Understanding how your brand shows up and adapts within new technologies is essential for the future of your business. AI mentions (when generative AI models refer to a brand in their responses) are quickly becoming a hot topic in digital marketing. Yet, not all companies are using the right tools for AI mention tracking. 

According to a recent KPMG study, 66% of the global population uses AI regularly and relies on AI output without verifying accuracy. That means your brand could already be appearing in AI conversations without you even knowing it.

Here’s what you need to know about AI mention tracking and the best tools leading the market in 2026.

What Is AI Mention Tracking?

Every time an AI model such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini mentions your brand or company in a response, it counts as an AI mention. Monitoring and analyzing how these IA mentions can impact your brand is known as AI mention tracking.

First, it’s important to understand that an AI mention can be positive, neutral, or negative. While you can’t control exactly what an AI system says about your brand, the quality and tone of those mentions depend largely on factors such as:

• Your brand’s online presence: reputation, visibility, and the amount of reliable data available.

• The AI model’s understanding of your brand’s products or services, as well as the user’s intent in the query.

• Your brand’s reputation on external platforms, including social media and forums such as Reddit. 

• Your website’s structure and SEO strategy, which influence how AI systems interpret your content. 

• Third-party coverage, including articles and online publications mentioning your brand. 

Next, it’s helpful to understand the difference between two related concepts: AI mentions and AI citations.

AI Mentions vs. AI Citations

Getting mentioned in an AI-generated response is generally a positive sign, although the context matters. There are two main types of mentions:

• AI mention: when the AI model writes or says your brand’s name as part of its response to a user’s query. 

• AI citation: when the AI model not only mentions your brand but also includes a link to your website, giving users the option to visit your page directly.

Both AI mentions and AI citations are valuable metrics. They reveal how the brand is perceived by AI models, how the brand visibility can improve, as well as data to optimize GEO and SEO strategies. 

Maintaining a clear and global view of your brand’s presence within the AI ecosystem is what will allow you to develop constructive strategies. It’s also a way to quickly detect if your brand isn’t being represented the way you intend—and to address it in time through optimization strategies.

How to Track AI Mentions


Startups and companies developing frontier AI models, such as OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic, don’t share private user data or conversations with third parties. Instead, companies interested in AI mention tracking must rely on specialized tools.

To track mentions of your brand in AI systems, most tools include features such as AI visibility tracking, competitor analyses, AI mention monitoring, and brand comparison across different AI models. Together, these capabilities help you understand how and where your brand appears in AI-generated content.

Top tools for AI mention tracking in the market

There are different platforms with different systems for tracking mentions related to AI. These are the most relevant tools for AI mention tracking in 2025 and a brief description of their competitive advantages:

1. Bear AI 

Bear AI was designed with AI models in mind. Its AI mention tracking tool monitors and analyzes your brand’s AI citations across multiple frontier AI models and helps you find gaps and opportunities, also considering your competitors’ performance. 

Bear AI offers content generation as well to help you boost visibility and suggests topics and strategies tailored for your brand’s performance in the AI ecosystem. 

2. Surfer's AI Tracker

The popular SEO tool SurferSEO launched an AI Tracker a few months ago as a paid add-on to its platform. This tool monitors AI-generated responses from several AI systems and builds buyer-intent prompts to help optimize marketing strategies.

​3. Otterly.AI 

This platform studies mentions of your brand across all the main AI models, such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot. It monitors prompts, AI mentions and citations, and provides insights into your brand’s reputation and competitive positioning through a ranking system. It also offers reporting and exporting features for deeper analyses.

4. Peec AI

Peec AI is another platform that analyzes your brand visibility across frontier AI models and helps you identify relevant prompts and competitive opportunities to optimize your AI visibility. This tool includes user-friendly features such as prompt customization.

5. Profound AI

This new platform has also been developed to offer AI mention tracking services and track AI visibility. Profound AI offers your brand analyses across several AI models, including Grok and Meta AI. It provides graphics and analysis so that you can develop future strategies.

These platforms represent some of the most specialized solutions available for understanding and improving your brand’s presence within AI ecosystems. The choice of the best option will depend on your needs and your team’s current capabilities.

AI Mention Tracking Leads To Future-Optimized Strategies

Tracking AI mentions is one of the most effective ways to understand whether your brand is part of the new AI ecosystem, how relevant it is, and how AI models perceive your authority. 

With the help of an AI mention tracking tool, you’ll be able to quickly detect false claims or negative information, identify visibility and growth opportunities, and optimize SEO, GEO, and other marketing strategies that better adjust to your business goals.

Since most brands aren’t yet monitoring their AI mentions, adopting these tools early can give you a significant competitive advantage over companies offering similar products or services.

FAQ

1. What counts as an AI mention?

Every time an AI system, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini, mentions your brand in an interaction with a user, it counts as an AI mention. It can be just an AI mention, which is when the AI model writes or says the brand name, or an AI citation, when the chatbot provides a link to your brand’s website.

2. How can I know if my brand has been mentioned on AI search?

While AI companies that build chatbots don’t share private conversations or internal data, there are specialized tools that provide AI mention tracking services. Platforms such as Bear AI can help analyze your brand’s reputation across different AI systems, run simulated prompts, and compare your business performance with competitors to help you boost AI visibility and brand authority. 

3. Are AI mention tracking tools free?

Most AI mention tracking tools are paid, as they rely on advanced data analysis and integrations. There are certain free options, such as Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which could show you if your traffic acquisition comes from certain AI models, but the data is minimal. Paid tools usually offer more relevant and detailed data, as well as analysis that can help your brand increase its presence and credibility in AI systems.

4. Are legacy SEO metrics obsolete?

No. AI models still feature brands that have implemented good SEO strategies, and these are still relevant when it comes to building authority and content structure. The best approach at the moment to boost AI visibility is to include GEO metrics and implement AI mention tracking tools.