People Are Asking AI Now — What Does It Say About Your Brand?

A while back, I noticed that the way I look things up had completely changed.

It used to be that whenever I ran into something I didn't understand, I'd open a search engine, click through a dozen pages, and piece the answer together myself. Now? I open ChatGPT and just ask. Three seconds later, a well-organized answer is sitting in front of you — with comparisons, with recommendations.

Satisfying. Deeply satisfying.

But last month, a friend of mine who runs marketing told me something that made my heart sink.

Her company ranks top three in its industry. When users asked AI the same kinds of questions, the AI recommended three brands.

She wasn't one of them.

Not a single mention.

Frustrating, right? The website is in great shape, plenty of budget has gone into content, search rankings are climbing. But the users' entry point has changed, and AI doesn't play by those rules.

Which brings us to a word the marketing world hasn't been able to avoid these past two years: GEO.

What Is GEO?

Generational Engine Optimization? No — Generative Engine Optimization.

Put simply: SEO is about figuring out how to get search engines to rank you higher, while GEO is about figuring out how to get AI to mention you, cite you, and speak well of you when it generates answers.

They're two different things, yet at bottom the same thing. Why?

Because AI builds its answers on the content it has "read." How your brand's information is laid out across the web determines what AI makes of you.

So here's the question: what does AI actually make of you?

You have no way of knowing on your own. Ask today, and you're mentioned; ask again tomorrow, and you're gone. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google's AI Mode... every platform has its own temperament. You can't exactly hire someone to ask ten AIs in rotation every day, can you?

And so a new business was born: GEO tools.

I've picked the nine on the market in 2026 that are worth a serious look, and I'll walk you through them one by one — with the prices and the pitfalls tallied up along the way.

Ask Yourself Three Questions Before You Pay

There is no "best" tool, only "fits" or "doesn't fit." Before you pull out your wallet, ask yourself three questions.

One: do you just want to watch, or do you want to be able to act after watching? Some tools only do monitoring, and their reports are gorgeous. And then? There is no then. Others can follow the gaps they find and help you fix your content directly.

Two: how many brands and how many platforms do you need to track? A small team watching one brand and an agency watching twenty clients are two entirely different things.

Three: what's the budget? These nine tools run from $29 to $800 a month — a spread of nearly 30x. Spend the money where it counts.

Alright, let's begin.

1. Semrush: If You Want SEO and GEO in One Basket, Look Here

An old familiar face in the marketing world. Semrush started out as a search tool, and over the past couple of years it has added a full suite of AI visibility capabilities called the AI Visibility Toolkit.

You can see: how often your brand gets mentioned on platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, how it gets described, and whether the sentiment skews positive or negative — benchmarked item by item against your competitors.

Its biggest value comes down to a single word: consolidation. Search rankings and AI visibility, in one back end. Teams already using Semrush for search don't need to buy another tool and reconcile yet another set of data.

The enterprise tier goes even further. You can see which search signals are influencing AI answers, keep an eye on what your products look like inside ChatGPT Shopping and Google AI Mode, and even see how AI crawlers make their way through your website.

Pricing: the AI Visibility Toolkit starts at $99 per month; the Starter package that bundles search and AI visibility together runs $199 per month. Enterprise is negotiated separately.

There's a pit, too: it's simply too much. If all you want is a lightweight check on "does AI mention me," it will feel expensive and heavy. In that case, read on.

2. Otterly: The First Thermometer for a Small Team

Starting at $29 a month — the cheapest entry ticket of the nine.

The setup is refreshingly simple: you define a set of prompts, it asks them on your behalf every day, and it records whether your brand showed up, where it ranked, and which link got cited.

Simple, but effective. Especially its detection of linked citations inside AI answers. Say ChatGPT cites one of your articles when recommending industry guides — you can see exactly which article it was, and then produce a few more along that same line.

But run the numbers first: every plan covers only four AI platforms by default; Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Mode are all add-on purchases. As the platforms pile up, so does the cost. Decide up front which ones you actually need to watch.

3. Conductor: Built for Big Companies, Yet Surprisingly Easy to Get Into

An enterprise-grade platform with usage-based pricing and no prices posted on its website.

Here's what it handles: mentions, citations, market share, covering platforms such as Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and Grok. The most interesting part is its AI search performance report, which can infer roughly who the person asking is and what they intend. Which kinds of people, asking which kinds of questions, your brand shows up in — all crystal clear.

One more thing, rare among the other tools: it checks whether AI crawlers are properly visiting your website, and whether any technical pitfalls are getting in their way.

Small teams, think twice. You'll feel like you bought an aircraft carrier to commute to work.

4. Profound: While the Other Tools Are Guessing, This One Is Watching

Personally, this is the one with the most elegant approach.

Choosing prompts is GEO's number-one challenge. What do you think users will ask? Guess, and you'll guess wrong.

Profound doesn't guess. Its prompt-volume data comes from anonymized conversations between real users and AI — data it compliantly purchases from a consumer panel that has gone through double opt-in confirmation — and then models demand and intent back out of it. What users are actually asking, it tells you directly.

And it runs its prompts every day through the real AI interfaces consumers face, not through APIs. That detail matters: what you see is what users see.

Once a problem is found, its Agents can turn citation gaps directly into content drafts and optimization suggestions. Retail customers on the enterprise tier also get ChatGPT Shopping analytics — product visibility, descriptions, checkout links.

Starting at $99. The pit: the entry plan only lets you track 50 prompts inside ChatGPT; full prompt-volume search and ChatGPT Shopping both require the enterprise plan. That gap in capability is immediately felt.

5. XFunnel: Track the Buying Journey, Not Vanity Metrics

"Brand mentioned 200 times" sounds lovely. But if it all happens in the awareness stage — when users still know nothing at all — and you're nowhere to be found at comparison time, the mentions might as well not exist.

XFunnel's signature capability is called buying journey analysis, and it splits AI visibility open by funnel stage: are you present in awareness? In consideration? And in the conversion stage, at the moment of truth?

That's exactly where a lot of brands go wrong: a star in the awareness stage, vanished in comparison prompts. The question users ask right before placing an order — "which is better, X or Y?" — is the one that's genuinely worth money.

The pricing structure is brutally simple: one free audit, and after that only a custom-priced enterprise version. If you want self-serve subscriptions and clear price tags, this isn't for you.

One more reminder: in October 2025, XFunnel announced an acquisition agreement with HubSpot. Before you buy, confirm whether it still sells a standalone version, and how HubSpot plans to develop it going forward.

6. Scrunch: Don't Just Get Seen by AI — Serve the AI Well

The posture of the tools above is all "observe the AI."

Scrunch takes one step further: when AI crawlers and bots come to visit your website, it feeds them optimized content directly. The capability is called AXP, the Agent Experience Platform.

The thinking is ahead of its time: in the future, the one browsing your website on users' behalf may not be a person but an AI agent. The flashy pages you've prepared for human visitors may not make sense to an agent; so keep a machine-readable menu ready just for them.

The monitoring side doesn't slack either: for every tracked prompt, you get visibility, position, sentiment, and competitor performance. Outdated information, wrong product descriptions, competitor-steered narratives — all of it gets sniffed out and fixed.

It isn't cheap: the brand tier starts at $250 per month, the agency tier at $500 per month, with a 7-day trial. Also, in June 2026 Scrunch was acquired by Sitecore, and the two companies said they'll connect omnichannel content publishing with performance measurement. The product will most likely get more stable, but its direction is worth keeping an eye on.

7. Peec AI: Multiple Brands, Multiple Projects, Allocated Like Building Blocks

For agencies and teams managing multiple brands, the pain is very specific: how do you split the prompt quota? How do you split the AI models?

That's exactly what Peec AI is here for. Every prompt runs once every 24 hours on the models you select, so the data stays stable; prompts and models can be flexibly allocated across brand projects, and a single dashboard shows you everything.

Starting at $95 (brand tier), agency tier from $245, scaling up with the number of prompts and models.

The pit: the lower tiers include only three AI models. For broader coverage, pay more, or go enterprise.

8. Writesonic: See the Problem, Then Write the Problem Away

Most GEO tools stop at the report.

Writesonic doesn't. Visibility monitoring is half of it; the other half is content: content creation, website audits, optimization prioritization — a complete workflow. The higher plans add agentic workflows and an Action Center that lines up "what you should do" into a task list for you to execute.

For teams that finish a report and immediately want to get hands-on, it's smooth.

But look closely: the most valuable GEO capabilities are locked inside the higher plans. The self-serve version only watches ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews; full coverage of 10 platforms and the complete Action Center are enterprise-tier matters.

Pricing: billed annually, the brand tier starts at $79 per month and the agency tier at $200 per month, with a free trial.

9. Evertune: The Most Expensive One Manages the "Narrative"

Starting at $800 per month, no free trial — even to take a look, you have to book a demo first.

What is it selling? It isn't satisfied telling you "how many times you were mentioned"; it analyzes how AI "talks" about you: what your product narrative looks like across up to 11 AI models.

Its consumer preference analysis can show which of your selling points AI emphasizes, and which ones it ignores.

An example. Your entire company keeps talking about "simple and easy to use," yet AI goes on and on about your price and your technical specs. You say your thing; it says its own. This kind of misalignment is something ordinary visibility reports simply cannot catch — but for brand and PR teams, it's a gold mine.

Mid-size and large companies use it. Budget-tight small teams, admire it from afar.

Finally, Let Me Finish the Math for You

Nine tools, in one breath.

Only want to spend a little to test the water: Otterly, or Peec AI.

Want search and AI visibility in one pot, and already doing search: Semrush.

Want to know what users are really asking: Profound.

Afraid of not being mentioned at the moment of truth: XFunnel.

Want more than watching — you want to fix content: Writesonic. Want to go a step further and serve the AI agents that come visiting: Scrunch.

Need to explain to the boss that "AI is telling our story wrong": Evertune.

Back to the marketing lead from the beginning.

She later told me that the hardest part wasn't watching the rankings drop — it was the calm, even tone in the AI's voice when it talked about her industry, as if her company didn't exist.

I've remembered her words to this day.

The business is still here; the entrance has changed. This time, don't be late again.

In the era of search engines, you fought for rankings. In the era of AI, you fight to be remembered.

And may you, in AI's answers, be mentioned, be cited, and be described exactly right.