AI-powered search is transforming the way people discover information. Platforms like ChatGPT and Google Gemini now generate direct answers instead of showing only traditional search results.
Note: This is only about LLM tracking. AI Overviews (AIO/SGE) are detailed in the dedicated article.
How It Works
AI Search Tracking allows you to see:
AI Search Presence: the percentage of Search Volume where the site is mentioned calculated from the total search volume of keywords in this group
that trigger AI to mention brands.AI Search Cited: the percentage of Search Volume where the site is cited.
Citation Rank: the position among AI-generated citations (#1, #2, etc.).
Context Analysis & Sentiment: whether the brand is mentioned positively, negatively, or neutrally.
AI Response Examples: actual snippets of how AI presents the site's content.
Why this matters:
Mentions reflect how often the model recommends your brand within the narrative.
Citations reveal the evidence the model leans on (your pages and credible third-party sources).
Viewed together at the topic (keyword) level, they explain why you appear (or not), and where to improve content depth, topical authority, and citations.
Why Keywords (Not Prompts)
Demand & prioritization: Keywords carry search volume; prompts don’t. That lets you size opportunities, prioritize by impact, and tie AI visibility to outcomes (traffic, pipeline, revenue).
Topic coverage: Each keyword naturally represents a cluster of prompt variations (initial question and variations). We evaluate the topic’s natural answer, not a single conversation turn—so you’re not blind to those.
Unified reporting: One keyword set powers Google, AIO, and AI Search—enabling apples-to-apples benchmarking and competitive analysis across channels.
How SEOmonitor queries AI models
For each keyword in your campaign, we use the exact tracked keyword and query it in ChatGPT or Gemini in a neutral, fresh session (no user history or memory), localized to your campaign.
If the model asks for clarification, we add a short, neutral company context so it can complete the answer consistently.
This mirrors how LLMs actually gather evidence—via keyword-like lookups weighing topical authority and citations—while keeping tracking standardized and comparable across brands.
One-time Snapshot vs. Ongoing Tracking
AI Search Snapshots are free:
One-time processing of all campaign keywords.
Includes your AI presence, citations, and basic context.
Limitations: no history, no exports, no automatic updates.
AI Search Tracking comes as a paid add-on:
Weekly automatic updates.
Historical trend charts and export options.
Continuous monitoring of your and competitors presence.
Integration with your existing keyword tracking.
Getting Started
1. Activate AI Search Tracking
Go to Campaign Settings → Add-ons.
Toggle AI Search Tracking on.
Choose a source: ChatGPT or Gemini AI Mode (only one per campaign).
2. Run your first snapshot
Instantly see your presence, citation ranks, and context.
Review your brand terms: SEOmonitor will suggest detected terms, and you can confirm, add, or remove them before the snapshot runs.
Note: Any brand term changes made later (in Campaign Settings) will take effect after the next data refresh (up to 24 hours).
3. Enable ongoing tracking
Turn on weekly tracking for historical trends, exports, and continuous monitoring.
When you first activate AI Search or add new keywords, these go through a separate async processing. During this time, you’ll see progress indicators until the fresh data becomes available.
Note: Processing time varies depending on your keyword volume and the overall queue. Large campaigns and busy periods may take longer to complete.
Some keywords may be automatically excluded if they can’t return meaningful results (e.g., no AI citations or no search results). Excluded keywords are flagged accordingly in your list and do not count toward billing.
Graphs & Trends
Your AI Search visibility updates are tied to a weekly schedule. This ensures consistent and reliable reporting.
You’ll see one data point per crawl on your charts.
If you select dates between crawls, no data will appear — this is expected.
Trends and percentages are calculated between actual crawl points; they are not estimates.
New keywords added between crawls will appear on the previous crawl date once processed.
Competitive Analysis & Reporting
Use the Competitors panel to compare how your performance compares against competitors for Google, AI Overview, and AI Search.
What each column means
Google – Competitor organic visibility and ranks for the same keyword set. See more about this here.
AI Overview –
Mentioned: % of total search volume where the brand is named inside the AIO text.
Cited: % of total search volume where the brand/site is linked in the AIO citations.
Deltas show change since last crawl.
AI Search –
Mentioned: % of total search volume where the brand is named in the LLM answer.
Cited: % of total search volume where the brand/site is included among the LLM’s sources.
Deltas show week-over-week change.
Why “by search volume”? All rates are weighted by the keyword’s demand so wins on high-volume topics count more than tail terms.
Reading the trends & pies
In Performance Trend, switch the metric (dropdown) to chart AI Search Mentioned, AI Search Cited, AIO Mentioned, or AIO Cited over time for each competitor line.
In Share of Voice, use the pies to show the current distribution for the chosen metric (e.g., AIO SoV vs. Google SoC). This is ideal for executive reporting.
How Share of Voice is derived
AI SoV compares selected competitors only.
Scoring is topic-level: +1.0 for a mention, +0.5 for a citation; multiplied by search volume, summed across the competitor set.
Your SoV slice is your share of the total score among those competitors.
Keyword-level drill-down
From the keywords table:
Toggle the AI Overview / AI Search tabs to see, per keyword and per competitor, whether that brand was mentioned and/or cited.
Use filters to isolate:
Topics where you’re absent but a competitor is mentioned/cited (gap analysis)
Topics where sentiment is negative for your brand (risk watch)
Seasonal terms now triggering AI modules where competitors have momentum
Billing & availability
Pricing: Per campaign, per 1,000 keywords (rounded up). The latest information on prices is always available on the dedicated page.
Note: Free snapshots reserve tracking slots for the entire billing cycle; archiving campaigns or keywords will not release them early.
Trials: AI Search is enabled for the first campaign (up to 10,000 keywords).
Compatibility: Available on Pro plans and above.
Not available: On grandfathered or Content Writer–only plans (upgrade required).
Why weekly crawls:
A weekly cadence reduces noise from one-off AI generations and provides a stable trend signal for reporting and competitive comparisons.
Limitations
One AI source per campaign: ChatGPT or Gemini, not both. Switching resets the data (and there is no backfill possible). If you need both sources, you need to set up separate campaigns.
Draft campaigns: AI Search is not supported on these free campaigns, since processing is more expensive than the standard Google tracking. Drafts must be converted to tracked campaigns to see AI Search data.
Snapshots: require a (regular, Google) tracking subscription and do not include exports or history.
Other modules: AI Search will be included at a later time in the Research tools, and also in the Forecast module, following Organic Traffic enhancements.