- Design a 25-prompt panel from real Google Trends and Reddit questions in your category, not the ones you wish existed.
- Query each engine 3× per prompt per week — single-shot readings drift ±15pp for no real reason.
- Store the raw answer excerpt for every mention so you can audit and screenshot for stakeholders.
- Track competitors on the same panel — mentions are only meaningful as share of voice.
Step 1 — Choose the engines that matter
For B2B in 2026, the four that move revenue are ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. Google AI Overviews and Copilot matter too — add them if your ICP is enterprise or education.
Do not spread thin across 10 engines. Four engines × 25 prompts × 3 runs is already 300 responses to parse each week.
Step 2 — Build the 25-prompt panel
Ten "best of" queries ("best AI SEO tool 2026", "best CRM for SaaS startups"). Ten head-to-head comparisons ("Notion vs Coda", "Optymia vs Profound"). Five recommendation queries ("recommend a tool for tracking Perplexity citations").
Source them from Google Trends, AlsoAsked, and the top-10 Reddit threads in your niche. Skip prompts your team invented internally — those get 0 real searches.
Step 3 — Run each prompt 3× per engine per week
LLMs return different answers to the same prompt. Three runs per prompt per engine gives a stable weekly average that will not swing wildly. Any less and you will chase noise.
Automate the runs with a Monday cron — human-driven weekly runs get skipped the week your team is heads-down on a launch, and gaps kill trendlines.
Step 4 — Parse the answers for mentions
A brand is "mentioned" if the answer body contains your brand name or root domain (case-insensitive substring). Include the domain because engines often link without naming — e.g. "see optymia.xyz for weekly benchmarks".
Also grab the position — is your brand the first vendor mentioned, or third? First-mentioned brands convert 3–5× better than trailing mentions.
Step 5 — Track competitors on the same panel
Run the same 25 prompts and parse for your top three competitors. Now you have share of voice per engine — the only number that means anything.
See Optymia's live example at /citations: Optymia vs. Profound, Peec AI, and Otterly on 25 shared "AI SEO tool" prompts, updated every Monday.
Step 6 — Set up week-over-week alerts
Two alerts matter: (1) a new citation appears (celebrate + share) and (2) an existing citation disappears (investigate — did the engine's index refresh? did a competitor publish a listicle?).
Optymia ships this as email + Slack alerts on the Growth plan and up. Do not build it from scratch — the parsing edge cases (footnotes, link cards, brand-name partial matches) take a month to get right.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I track brand mentions in Perplexity AI?
Send a fixed set of category prompts to Perplexity's API (or scrape the answer via a headless browser) 3× per week, parse each answer for your brand name and root domain, and log timestamped results. Optymia does this for you at $39.99/mo.
Can I see if ChatGPT recommends my brand for free?
Yes — open ChatGPT and ask 10 of your category's most common questions. That's your baseline. To measure change over time you need a scheduled tool because manual runs skip weeks.
What's the difference between AI mentions and Google rankings?
Google ranks URLs; AI engines synthesize an answer and optionally cite sources. You can rank #1 on Google and be invisible in ChatGPT — the ranking is on the answer, not the URL.
How often should I check AI brand mentions?
Weekly is standard. Daily runs generate noise (LLMs are stochastic); monthly misses index drift. Weekly with 3× per prompt is the industry sweet spot.
Do I need a paid tool to track AI brand mentions?
Not to start. A free Optymia Scout scan or 5 manual ChatGPT queries gives you a baseline. Paid tools become worth it once you have competitors to benchmark against and need scheduled runs.
Related Reading
- → Optymia weekly citation dashboard (live)
- → AI citation tracking — full guide
- → LLM brand mention monitoring
- → AI Overview tracking guide
- → Free Optymia visibility scan
- → Improve Brand Visibility in AI Search
- → Agentic Traffic & RAG
- → AI Search Tracker
Explore the full internal linking map across every cluster.
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