Is anyone else tracking how visible their brand is in AI responses? Just started and the data is eye-opening

Position is HUGE. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I’ve been tracking brand visibility for clients for 18 months now. Here’s what the data shows:

The position effect is real:

• First mention: ~45% of users investigate that brand further
• Second mention: ~25% investigate
• Third or later: ~10% investigate

Think about your own behavior. When ChatGPT lists five brands, how many do you actually look up? Usually just the first one or two.

How I actually measure visibility:

I use Am I Cited because it gives you a visibility score that factors in both frequency AND position. Just knowing “we were mentioned” isn’t enough - you need to know WHERE you were mentioned.

The dashboard shows position distribution over time. One client discovered they were mentioned in 80% of relevant prompts but almost never first. That insight completely changed their strategy.

Been dealing with this exact problem for 6 months. Here’s what actually moved our position:

What changed our visibility:

1. Brand relationship mapping - We used monitoring tools to see which brands were frequently mentioned alongside ours. Discovered AI was categorizing us with budget brands when we’re actually premium. Major perception issue.

2. Content restructuring - Our product pages were all features and specs. We rewrote them as “why this solves X problem” with clear benefit statements. AI started summarizing us more favorably.

3. Third-party validation - Got featured in several industry roundup articles that explicitly positioned us as a premium option. Within weeks, AI responses started reflecting that positioning.

The metric I watch most: Position trend over time. We went from average position 3.2 to 1.8 over four months.

The brand co-occurrence data was the key insight though. If AI thinks you belong in a different category than you intend, your visibility will always suffer.

Traditional SEO person here, still getting my head around this.

The mental shift that helped me:

In Google, you’re optimizing to BE the answer. In AI, you’re optimizing to be CITED as part of the answer.

Visibility isn’t just about showing up - it’s about:

• How you’re described (positive vs neutral vs “be careful with this brand”)
• Where you appear (first recommendation vs afterthought)
• What context triggers your mention (are you cited for premium questions? budget questions? specific use cases?)

I started thinking of it as “brand positioning in AI minds.” The AI has formed an opinion about your brand based on everything it learned. Your job is to understand that perception and shape it.

The tools that track this stuff give you x-ray vision into AI’s perception of your brand. Without that data, you’re flying blind.

The competitor comparison feature is what sold me on proper visibility tracking.

Here’s a real scenario from last month:

We noticed a competitor suddenly jumping to position 1 for several prompts where we used to be first. Dug into it and found they had:

• Published a comprehensive comparison guide
• Got it picked up by several industry blogs
• The guide specifically addressed questions AI gets asked often

Within 3 weeks, AI responses shifted to favor them.

What this taught me:

Visibility isn’t static. Your competitors are actively working on this too. You need ongoing monitoring to catch these shifts early.

Am I Cited’s competitive analysis shows share of voice over time. When a competitor’s share suddenly increases, it’s a signal to investigate what they did.

Small brand perspective here - this thread is intimidating but also validating.

We’re a 2-year-old brand competing against 20-year incumbents. For traditional SEO, we’re basically invisible. But for AI responses, we’ve found some openings.

Where small brands can win:

• Niche queries where big brands don’t bother (we show up first for very specific use cases)
• Recent product innovations (AI picks up on “new to market” content)
• Reddit discussions (our founder is genuinely active in relevant subs, which seems to help)

What I track:

Visibility trend by prompt category. We’re never going to win “best [product category]” but we’re making progress on “best [product] for [specific use case].”

The calendar view showing visibility changes over time helps me see if our content efforts are paying off. It’s a longer game than I expected, but we’re making progress.

Different perspective from enterprise scale.

We track visibility across hundreds of prompts covering dozens of product lines. At this scale, the aggregated metrics matter most:

What our executive dashboard shows:

• Overall visibility score (trended weekly)
• Position distribution (% first mention, % second, etc.)
• Competitor share of voice
• Alert when visibility drops significantly

The insight that changed our strategy:

We discovered our visibility was high for legacy products but almost zero for new launches. Traditional media coverage wasn’t translating to AI visibility.

Now every product launch includes “AI visibility optimization” as a specific workstream. We structure launch content to be AI-friendly from day one.

The ROI measurement aspect is important for us too - being able to show that visibility improvements correlate with business metrics helps justify the investment to leadership.

Running an agency focused on this, here’s the framework we use:

The Four Pillars of Brand Visibility:

1. Frequency - How often are you mentioned? (baseline metric)
2. Position - Where do you appear? (quality metric)
3. Context - How are you described? (sentiment metric)
4. Competition - How do you compare? (relative metric)

Tools we use:

Am I Cited handles all four pillars. The visibility score algorithm weighs position heavily, which aligns with actual user behavior data.

Common mistake we see:

Clients celebrate “we got mentioned!” without checking position. Being mentioned fifth after four competitors isn’t a win - it might actually be worse than not being mentioned at all because it implies inferiority.

The position distribution analysis is the first report we show clients. Usually it’s the moment they realize they have a real problem to solve.

This thread has been incredibly valuable. Thank you all.

What I’m taking away:

1. Position matters as much as presence - need to track both
2. Visibility score is a better metric than simple mention counts
3. Brand relationships/co-occurrence reveals how AI categorizes us
4. This requires ongoing monitoring, not one-time audits
5. Competitors are actively working on this - can’t afford to ignore it

My immediate next steps:

• Set up proper visibility tracking (going to try Am I Cited based on recommendations)
• Get baseline data on our position distribution
• Identify which prompts we should be winning but aren’t
• Start the conversation with leadership about AI visibility as a strategic priority

The “invisible to a growing segment of customers” fear is very real. Glad to have some direction now.