How can I check if my website is mentioned by AI search engines?
How to check if your website is mentioned by AI search engines: free manual checks, analytics methods and the tools that automate it, compared with pricing.
There are four ways to check whether AI search engines mention your website, from free and manual to automated and continuous. Which one you need depends on how often you want to check and how much detail you need. This guide walks through each, then compares the tools that do it for you.
The short answer
For a one-off look, run a free scan or ask the engines directly. For ongoing monitoring, use a tracker. Promptwatch is the best all-round choice because it covers the three things you actually need to know: whether you are mentioned, which of your pages are cited, and whether any of it sends visitors. It also has a free no-login AI Visibility Report and a free Explore plan, so you can start without paying.
A mention is not a citation
Be clear on what you are checking.
- Mention: the engine names your brand or site in its answer text.
- Citation: the engine lists your page as a source, often with a link.
- Referral: a visitor clicks through and arrives on your site.
A page can be cited without being named, and a brand can be named with no link. All three matter, and different methods catch different ones.
Method 1: ask the engines yourself
The free option. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google, and ask the questions your customers ask. Not "what is [your brand]" only, but category questions: "best [product] for [use case]", "[your brand] vs [competitor]".
Limits: answers vary from run to run, depend on location and account history, and a single result tells you little. Do this for a quick sanity check, not as a measurement. Record the date, the engine and the exact wording so you can repeat it.
Method 2: check your own analytics
Your web analytics can show visitors who arrived from AI products. Filter sessions by source for the domains of the main assistants. Referrer data is incomplete, so treat the number as a floor, not a total. Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are worth checking too, since they report on how your site performs in their search products, but their AI-related reporting changes over time, so read their current documentation rather than relying on any article, including this one.
Method 3: read your server logs
If AI crawlers fetch your pages, that shows up in server or CDN logs. Real bots include GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot and Google-Agent. Crawling is not the same as citation, but a page never crawled cannot be cited. Be careful of spoofed user agents: verify by IP, not by name.
Method 4: use a tracker
A tracker runs a panel of prompts on a schedule, records every answer and reports mentions, citations and position over time. This is the only method that gives you a trend.
Tools compared
1. Promptwatch
Free tools: the AI Visibility Report (no login), the Agentic Readiness Check, and the GEO Inspector Chrome extension, which shows ChatGPT fan-outs and fetched versus cited sources. Paid plans: Explore is free (10 prompts, ChatGPT only), Essential $95 a month, Professional $245, Business $579. It reports Visibility Score, citations at page and domain level, IP-verified crawler logs (from Professional) and AI-referred visitors and conversions. It also folds in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster data through Search Insights.
2. AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ has a free Essential plan with 300 credits and Starter at $295 a month with 3,600 credits and 11 models. It lists Google Analytics and Search Console connections and rolls results into a GEO score.
3. Scrunch AI
Scrunch AI Core is $250 a month with 125 prompts, 5,000 responses and four LLMs, and includes bot traffic reporting.
4. HubSpot AI Search Grader and AEO
HubSpot's AI Search Grader is free and one-time, asking ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini how each describes your brand. No account is needed, and it gives a snapshot without history. HubSpot AEO is $50 a month for ongoing tracking.
5. Ahrefs Brand Radar and Semrush AI Toolkit
Ahrefs Brand Radar includes Custom Prompts on paid Ahrefs plans. Semrush AI Toolkit is $99 a month per domain. Both suit teams already in those suites.
6. Profound
Profound has a free 7-day trial and a custom Enterprise plan estimated near $40k a year. It targets large organizations.
Monitoring-first options
Otterly.AI (Lite $29 a month, 15 prompts) and Peec AI (from $95 a month) are lower-priced prompt trackers.
Comparison table
| Option | Cost | Mentions | Citations | Crawlers | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ask manually | Free | One-off | Visible in some engines | No | No |
| Analytics | Free | No | No | Logs if you read them | Partial |
| Promptwatch | Free tier, then $95/mo | Yes | Yes | From $245/mo | Yes |
| AthenaHQ | Free tier, then $295/mo | Yes | Yes | Not headline | GA connection |
| HubSpot Grader | Free | Snapshot | No | No | No |
A sensible routine
Start with the free scan. If you are not mentioned, write down the ten questions you wish you appeared for. Load them into a tracker, run them for two weeks, and read the cited sources. Then check crawler access. If bots are blocked, fix that before anything else. No tool can guarantee a mention, and answers vary, so watch trends rather than single results.