Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: Local Search Tracking and GEO (2026)
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit vs Promptwatch for local GEO tracking: location targeting, engines, refresh, crawler data and price side by side, with a quick verdict.
Quick verdict
For local GEO tracking, Promptwatch is the stronger tool. It runs daily monitors by city, state or exact coordinates, covers more engines per monitor, and shows what happens after the answer: which AI crawlers fetched the page and whether AI-referred visitors converted.
The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit can tie its weekly Brand Performance report to a city, and that's useful. Its daily Prompt Tracking takes a location per campaign, but Semrush doesn't document city targeting there, and each campaign runs one engine. For a team already on Semrush that mostly cares about Google Maps and wants a light AI check, Semrush can be enough. For anyone reporting local AI visibility as its own channel, Promptwatch wins.
Semrush facts were read on semrush.com (llms.txt, knowledge base, pricing pages) on 5 November 2026. Promptwatch facts come from its llms.txt and ai-agent-instructions, updated 3 November 2026.
Side by side
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Promptwatch | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $99/mo ("$99/mo per domain, billed annually" on the pricing page) | Essential $95/mo; city tracking from Business $579/mo or agency Kick-off $199/mo |
| Free trial | None | 7 days on monthly billing, all six self-serve plans |
| City-level AI report | Brand Performance, one location chosen at setup from 68,000+ options including cities; $99/mo per extra location | City and state monitors on Business, every agency plan, Enterprise |
| Daily prompt tracking location | Per campaign; 220+ countries and territories; city targeting not documented | Per monitor; country on every paid plan, state and city from Business |
| Exact coordinates | Not described | 20 m to 5 km radius for ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode (Business, Agency Scale, Enterprise) |
| Engines in prompt tracking | ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode, Gemini; one per campaign | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Alexa, Meta AI (real UI), plus API models |
| Prompts included | 25; 50 more for $60/mo | 50 on Essential, 150 on Professional, 350 on Business; unlimited on agency plans |
| Refresh | Prompt Tracking daily; Brand Performance weekly | Daily; every 12, 6 or 1 hours on Business |
| Share of voice in prompt tracking | Not available | Yes |
| AI crawler data | Site Audit flags AI crawler blockers, up to 100 pages | IP-verified crawler logs, crawl-to-citation path (from Professional) |
| AI-referred visits and conversions | Not described | Visitor analytics on every paid plan |
| Google Maps rank tracking | In the separate Local Toolkit (Map Rank Tracker geo-grid) | No |
| Extra users | $99 each | Unlimited seats on every paid plan |
Location targeting in detail
Semrush splits location across two reports, and they don't match. Brand Performance gives you the fine-grained choice: one location and language picked at setup, from a list Semrush describes as "ranging from countries, states, regions, and cities, to global coverage". The trade-off is cadence. It updates weekly, and every additional location is another $99 a month.
Prompt Tracking is the daily report, the one you'd normally build a local program on. You enter a location and language per campaign, and the knowledge base lists coverage as 220+ countries and territories. It doesn't say whether a campaign can be set to a city, so we can't tell you it can. Results are desktop only. Topic volume, which helps you size a prompt, is available in 15 countries.
Promptwatch puts location on the monitor. Country is available on every paid plan. State and city start on Business and are on every agency plan, and the State field is US only. Coordinate targeting goes further: you search a place or drop a pin, pick a radius from 20 m to 5 km, and ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode answer as if asked from that spot. Other models on the monitor use its country, state or city. The pin and the monitor's language and location are fixed once created, so plan before you build. Our comparison of coordinate and city-level tracking helps you pick a level.
Engines and the counting problem
Semrush's Prompt Tracking runs ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode or Gemini, one per campaign. Semrush's blog notes that tracking the same prompts on two engines counts them twice against your limit, and that Claude and Perplexity aren't supported in Prompt Tracking. Put the 25 included prompts on three engines in two cities and you'd need 150 prompt slots, assuming each campaign draws on the same allowance.
On Promptwatch, a monitor runs its prompts across the models you choose, so one city monitor covers several engines. Every paid plan can track any of the supported engines.
What happens after the answer
This is where the two products diverge most. Semrush's Sources report breaks down where answers come from, with per-page recommendations, and Site Audit checks whether AI crawlers are blocked. The pages we read describe nothing about AI crawler logs or AI-referred conversions.
Promptwatch's Agent Analytics logs AI crawler visits verified against each operator's IP ranges, with a citation rate per page, so you can tell an access problem from a content problem on a location page. Visitor analytics counts AI-referred visits and conversions through a script, a GTM template or the WordPress plugin. ChatGPT stopped sending a referrer on 8 October 2026, and an "Include ChatGPT UTM referrers" toggle counts utm_source=chatgpt.com visits as ChatGPT again. On Business, the Content Agent can write and publish pages for the gaps it finds.
Where Semrush has the edge
Google Maps. Semrush's Local Toolkit (Local Base $30, Local Pro $60 per location per month, labelled billed annually) includes a Map Rank Tracker geo-grid and the GBP AI Agent for profile posts, review replies and photos. Promptwatch does neither. If your team reports Maps rankings every week, Semrush is already doing that job, and Promptwatch would sit next to it rather than replace it. Prompt Research's volume, difficulty and intent data is also handy for choosing prompts, wherever you end up tracking them. For a broader view of the method question, see city tracking vs geo-grids vs coordinate targeting.
Who should pick which
Pick Semrush if you're one location, already on Semrush, Maps rankings are the main report, and a weekly AI read on your city is enough. Brand Performance pointed at that city plus the Local Toolkit covers it.
Pick Promptwatch if you need daily AI tracking for several cities or storefronts, more than one engine per location, or proof that AI answers bring visitors who convert. A brand would start on Business. Agencies get city tracking on Kick-off and coordinates on Scale.
Pick both if Maps and AI answers are separate lines in your report. They barely overlap.
Bottom line
Semrush gives you a weekly city snapshot inside a suite you may already pay for. Promptwatch gives you daily local AI data with the crawler and conversion evidence to act on it, which is why it's our pick for local GEO tracking. Start the 7-day free trial on monthly billing on Business and run one of your cities in both tools for a week.