Those AI visibility tools just count mentions

These trackers send questions, grab the answers, and pull out brand names. Write down whether you were named, only linked, or named with a wrong fact, instead of trusting one score.

Updated 7 October 2026

A vendor emails to offer you brand tracking across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini, with daily share of voice and competitor charts.

Underneath the dashboard is a simple loop. It stores the names in a table and draws a line. What you are buying is packaging and a schedule, not access to how any of those tools rank things.

That can be worth paying for, as long as you know what a mention counter misses.

What they actually do

A list of questions (“best running watch under €300”)
Send each one to one or more tools
Scan the reply for your brand name (or a URL)
Sometimes a second model grades “was brand X mentioned?”
A table: date, tool, question, mentions
A chart over time

Paid plans add more questions, more tools, and alerts. They rarely tell you whether a mention was a recommendation, a source link, or a fact that is wrong.

A mention counter records “Brand X: 1 mention,” which is a string match in the reply. A log you keep yourself records three outcomes in the same row: named, linked only, and wrong facts.

Write down three things, not one score

Illustrative example, not a logged test. Northloop is a fictional brand on this site. Take one realistic question, a Northloop-style trail watch with contactless pay under €300, and run it in more than one tool. Ask it a few times the same day. Note the tool, whether the plan is free or paid, and where you asked from. Two replies can disagree because one of them was asked from somewhere else.

For each answer, note:

What happened	Meaning
Named	Your brand, shop, place, or product is one of the options
Linked only	Your page is a source, but the thing you sell is not named. A citation is a link used to build the answer. Being cited is not the same as being named.
Wrong facts	You appear, but the price, shop, stock, availability, or spec is off

Your page can be used as a source without you being recommended explains why the first two matter separately. Keep named, linked-only, and wrong-facts as separate columns instead of one score.

The replies do not even look the same. A ChatGPT-style answer names a few brands, and links are optional. A Perplexity-style answer names brands and attaches a source link to each, which is closest to the setup in the GEO paper. An overview-style answer weaves a paragraph and puts guide links underneath, so being cited inside the write-up is a different result from being named. “We rank #2 in AI” means nothing until you say which tool, which question, and whether that #2 was a name, a link, or a passing mention.

Keep one row per question and tool. Record the date, the tool, the question, who was named, who was only linked, and what was wrong. If the interface shows a model name or a “searching…” step, note that as well. You do not need a hundred questions on day one. You need columns that stay the same, so ChatGPT and Perplexity can be compared without “linked” quietly turning into “recommended.”

Four things the chart gets wrong

Named versus linked. Your guide can count as a mention while your shop never makes the list of options, and those are different outcomes.

The wrong question. Being named for “best luxury dive watch” does not help you if you sell a €40 water bottle. The spreadsheet will not notice unless a person reads the row.

Wrong facts. Illustrative example, not a logged test. The log says “Northloop Trail Watch — mentioned,” while the answer quoted €199 at a shop that has not stocked the line in a year. The page says €300. Mentions went up and the facts went wrong. See wrong price, wrong shop.

Earned versus invented. A reported case, ChatGPT recommended a deodorant that didn’t exist, shows a fake brand named Morrowen. It had no reviews and no independent sources behind it, and a name scan still counts it.

Build or buy — same columns either way

You can run this in a spreadsheet or a short script. What the vendor sells you is time and consistency, rather than any insight into how ChatGPT ranks.

Three questions to ask before you pay. Does “mention” mean named, linked, or any appearance of your brand name? Can you export the raw answers and check ten of them by hand? And do they sell one score across tools that do not share a search system?

That log will not prove a tactic works, and it will not replace fixing crawler access, understanding what an answer actually looked up, or correcting your product facts. What it will do is settle arguments that started from a single screenshot.

Treat a tracker as a logbook, and remember that somebody still has to read the rows.