Which tools track brand visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini? Our experience
What we have learned tracking client brands across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini: why each engine needs its own view, and what to check when choosing a tool.
Clients rarely ask for "ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini" by accident. They have usually seen a competitor named in one and themselves absent in another, and they want a tool that shows all three at once. We agree with the instinct. The three engines behave differently enough that tracking only one gives a distorted view. Here is what we have learned and what we look for.
The engines are not interchangeable
Each engine draws on different sources, cites them differently and varies in how often it names brands. In our work it is common for a brand to be strong in one engine and weak in another, and the reasons differ. Sometimes the pages that one engine prefers do not carry the brand. Sometimes the crawler for one engine is blocked while the others get through. Without separate views, you cannot tell which.
So the first requirement is simple: the same prompts, run daily on each engine, shown side by side.
What we check when choosing a tool
- Are all three included in the plan? Many tiers include a subset, with the rest sold as add-ons or kept for Enterprise.
- How is usage counted? If limits apply per engine, tracking three engines triples consumption. Credit-based plans are the clearest example.
- Is it the real experience or an API? Live-search monitoring reflects what a user sees. API results can differ.
- Can we compare engines in one view?
- Can we see the sources each engine cites?
Those last two matter because visibility numbers alone do not tell us what to fix.
What we run
Our client programs run on Promptwatch. ChatGPT (Search), Perplexity and Gemini are monitored through their live-search experiences, along with Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Copilot and Meta AI. Every paid plan includes all active models, so adding an engine does not change the bill. Claude, DeepSeek and Mistral are tracked via API, and we tell clients that distinction plainly.
The heatmap compares any two dimensions. Brands against models is the one we use in client reviews: a single picture shows where the client leads and where they trail. Per-engine citation analytics then shows the sources behind each result. If Perplexity cites a review site that never mentions the client, that is the work. If Gemini results are thin, we look at crawler logs for Google-Agent and other bot activity.
Crawlers differ by engine too
OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User serve ChatGPT, PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User serve Perplexity, and Google-Agent and GoogleOther relate to Google. Agent Analytics logs these with IP verification, so spoofed user agents drop out, and shows a citation rate per page. An engine that never fetches your pricing page will never cite it.
Attribution
Visitor analytics in Promptwatch tags visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and others, with conversions. Even when volumes are small, seeing which engine sends visits helps us decide where to put effort.
Other options
AthenaHQ covers many models but meters usage in credits per response. Scrunch AI's entry plan covers four engines and does not list Gemini. Profound's higher tiers cover more engines. Ahrefs and Semrush add AI tracking to their suites. Otterly.AI includes some engines at base and sells others as add-ons, and Peec AI is a simple tracker whose limits we would check before buying. For client work we want all three engines included, sources visible and traffic attributed.
Honest limits
Visibility varies by run, market and user. No tool can promise a mention in any engine. We review trends on a fixed prompt set and change a few pages at a time so we can see what worked.