now show an AI answer, and the share depends on the niche. OpenAI reported 900 million weekly ChatGPT users in February 2026. BrightEdge found AI Overviews on about 48% of the queries it tracked in February 2026, up from about 30% a year earlier. In our iGaming SEO research, Google showed an AI Overview on 12.1% of gambling queries and on 77.2% of finance and health queries.
What Are AI SEO Tools?
AI SEO tools are software products that use machine learning and large language models to automate keyword research, content optimization, technical audits and reporting, and to track how often AI assistants mention or cite a brand.
SEO AI tools split into six jobs, and most teams need two or three of them:
| Job | What AI does here | Tools in this list |
|---|---|---|
| Research and competitor analysis | Clusters keywords, finds gaps, reads SERPs and competitor pages | Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Conductor |
| Content writing and optimization | Builds briefs, scores drafts against top pages, writes first drafts | Surfer, Clearscope, Frase, MarketMuse, Writesonic, Koala AI |
| General AI assistance | Drafts, schema, regex, data analysis, ad hoc prompt checks | ChatGPT, Claude |
| AI visibility tracking (GEO) | Runs prompts in AI engines and logs mentions, citations, sentiment | Profound, Peec AI, Otterly AI, Rankscale, Scrunch, HubSpot AEO |
| Technical access for AI crawlers | Audits crawlability, renders JavaScript for bots, reads log files | Botify, Lumar, Alli AI |
| Measurement | Reports AI impressions, citations and AI referral traffic | Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, GA4 |
How We Chose These Tools
The tools are grouped by job, because a content editor and a log-file crawler solve different problems. Engine lists for trackers come from each vendor’s pricing page, which is sometimes narrower than the homepage. We preferred tools that read Search Console, analytics, crawl data or live AI answers over tools that only wrap a language model.
ICODA is a Semrush partner and runs its audits on Semrush. We also use Ahrefs, Search Console and GA4 daily, and query ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini directly for our studies.
AI SEO Tools Comparison Table
Semrush
All-in-One + AI Tracking
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Ahrefs
Backlinks + AI Citations
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
SE Ranking
Mid-Market Suite
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Conductor
Enterprise SEO + AEO
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Surfer
Content Optimizer
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Clearscope
Content Grader
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Frase
Briefs + Drafts
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
MarketMuse
Topic Planner
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Writesonic
Monitor + Create
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Koala AI
Article Generator
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
ChatGPT and Claude
General AI Assistants
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Profound
Enterprise AI Visibility
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Peec AI
Multi-Market Tracker
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Otterly AI
Budget Tracker
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Rankscale
Wide Engine Coverage
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Scrunch
Tracker + Agent Layer
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
HubSpot AEO
CRM-Linked Tracking
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Botify
Crawl + Logs
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Lumar
Technical GEO Audits
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
Alli AI
Auto-Deploy at Scale
Best For
Free Trial
Key Strength
All-in-One SEO Suites With AI Features
1. Semrush
Semrush is an SEO suite with a built-in AI Visibility Toolkit, so Google rankings and AI answers sit in one dashboard. We run ICODA’s keyword research and site audits in Semrush.
Key features:
- Prompt Research. Searches Semrush’s database of AI prompts by topic, with volume, difficulty and intent for each topic.
- Brand Performance. Reports share of voice, sentiment and the main narratives about your brand in Google’s AI features, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, against competitors.
- Prompt Tracking. Checks your prompts daily in AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT, next to your Google positions, in 220+ countries and territories.
- AI Search Site Audit. Shows which AI crawlers your site blocks, such as OAI-SearchBot, Google-Extended and PerplexityBot, and lists other technical blockers.
- MCP server. Connects Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor to Semrush data through MCP (Model Context Protocol, a standard that lets AI assistants pull data from other apps).
Limitations:
- Prompt tracking covers three engines; Perplexity and Gemini appear only in brand-level reports.
- The standalone AI Visibility Toolkit has no free trial, and MCP access needs Starter, Pro+ or a Classic Pro or Guru plan.
Pricing: SEO plan $139/mo. Starter with AI tracking $199/mo (50 daily prompts); Pro+ $299/mo. Standalone AI Visibility Toolkit $99/mo per domain with 25 prompts. Free tier, and a 7-day trial on the main plans.
Best for: Teams that want keyword research, competitor data and AI visibility in one subscription.
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs adds AI citation data to its backlink and keyword index. We use Ahrefs AI citation counts in client reporting: on the Godex SEO project, Google AI Overview citations grew from about 52 to 967 while organic traffic grew from 7,551 to 20,634 monthly visits.
Key features:
- AI citations in Site Explorer. The overview of any domain shows how many AI answers linked to it and how many of its pages were cited, on all plans.
- Brand Radar AI Visibility Index. Profiles any brand across 509 million+ monthly prompts built from Ahrefs keyword data, in AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.
- Custom prompts. Tracks your own prompts daily, weekly or monthly; Claude and Grok are available here too.
- Cited Domains and Cited Pages. Lists the sites and URLs that AI answers cite for a topic, which gives you outreach targets.
- AI Content Helper. Scores a draft from 0 to 100 on topic coverage for a chosen search intent, in English and 173 other languages.
Limitations:
- Brand Radar is a paid add-on, and the Index re-tests prompts monthly.
- Custom prompt checks are capped by plan (150 a month on Lite), and one Claude check uses 8 of them.
Pricing: Starter $29/mo, Lite $129/mo, Standard $249/mo, Advanced $449/mo, Enterprise $1,499/mo. Brand Radar custom prompts from $50/mo, AI Visibility Index from $199/mo.
Best for: SEO teams that live in backlink and competitor data and want AI citations in the same view.
3. SE Ranking
SE Ranking is a mid-priced SEO suite with an AI Search Toolkit add-on that tracks Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT and Gemini, with Copilot listed as coming soon.
Key features:
- AI Results Tracker. Records the brand mentions and links your prompts trigger in AI answers, where they rank and how competitors compare, with history over time.
- AI Competitor Research. Measures any brand’s or domain’s AI presence before you set up prompts of your own.
- Sources and cached answers. Maps the domains and URLs that AI answers cite and saves the answers, so you can read how your brand is described.
- Content Editor. Builds briefs from SERP data and scores drafts as you write, with a Google Docs add-on.
- MCP server. Gives Claude, Cursor and other assistants 180+ SEO and GEO tools, included on every plan.
Core plus the toolkit costs $218/mo for rank tracking, audits, content tools and AI tracking.
Limitations:
- AI tracking is an add-on, and AI visibility data covers 7 markets and five languages.
- White-label reports need the Agency Pack (+$69/mo, billed annually).
Pricing: Core $129/mo ($103.20/mo billed annually), Growth $279/mo, Enterprise custom. AI Search Toolkit +$89/mo (75 prompts a day). 14-day free trial, no card.
Best for: Small agencies and freelancers who want AI tracking at a mid-market price.
4. Conductor
Conductor is an enterprise SEO and AEO platform. Its AI search tracking covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Grok, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity.
Key features:
- AI Search Performance. Measures your topic-level share of AI mentions and citations against competitors.
- Prompts by persona. Generates up to 100 prompts per topic from your keyword, content and domain data, grouped by buyer persona.
- Sentiment score. Rates how AI answers describe your brand on a scale from 1 to 10.
- Writing Assistant. Scores content and drafts it from Conductor’s search data; paste a live URL to optimize an existing page.
- Monitoring and MCP. Tracks how AI bots crawl your site around the clock with alerts, and every subscription includes MCP access for ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot.
Its AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report analyzed about 21.9 million Google searches and 3.3 billion sessions across 13,770 domains (data from May to September 2025). Conductor was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave for SEO Solutions, Q3 2025.
Limitations:
- No public prices. The free trial is on Essentials, which has no AI search tracking; tracking starts at Growth, sold through a demo.
- Daily tracking uses credits much faster than weekly.
Pricing: Usage-based Essentials, Growth and Enterprise tiers; no public dollar prices. Free trial on Essentials.
Best for: Large brands that want SEO and AI visibility on one enterprise platform with benchmarks.
AI Content Writing and Optimization Tools
5. Surfer
Surfer (now at surfer.ai) scores drafts against top-ranking pages and tracks your brand in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini.
Key features:
- Content Editor. Gives three scores while you write (Content Score, SEO Score and AI Search Score), based on pages that already rank.
- Auto-Optimize. Adds missing relevant terms to a finished draft in one click.
- AI Tracker. Reports visibility score, mention rate, average position and the pages AI models cite most.
- Sentiment analysis. Shows how AI answers and their sources describe your brand.
- AI visibility recommendations. Turns tracker data into a task list: which mentions to pursue and which topics to cover.
- Integrations. Google Docs and WordPress on paid plans; MCP from Pro.
Limitations:
- AI tracking depends on the plan: Discovery has none, Standard tracks 25 ChatGPT prompts weekly, and all five engines with daily refresh start at Pro.
- API access and Zapier are only on Peace of Mind.
Pricing (billed annually): Discovery $49/mo, Standard $99/mo, Pro $182/mo (50 prompts, daily), Peace of Mind $299/mo (100 prompts). Standalone AI Search Analytics $82/mo. Enterprise custom.
Best for: Content teams that publish every week and want a shared optimization score.
6. Clearscope
Clearscope grades content for topical coverage and tracks how ChatGPT and Gemini mention your brand on every plan.
Key features:
- Content grading. Paste a draft and get a grade and a list of missing terms and topics.
- AI Term Presence. Marks which suggested terms ChatGPT and Gemini actually use when they answer the target query.
- Query Tracking. Follows chosen queries in AI assistants and shows when and how your brand appears.
- Discoveries and Drafts. Finds the queries behind a topic or URL and writes AI first drafts.
- Content Inventory. Monitors the whole site with Search Console data to catch pages that lose traffic.
- Google Docs and WordPress. Recommendations show up inside the editor you already use.
All plans include unlimited seats, so a team of ten writers pays the same $129/mo as one.
Limitations:
- The pricing page names only ChatGPT and Gemini for AI tracking; Perplexity, AI Overviews and AI Mode are not listed.
- Monthly caps: 50 tracked queries and 20 drafts on Essentials, and Business still has 20 drafts. SSO and crawler whitelisting are Enterprise-only.
Pricing: Essentials $129/mo, Business $399/mo, Enterprise custom. 14-day free trial.
Best for: Editorial teams with several writers and strict quality standards.
7. Frase
Frase turns SERP research into briefs and drafts, and its plans include AI visibility tracking.
Key features:
- Research to brief. Compares top results, pulls People Also Ask questions and turns them into a brief. That question-first format suits answer engines, which pull direct answers to specific questions.
- SEO and GEO scores. Scores drafts both for Google rankings and for signals that affect AI citation.
- AI Visibility. Monitors prompts daily with alerts: ChatGPT and Google AI on Starter, Perplexity and AI crawler monitoring on Professional, Claude and Gemini on Scale.
- Content Guard. Watches pages for ranking decay and suggests a fix.
- Frase Agent. Drafts with your brand context and publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity or Wix after your approval.
- MCP and API. Runs research, scoring, audits and publishing from Claude or ChatGPT on every plan, in 70+ languages.
Limitations:
- Starter is 1 seat and 1 site, with 20 tracked prompts and 10 articles a month.
- White-label reports are Enterprise-only.
Pricing: Starter $49/mo ($39 billed annually), Professional $129/mo ($103), Scale $299/mo ($239), Enterprise custom. 7-day free trial.
Best for: Solo writers and small teams that want research, briefs, writing and basic AI tracking in one tool.
8. MarketMuse
MarketMuse analyzes a whole content library to show which topics a site covers well and where it has gaps. It is a planning tool: it shows which topics to write next. That matters for AI search because query fan-out rewards sites that cover a topic from many angles.
Key features:
- Topic Authority. Finds the topic clusters where your site is already strong and the quick wins next to them.
- Personalized Difficulty. Scores keyword difficulty against your own site’s authority.
- Content Briefs. Nine brief types, from FAQ to comparison, with structure, questions and link suggestions; export to Google Docs or Word.
- Optimize. An editor with a content score based on MarketMuse’s topic model.
- Connect. Suggests internal and external links with anchor text.
Siteimprove completed its acquisition of MarketMuse on 31 October 2024, but MarketMuse is still sold on its own.
Limitations:
- No AI visibility tracking appears on its product pages, and only the free plan has a public price.
- The free plan is small: 1 user, 10 queries a month and no briefs.
Pricing: Free plan, then Optimize, Research and Strategy plans; prices on request.
Best for: Content strategists planning topic clusters for large sites.
9. Writesonic
Writesonic combines an AI writer with AI visibility tracking, so the same tool shows where a brand is missing and drafts the content to fix it.
Key features:
- AI Visibility. Tracks prompts daily; self-serve plans cover ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews with 50 to 200 prompts.
- Citation analysis. Shows your citation share and where competitors are cited instead.
- Action Center. Ranks fixes by expected visibility and citation impact.
- Site Audit. Catches errors that GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot hit, plus robots.txt, schema and indexing issues.
- AI Traffic Analytics. Reads server logs to count AI bot visits and human visits referred by AI platforms.
- GEO rewrites. An AI agent rewrites pages for AI citation, adding FAQ blocks and comparison tables. Search Console and WordPress connect on all plans.
Limitations:
- Self-serve plans track three engines in one market; Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, AI Mode and Grok are Enterprise-only (up to nine platforms).
- GA4 and Looker Studio integrations are Enterprise-only. As with any AI writer, drafts need an editor before they go live.
Pricing: Starter $79/mo, Basic $199/mo, Growth $399/mo, Enterprise custom. Free trial, no free plan.
Best for: Marketing teams that want visibility data and content production without two separate tools.
10. Koala AI
Koala AI writes full SEO articles from a keyword, using current GPT and Claude models.
Key features:
- KoalaWriter. Analyzes the pages ranking for the keyword and covers the entities they share; a Deep Research mode is available.
- Internal linking. Indexes your site and places relevant internal links in every article; it has placed over 25 million so far.
- Brand DNA. An SEO agent (April 2026) that reads your Search Console data, remembers your business and hands topics to KoalaWriter.
- Backlink and competitor intelligence. Audits backlinks and finds unlinked brand mentions and keywords competitors rank for.
- MCP server. Connects an AI assistant to 62 SEO tools on every paid plan.
- Publishing. Sends articles to WordPress, Shopify, Webflow or Ghost.
Limitations:
- Koala optimizes content for AI answers but does not track them.
- The Brand DNA agent is message-capped below Boost, and stronger models use 2 to 3 times more of the word quota.
Use it only if volume is the bottleneck and someone edits every article: Google’s spam policies treat mass-produced, low-value pages as scaled content abuse.
Pricing: Starter $25/mo, Professional $49/mo, Boost $99/mo, Growth $179/mo (about 20% less billed annually). Free trial with 5,000 words, no card.
Best for: Affiliate and content teams that need first drafts at volume and have editors to check them.
General AI Assistants for SEO Work
11. ChatGPT and Claude
ChatGPT and Claude have free plans and handle most text and data tasks in SEO, as long as you feed them Search Console, analytics or crawl exports.
Key features:
- Web search with citations. Both pull current pages into the answer and link the sources.
- Deep research. ChatGPT’s deep research and Claude’s Research run many searches and return a cited report.
- Data analysis. Upload a Search Console or crawl export as CSV, and both write and run code to clean, merge and chart it.
- Projects. Keep files, instructions and chats for one site or client in one workspace.
- MCP connectors. Both connect to MCP servers, including the ones Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking and Peec AI offer.
They are also the simplest AI visibility check: ask the questions your buyers ask and see who gets named. We ran 36 crypto queries through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini for our crypto media citation study. In our AI visibility audit of 44 game studios, 20 studios got zero mentions from Claude.
Limitations:
- Neither has keyword volume or difficulty data. Ask for those without data and they will invent them; OpenAI’s own guide says to verify critical results.
- Paid plans have usage limits: Claude Pro has a session limit that resets every five hours plus a weekly cap.
Pricing: Both have free plans. ChatGPT Plus costs $20/mo; Claude Pro $20/mo ($17 billed annually).
Best for: Any team, as an analysis layer on top of SEO exports.
AI Visibility and GEO Trackers
AI visibility trackers send a fixed set of prompts to AI engines on a schedule and record whether your brand appears, where it appears, how it is described and which sources are cited. Two findings from our research explain why they exist as a separate category:
- Cited pages often sit outside the top 10. Half of the URLs cited in gambling AI Overviews (49.9%) were outside that query’s organic top 10, according to our iGaming SEO research. A rank tracker would never show those pages.
- Engines behave differently. In our crypto media study, Perplexity cited 22.9 sources per answer and ChatGPT 2.7, and Gemini cited a source in only 12 of 36 answers. A single blended “AI visibility score” hides that. Ask any tracker for results per engine.
Before paying for a tracker, run a free baseline: a manual set of 10 to 20 buyer questions, or one of the free checkers listed further down. For a side-by-side test of trackers on one site, see our comparison of AI visibility tools.
12. Profound
Profound is an enterprise AI visibility platform; its customers include Target, Figma, Walmart, Ramp and MongoDB.
Key features:
- Answer Engine Insights. Tracks visibility score, share of voice, sentiment and citations daily, collected from the engines’ browser experience, in 30+ languages and 150+ regions.
- Prompt Volumes. Estimates what people ask AI, from 1.5 billion+ conversations in 10 countries.
- Agent Analytics. Reads server logs to show which AI crawlers visit and whether AI-referred visits turn into traffic.
- Agents. No-code workflows that refresh pages losing AI citations and draft FAQs and briefs, with human approval.
- CSV export. Exports the raw tracking data for your own analysis.
- Shopping. Tracks product visibility in ChatGPT Shopping (Enterprise).
The Enterprise plan tracks up to nine answer engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Exa Search. Profound states SOC 2 Type II compliance.
Limitations:
- No public prices: only a free trial and custom Enterprise contracts.
- The trial is narrow: 50 prompts, three engines, one language and one region.
Pricing: Free 7-day trial (50 prompts a day on ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews). Enterprise custom.
Best for: Enterprise marketing teams that need broad engine coverage and content workflows.
13. Peec AI
Peec AI is a Berlin-based tracker that measures visibility, position and sentiment in AI answers, with unlimited seats on every plan.
Key features:
- Visibility, position and sentiment. Runs prompts daily through the engines’ own interfaces and reports how often your brand appears, where it ranks among the brands named and the tone.
- Sources. Shows which sites and articles AI models cite when they mention brands, so you know where to earn mentions.
- Actions. Ranks fixes in four groups: crawlability, your own content, third-party mentions and inaccurate claims, with an editor for optimizing content.
- MCP, API and Looker Studio. Sends data to Claude, Cursor, n8n or Looker Studio, or exports CSV.
- Countries and competitors. Tracks prompts by country and benchmarks named competitors, which suits brands selling in several languages. Peec is GDPR compliant.
Limitations:
- Starter and Pro include three engines of your choice; more need Enterprise or an add-on.
- Starter has no API access, and prices are shown only in the app.
Pricing: Starter, Pro, Advanced and Enterprise tiers. Peec’s own comparison page lists Starter at €89/mo; check the in-app pricing for current figures. Free trial.
Best for: International and European teams tracking several markets.
14. Otterly AI
Otterly AI is a low-cost entry point for AI visibility tracking, with unlimited team members, brands and competitors on every plan.
Key features:
- Citations report. Shows which domains and URLs each AI engine cites for your prompts, and which gained or lost the most since the last period.
- Competitive benchmarking. Compares your mentions, share of voice and sentiment with up to five competitors.
- GEO Audit. Checks a URL for crawlability, content readiness and the sub-queries AI engines generate; 1,000 URLs a month on Lite.
- Agent Analytics. Logs which AI agents and crawlers visit your site (Standard and above).
- Looker Studio, API and MCP. Sends data to reports or AI assistants (Standard and above).
- ChatGPT Ads tracking. Records ChatGPT ads and shopping cards in brand reports, across 60+ countries.
All plans cover ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot.
Limitations:
- Claude, AI Mode and Gemini are paid add-ons, from $9/mo per engine.
- Lite has 15 prompts and no API, MCP or Looker Studio.
Pricing: Lite $29/mo (15 prompts), Standard $189/mo (100 prompts), Premium $489/mo (400 prompts), Enterprise custom. 7-day free trial, no card.
Best for: Startups and small businesses starting with AI visibility.
15. Rankscale
Rankscale tracks 17+ engines from $20/mo, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode, DeepSeek, Mistral, Grok and Copilot, with no per-engine upsell.
Key features:
- AI Visibility Tracker. Reports visibility score, rank and sentiment per prompt, run anywhere from hourly to monthly on every plan.
- Citation analysis. Shows which sources each engine cites for your brand, with share of voice by engine.
- Competitor analysis. Detects the competitors that appear in AI answers and compares them with you.
- Query fan-outs and prompt research. Shows the searches AI engines run before answering and estimates prompt volume.
- Page audits. Scores a page’s AI readiness by factor.
- GA4 and Search Console (beta). Connects AI visibility to traffic. MCP is on all plans, the REST API from Pro+.
Limitations:
- Every prompt run on every engine uses credits (1,200 a month on Pro), so hourly runs on many engines burn through a plan quickly. Plan the prompt set before you start.
- Essentials is billed yearly only, and the API starts at Pro+.
Pricing: Essentials $20/mo (annual only), Pro $99/mo, Pro+ $229/mo, Growth $385/mo, Enterprise $780/mo. Pro has a free trial.
Best for: Analysts who want wide engine coverage and control over what runs where.
16. Scrunch
Scrunch tracks AI visibility and adds an Agent Experience Platform (AXP) that prepares your pages for AI agents. Sitecore acquired Scrunch on 3 June 2026; Scrunch still sells its own plans and is being integrated into SitecoreAI.
Key features:
- Prompt analytics. Tracks prompts by topic and entity with trends, citations, competitors and rankings, collected through browser automation and official APIs.
- Citation analysis. Shows which sources AI relies on in your category.
- Persona and geo segments. Benchmarks presence by persona, topic and country, in any language.
- AI bot observability. Shows in real time which AI bots crawl your site and what errors they hit; a GA4 connection attributes human visits from AI platforms.
- AXP. Serves AI agents a structured, JavaScript-free version of your existing pages through your CDN (Cloudflare, Akamai or Vercel); human visitors see the site as usual.
Every plan covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Meta AI.
Limitations:
- The Data API and SSO are Enterprise-only, and seats are capped (3 on Starter).
- The pricing page does not say which plans include AXP.
Pricing: Starter $300/mo ($250 billed annually, 350 prompts), Growth $500/mo ($417, 700 prompts), Enterprise custom. 7-day trial on Starter.
Best for: Technical teams and agencies that want to control how AI agents read their content.
17. HubSpot AEO
HubSpot AEO tracks prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity inside HubSpot’s marketing platform. HubSpot announced its acquisition of XFunnel in October 2025 and launched AEO as a product in beta. It works without a HubSpot subscription and is included in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise.
Key features:
- Brand visibility and share of voice. Shows the share of prompts where your brand appears and your share of all brand mentions against competitors.
- Sentiment. Scores how AI engines describe your brand on a scale from -100 to +100.
- Citations. Compares how often AI cites your domain with your competitors and lists the top cited domains.
- Prompt suggestions. Suggests prompts from your company, industry and competitors; in Marketing Hub, CRM data shapes the suggestions.
- Recommendations. Turns citation patterns into content, social and outreach tasks.
The free AEO Grader gives a one-time score for a brand across GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity and Gemini, which makes a quick baseline.
Limitations:
- Three engines only: no AI Overviews, AI Mode, Claude or Copilot.
- 25 prompts a day (50 on Marketing Hub Enterprise), and the product is still in beta.
Pricing: 28-day free trial (25 prompts, no card), then $50/mo ($45 billed annually); more prompts available.
Best for: HubSpot users who want AI visibility tracking inside the platform they already use.
Technical SEO and AI Crawler Access Tools
Crawler access is the first thing to check. Our study of AI crawler access across 4,689 websites found that 19.2% of sites show an AI-specific server block, while only 3.5% block AI bots in robots.txt. An audit that reads only robots.txt misses most blocks, because the firewall or CDN (content delivery network) makes the decision. The same study found that 58.1% of server blocks still let OpenAI’s search and user agents through, so a block on a training bot does not always mean a block on search. Our list of AI crawlers and GPTBot guide show how to check each bot.
18. Botify
Botify connects crawl data, server logs and AI visibility, so you can see whether AI bots reach your pages as well as whether AI answers mention you.
Key features:
- AI Visibility. Tracks share of voice, citations, rankings, product mentions and sentiment in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews, with prompts based on your Search Console rankings.
- LogAnalyzer. Shows from server logs how GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other bots crawl the site, and which priority pages they miss.
- SpeedWorkers. Serves search and AI bots fully rendered HTML through your CDN, so JavaScript-heavy pages are readable; visitors are still served by your own servers.
- AI Readiness. Enriches product catalog data and delivers HTML or Markdown versions of pages to AI agents.
- Botify MCP. Connects crawl, log and Search Console data to ChatGPT or Claude; nothing goes live without approval.
Botify was named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave for SEO Solutions, Q3 2025, with the highest possible score in 11 criteria.
Limitations:
- No public pricing; demo only.
- AI Visibility data refreshes weekly, and log analysis works only after you connect server or CDN logs.
Pricing: Custom, demo only.
Best for: Enterprise sites with millions of URLs and JavaScript-heavy templates.
19. Lumar
Lumar (formerly Deepcrawl) audits sites for AI discovery, AI understanding and AI inclusion, and also tracks AI answers.
Key features:
- GEO dashboard. AI optimization scores backed by more than 90 reports, grouped into AI Discovery, AI Understanding and AI Inclusion.
- AI bot access checks. Flags pages blocked to GPTBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot and other crawlers, plus nosnippet directives that keep content out of AI answers.
- JavaScript and schema reports. Finds differences between raw and rendered HTML and reports structured data coverage.
- GEO Content Evaluator. Uses a language model as a judge to score how well content answers questions, its relevance, uniqueness and E-E-A-T signals.
- AI Visibility Tracking. Tracks custom prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, AI Mode and Claude, joined to crawl data.
- MCP server and integrations. MCP since July 2026, plus Search Console, GA4, Looker Studio, Slack, log-file tools and a GraphQL API.
Lumar is SOC 2 Type 2 certified, which matters to security teams at large companies.
Limitations:
- No public pricing.
- The AI Visibility Tracking page does not list which countries it covers.
Pricing: Custom; pricing on request.
Best for: Enterprise technical SEO teams auditing AI readiness and tracking AI answers at scale.
20. Alli AI
Alli AI deploys on-page fixes across a site and serves pre-rendered HTML to more than 50 AI crawlers, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot. Sites built on React or Vue often look empty to AI bots that do not run JavaScript.
Key features:
- Snippet deployment. One JavaScript snippet in the site header, a WordPress plugin or a tag manager; no backend access or code changes needed.
- AI Crawler Enablement. Detects AI and search crawlers and serves them static HTML of your JavaScript content, including lazy-loaded sections.
- Crawler activity dashboard. Shows in real time which AI and search crawlers visit and how often.
- Bulk on-page automation. Writes and deploys titles, meta tags, schema and internal links across many pages at once, or lets you edit in a visual editor.
- Rank tracking and SEO A/B tests. Runs with Search Console and GA4 connected.
Limitations:
- Its AI visibility features cover crawler visits, not brand mentions inside AI answers.
- API access and white label start at Agency, and Business is capped at 1,250 pages.
Pricing: Business $299/mo (5 sites, +$39 per extra site), Agency $599/mo (15 sites), Enterprise custom. 10-day free trial.
Best for: Agencies and teams managing many sites or JavaScript-heavy builds.
Free AI SEO Tools
These AI SEO tools are free:
- Google Search Console, Generative AI performance report. Shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country and device; live for all sites since 31 August 2026. It does not show clicks and combines the two AI features into one number.
- Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance report. Shows how often Copilot and Bing AI answers cite your pages, with a sample of the queries behind those citations. In public preview since February 2026.
- ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini free plans. Drafts, schema and manual prompt checks.
- HubSpot AEO Grader. A free one-time score for your brand across three AI engines.
- ICODA’s AI Visibility checker. Checks how AI engines answer questions in your category and whether AI crawlers can reach your site. Here is how it scores a site.
- Ahrefs Free and Semrush’s free tier. Limited keyword and site data.
- GA4 with an AI referrer channel group. Visits and conversions from AI assistants. Our guide to tracking AI referral traffic in GA4 has the setup.
How to Measure AI Search Visibility
AI visibility needs its own KPIs. Track these five and map each one to a tool:
| KPI | What it shows | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Mention rate | Share of tracked prompts where AI names your brand | Any tracker: Profound, Peec AI, Otterly AI, Rankscale, Semrush |
| Citation share | Share of cited sources that are your pages | Ahrefs Brand Radar, Profound, Scrunch |
| Share of voice | Your mentions against competitors’ for the same prompts | Semrush, Peec AI, Conductor |
| AI impressions | How often your pages appear in Google and Bing AI features | Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools |
| AI referral sessions and conversions | Visits and sign-ups from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and other AI sources | GA4 with UTM tags and a custom channel group |
Search Console’s Generative AI reports show impressions for AI surfaces, but not clicks, as we noted in our study of Google AI citations. For visits and sign-ups, use analytics.
Visitors from AI convert well. Microsoft Clarity measured a 1.66% sign-up rate for visitors from AI platforms against 0.15% from search across 1,277 sites (November 2025). On a Web3 project, tagging AI referrers with UTM parameters in GA4 showed ChatGPT visitors converting at 46% against 29% from Google organic over 30 days.
How to Build Your AI SEO Tool Stack
Our research on Web3 sites after the Helpful Content Update recommends tracking organic results and AI citation share as two separate KPIs: a page can rank without being cited, and be cited without ranking. A stack should measure both:
- Get a baseline. Turn on the Search Console Generative AI report, set up the AI channel group in GA4, and run 10 to 20 buyer questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. This step costs nothing.
- Pick one suite. Semrush or Ahrefs for most teams, SE Ranking for tighter budgets, Conductor for enterprise.
- Add a content optimizer if content is your bottleneck: Surfer or Clearscope, or Frase on a small budget.
- Add a tracker when you need per-engine trends over time: Otterly AI or Rankscale to start, Peec AI for several markets, Profound or Scrunch at enterprise scale. Skip this step if your suite’s AI module already covers the engines your buyers use.
- Check technical access once a quarter, especially on JavaScript sites or behind Cloudflare.
- Review monthly and report organic and AI results side by side.
Suggested stacks by budget:
| Budget | Stack | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, GA4, ChatGPT or Claude free, ICODA AI Visibility checker | $0 |
| Small team | Frase Starter + Otterly AI Lite + ChatGPT Plus | about $100 |
| Growing team | Semrush Starter with AI tracking + Surfer Standard | about $300 |
| Agency | SE Ranking Growth + AI Search Toolkit + Rankscale Pro + Clearscope Essentials | about $600 |
| Enterprise | Conductor or Botify + Profound or Scrunch | custom |
GEO Tools vs. Traditional SEO Tools: Key Differences
| Dimension | Traditional SEO tools | GEO / AI visibility tools |
|---|---|---|
| What they track | Keyword rankings, organic traffic, backlinks | Brand mentions, citations and sentiment in AI answers |
| Data source | Search engine results and clickstream panels | Prompts sent to AI engines, crawler logs, Search Console AI reports |
| Success metrics | Rankings, clicks, CTR, sessions | Mention rate, citation share, share of voice |
| Platforms | Google, Bing | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, AI Overviews, AI Mode |
| Main limitation | A top-10 ranking does not show whether AI cites the page | Results vary by prompt, session and model version |
Most suites now track AI answers too: Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Surfer, Clearscope and Frase all offer AI tracking, either in their plans or as an add-on.
What Google Says About Optimizing for AI Search
Before you act on any tool’s advice, read Google’s own guide: Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search (last updated 10 July 2026). It covers AI Overviews and AI Mode, and its main message is that no separate playbook exists:
“The best practices for SEO continue to be relevant because our generative AI features on Google Search are rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems.”
The guide explains how AI features retrieve content through query fan-out, which Google defines as “a set of concurrent, related queries generated by the model to request more information and fetch additional relevant search results.” One question becomes several searches, so pages that cover a topic in depth get more chances to be retrieved. Topic-coverage features in content tools matter for that reason.
The “mythbusting” section of the guide works as a filter for tool pitches. For Google Search, you do not need:
- llms.txt or other AI files. “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in Google Search.”
- Chunked content. “There’s no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it.”
- Special schema. “Structured data isn’t required for generative AI search.” Google still recommends structured data for regular rich results.
- Rewriting content just for AI. Google lists this among the things you don’t need to do.
- Manufactured mentions. Google says seeking inauthentic mentions “isn’t as helpful as it might seem.”
On tools, Google is direct: “No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems.” Treat a tool’s score as an estimate and check its advice against Google’s documentation.
Google lists two requirements: a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and the site must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console.
To measure results, Google points to the Generative AI performance report in Search Console. These rules cover Google only: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude run their own retrieval, which is why the AI visibility trackers above exist.
What AI SEO Tools Can’t Do
| Limitation | Why it happens | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| AI answers change constantly | Semrush found that 96% of AI Overviews changed at least one cited domain over its tracking period (October 2024 data) | Compare results week over week |
| Prompt sets are small samples | A tracker checks only the prompts you give it, not everything users ask | Build prompts from customer questions and Search Console queries |
| AI drafts invent facts | Language models fill gaps with plausible numbers | Fact-check every figure; add first-hand data |
| Tools do not earn mentions | AI answers repeat what the web says about you | Pair tools with content, PR and reviews |
Which AI SEO Tools to Start With
Start with one suite that tracks AI answers (Semrush or Ahrefs), one content optimizer (Surfer, Clearscope or Frase) and the free AI reports in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Add a dedicated tracker such as Profound, Peec AI, Otterly AI or Rankscale once AI answers bring you leads and you need to see each engine separately.
A tool shows where you are missing. Getting cited takes content, digital PR and technical fixes. If you are weighing whether to do that in-house, our comparison of an AI SEO agency and DIY lays out the trade-offs, and our AI SEO services page shows how we work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Search optimization in AI, often called GEO or AI SEO, is the practice of making a brand’s pages easy for AI answer engines to find, understand and cite. It covers technical access for AI crawlers, content that answers specific questions with evidence, and mentions on third-party sites that AI engines trust. Success is measured by how often ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews mention or cite the brand.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the work of improving a website so search engines rank it higher for relevant queries: technical fixes, useful content and links from other sites. In 2026 it also includes AI search. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode are rooted in its core ranking systems, so classic SEO remains the base for AI visibility.
Yes, AI can do a large part of SEO work, but not all of it. Tools like Semrush, Surfer, Frase and ChatGPT automate keyword research, briefs, drafts, audits and reports, and tools like Koala AI or Alli AI can publish content or deploy changes. Strategy, fact-checking, original data and earning mentions on other sites still need people.
The best AI SEO tools in 2026 are Semrush and Ahrefs for all-in-one SEO with AI tracking, Surfer and Clearscope for content optimization, and Profound, Peec AI, Otterly AI and Rankscale for tracking visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews. For free tools, use Google Search Console’s Generative AI report with ChatGPT or Claude.
Yes, ChatGPT can write SEO content. Google’s guidance allows AI-generated content; its spam policies target low-value pages produced at scale, which Google calls scaled content abuse. Use ChatGPT for outlines and first drafts, then add first-hand experience, your own data and fact-checking before publishing, because language models invent statistics and sources.
SEO is evolving, not dead. Google states that SEO best practices still apply because its AI features are rooted in its core ranking systems. What changed is measurement: brands now track AI mentions and citations alongside rankings, because more answers now appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode and assistants like ChatGPT, and many people get them without clicking.
For most teams, Semrush or Ahrefs is enough to start. Both now track brand mentions in AI answers: Semrush from its Starter plan, Ahrefs through the Brand Radar add-on, covering AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. A separate tracker such as Profound, Peec AI or Rankscale is worth it when you need more engines, more prompts or more markets than your suite covers.
AI visibility trackers send a fixed set of prompts to ChatGPT and other engines on a schedule, then record whether your brand appears, its position in the answer, the sentiment and the cited sources. Results vary between runs, so trends over several weeks are more reliable than a single check. Technical tools such as Botify and Lumar also check whether AI bots can reach your pages.
No. No tool can guarantee AI citations, because AI answers change constantly: Semrush found that 96% of AI Overviews changed cited domains over its tracking period (October 2024 data). Tools show where you are missing and what to fix. Citations come from content, technical access and mentions on sites AI engines already trust.
AI SEO tools range from free plans to custom enterprise contracts. Entry plans start around $20 to $50/mo (Rankscale, Otterly AI, Frase), suites and content tools with AI tracking cost about $100 to $330/mo (Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking, Surfer), and enterprise platforms like Profound, Conductor and Botify use custom pricing. Rankability’s October 2026 review of AI visibility trackers put the median at $99/mo.
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