How to Track AI Visibility for Free

Why measure first?

The only way to know you improved something is to know how it was before. “I think ChatGPT recommends us” is a guess. “Mentioned in 4 of 25 questions, average position 3” is data.

Even Google tells you not to rely on tools here: no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.¹ So we do two things: we ask the assistants ourselves, and we read the data the platforms themselves provide.

1. Build the question set (15 min)

Write the 15–25 questions your customers ask before buying, in their own words. Mix four types:

Type	Example
Category	“What’s the best accounting software for small businesses in London?”
Comparison	“Is X or Y better?”, “What’s an alternative to X?”
Problem	“What’s the easiest way to send an invoice?”
Brand	“Is [your brand] reliable?”, “[your brand] reviews”

2. Ask in five assistants (30 min)

Sign in to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot (free accounts are fine). Ask every question in every assistant in a fresh chat and log it:

question	assistant	mentioned?	position	competitors named	cited sources
best accounting software	ChatGPT	no	–	A, B, C	comparison site, forum

3. Calculate three numbers (15 min)

• Visibility rate = rows where your brand is mentioned ÷ all rows
• Average position = where your brand appears when it is mentioned
• Citation share = rows where your own site is cited ÷ all rows

These three numbers are your baseline. Save them with the date. Paid tools often call the first one an “AI visibility score” or “share of voice”; it is the same idea, and you can calculate it yourself.

To see the visits AI assistants send you, add analytics: How to see ChatGPT traffic in Google Analytics 4.

4. Add the platforms’ own data

Manual measurement alone isn’t enough. You now have two official sources:

Google Search Console: Generative AI performance report. It shows your impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country and device. It has been available for all sites since August 31, 2026.² The report shows impressions only; there are no clicks, CTR or position.³

Bing Webmaster Tools: AI Performance. It shows how often your site is cited in Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries, which pages are cited, and the “grounding” queries.⁴ Grounding queries are the key phrases the AI used when retrieving content, not the user’s question itself.⁵ Views like Citation Share and Compare were added in June 2026.⁶

Bonus: Microsoft Clarity tracks visits from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity as a separate channel.⁷

5. Repeat

Every 2–4 weeks, run the same question set the same way. Compare the three numbers with your baseline. If nothing moved, check which pages aren’t indexed and which questions are still open. The decision always comes from the table.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, July 10, 2026. ↩

2. Google Search Central Blog, Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, June 3, 2026. ↩

3. Search Console Help, Generative AI performance report (Search). ↩

4. Bing Webmaster Blog, Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools, February 10, 2026. ↩

5. Microsoft Bing, AI Performance — Bing Webmaster Tools Help. ↩

6. Bing Search Blog, New AI Visibility Insights in Bing Webmaster Tools, June 16, 2026. ↩

7. Microsoft Clarity, AIPlatform and PaidAIPlatform channel groups, December 2025. ↩