What Does Perplexity, ChatGPT and Gemini Say about Your Brand? Here is How to Check

Let me ask you something straight. When was the last time you actually opened ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google Gemini and asked about your own brand?

Not a Google search. Not checking your website analytics. I mean, literally typing your brand name into an AI search tool and reading what it tells people about you.

If you have not done this yet, you are flying blind in 2026. And I say this after spending 18 years in SEO and watching search change more in the last 18 months than it did in the previous decade.

Here is the reality. According to a Search Engine Land study from January 2026, 37% of consumers now start their searches with AI tools instead of Google. ChatGPT alone processes over 2.5 billion queries per day as of mid-2025, according to TechCrunch. Gemini has 400 million monthly active users. Perplexity has crossed 22 million active monthly users, and 30% of those users are in senior leadership roles.

Your potential customers, your potential clients, your potential partners, they are asking these AI tools about you. The question is: what are these tools telling them?

Why This Matters More than Your Google Ranking Right Now

I have had clients come to me saying their Google rankings are solid, top 3 for their main keywords. Good traffic. Decent conversions. Then I ask them to open ChatGPT and search for the best service provider in their category. Their name is nowhere.

This is not a hypothetical problem. SEMAI published research in February 2026 analysing over 25,000 URLs cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity over 60 days. Their finding was clear: over 63% of B2B research now begins on AI platforms, but most marketing teams continue to focus only on Google rankings.

Here is what makes this tricky. Each AI platform trusts different sources. Yext analysed more than 6.8 million citations across 1.6 million responses from Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. What they found changes how you should think about visibility:

• Gemini acts like a stricter version of Google. 52.15% of its citations come from brand-owned websites. It trusts structured, factual content directly from your domain.
• ChatGPT pulls heavily from third-party sites. 48.73% of its citations come from directories like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and MapQuest. Google properties contributed 465,000 citations overall.
• Perplexity leans into niche, industry-specific directories. In healthcare, it favours Zocdoc. In hospitality, TripAdvisor. For unbranded queries, niche sources make up 24% of all citations.

In plain language: Gemini trusts what your brand says about itself. ChatGPT trusts what the internet collectively agrees about you. Perplexity trusts what industry experts and reviewers say.

If you are only working on one of these angles, you are missing two-thirds of your AI visibility.

How to Check Brand Visibility in AI Search: The Manual Method

Before you spend money on any tool, do this yourself first. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes and gives you a brutally honest picture of where you stand.

Step 1: Build Your Prompt List

Write down 15 to 20 questions that your ideal customer would ask an AI tool. These are not your SEO keywords. These are the actual questions people type into ChatGPT when they are looking for what you sell.

For example, if you run a digital marketing agency in Delhi, your prompts would include:

• “Who are the best SEO agencies in Delhi?”
• “Which digital marketing consultant should I hire for a small business in India?“
• “Best SEO expert for ecommerce websites in India”
• “Top-rated digital marketing agencies for startups“
• “Who provides answer engine optimisation services in India?”

Also include comparison prompts like “Agency A vs Agency B“ and problem-based prompts like “My website traffic dropped after the Google update, who can help?”

Step 2: Run These Prompts Across All Three Platforms

Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini separately. Type each prompt and document:

1. Does your brand appear in the response? Yes or No.
2. Where does it appear? First mentioned, middle of the list, or at the end?
3. What does the AI say about you? Positive, negative, or neutral?
4. Which competitors are mentioned alongside you?
5. Does the AI link to your website or a third-party page about you?

Record everything in a spreadsheet. This is your baseline.

Step 3: Check Your Brand-Specific Queries

Now type your exact brand name into each platform. Ask questions like:

• “Tell me about [Your Brand Name]“
• “What services does [Your Brand Name] offer?“
• “Is [Your Brand Name] good for [your service category]?”
• “[Your Brand Name] reviews”

Pay close attention to accuracy here. AI tools sometimes mix up facts, attribute wrong services to your brand, or pull outdated information. Document every error you find. These are the things you need to fix first.

Tools that help You Check Brand Visibility in AI Search at Scale

Manual checking gives you the picture, but it does not scale. If you are running a business with hundreds of potential prompts and multiple competitors to track, you need proper tools. Here are the ones that actually work based on current market data:

Otterly.AI – Used by over 20,000 marketing professionals. Tracks brand mentions and website citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. Good for teams that want a clean, simple dashboard.

SE Ranking Visible – Captures data from actual AI interfaces, not API simulations. Tracks six platforms, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Mode. Offers up to five free daily checks, which is rare.

Frase AI Visibility – Tracks rankings across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. Particularly strong for content-driven businesses because it connects to their existing content optimisation platform.

Peec AI – Starts at approximately €89 per month. Focuses on prompt-level tracking and source-level insights. Works well for agencies managing multiple client accounts.

Scrunch AI – Goes beyond monitoring into active optimisation. Tracks seven LLMs, including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, and Llama.

Pick one that fits your budget and needs. The point is to move from occasional manual checks to consistent tracking, because AI responses change frequently.

What the Research Says about Getting Cited by AI

Data from multiple studies in 2025 and 2026 paints a clear picture of what makes AI tools pick your brand over competitors.

Domain authority is the biggest factor. SE Ranking studied 2.3 million pages and found that high-traffic sites receive 3 times as many AI citations as low-traffic sites. Brands with over 32,000 referring domains are 3.5 times more likely to be cited by ChatGPT.

Blogs and webpages drive over 90% of all AI citations. SEMAI’s research across 25,540 URLs showed that blogs accounted for 41-55% of all AI citations, and standard webpages accounted for 38-47%. Together, just these two content types drive the vast majority of what AI tools reference.

Third-party presence matters enormously. Domains with profiles on platforms like Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, and Yelp are 3 times as likely to be cited by ChatGPT as sites without such profiles. Brands with strong mentions on Quora and Reddit have roughly 4 times higher citation rates.

Content freshness counts. About 40% of ChatGPT citations come from content published in 2025, according to Superprompt research. If your last blog post is from 2023, AI tools are likely to skip you in favour of competitors who publish regularly.

Each platform has different content preferences. ChatGPT is the only platform that meaningfully cites LinkedIn posts and Wikipedia. Perplexity actively cites comparison pages and solution-specific pages. Gemini favours brand-owned blog content and almost entirely avoids community sources like Reddit.

How to Fix Your AI Visibility Once You Know the Gaps

After you check brand visibility in AI search and find the gaps (and you will find gaps), here is what actually moves the needle:

Make Your Website Machine-Readable

AI systems do not care about your website design. They care about how easily they can parse your data. This means implementing JSON-LD Schema markup, particularly Organisation, Service, and FAQ schemas. Your website needs to tell AI exactly who you are, what you do, and what makes you different in a format machines can read without guessing.

Define Your Brand in Semantic Triples

AI tools connect facts using relationships. Think of it as [Subject] → [Predicate] → [Object]. For example: “Adwen Plus“ → “provides“ → “Answer Engine Optimisation services.“ When these connections are missing or scattered across your website, AI tools cannot build a clear picture of your brand.

Build Content That Directly Answers Buyer Questions

The Search Engine Journal published a case study in February 2026 showing that a brand went from zero AI visibility to appearing in 16.5% of relevant AI responses within six weeks. The approach was focused on content that directly answered specific buyer questions, not broad thought leadership pieces. Content that wandered, even if it was well-written, consistently performed worse in AI pickup.

Strengthen Your Third-Party Footprint

Since ChatGPT pulls nearly half its citations from third-party sites, your presence on directories, review platforms, and industry publications is not optional. Get listed in relevant industry directories. Actively collect reviews on platforms that matter for your category. Get mentioned in publications that AI tools trust.

Publish Consistently and Keep Content Updated

AI tools favour fresh content. A blog that has not been updated in six months is practically invisible to most AI systems. Set a publishing schedule and stick to it. Update existing content with current data and examples.

The Numbers You Cannot Ignore

Let me put some numbers on the table to show you how fast this space is moving:

• AI referral traffic now accounts for 1.08% of all website traffic and is growing roughly 1% month over month, with ChatGPT driving 87.4% of that traffic (Conductor 2026 Benchmarks).
• AI-driven visitors convert on average 4.4 times higher than standard organic visits (Semrush).
• Adobe reported a 693% surge in AI referral traffic during the 2025 holiday season.
• 54% of US marketers plan to implement Generative Engine Optimisation within 3 to 6 months (eMarketer, January 2026).
• The GEO market is valued at $848 million in 2025 and is projected to reach $33.7 billion by 2034.

This is not a someday problem. This is a right-now problem. And the brands that start tracking and fixing their AI visibility today will have a serious head start over those who wait.

How Adwen Plus helps You Own Your AI Visibility

At Adwen Plus, we have been working on Answer Engine Optimisation before most agencies in India even knew it existed. With 18 years of SEO experience and a focus on what actually works (not what sounds impressive in a pitch deck), we help brands take control of what AI tools say about them.

Here is what we do differently:

Full AI Visibility Audit – We run your brand through structured prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. You get a clear report showing exactly where you appear, where you are missing, what AI tools get wrong about you, and which competitors are beating you.

Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) Strategy – Based on the audit, we build a content and technical strategy designed specifically for AI search. This includes schema implementation, content restructuring for machine-readability, and building third-party presence.

Ongoing AI Visibility Monitoring – AI responses change constantly. We track your brand across multiple AI platforms on an ongoing basis so you always know where you stand and can respond quickly when something shifts.

Content That AI Tools Actually Cite – We create content structured around the questions your buyers are asking AI tools, using the formats and structures that each platform prefers. No fluff. No keyword stuffing. Just clear, authoritative answers that AI tools want to reference.

We offer monthly retainers starting at ₹15K and only take on clients who are committed to at least 6 months of consistent work. This is not a quick-fix service. Building real AI visibility takes the same discipline as building real SEO authority: steady, focused effort over time.

Our track record speaks for itself. We maintain a 93-94% success rate with clients who stay the course. The 6-7% who do not see results are almost always the ones who quit after 2-3 months or refuse to implement the changes we recommend.

What You Should do Right Now

Stop reading and go check. Open ChatGPT right now and type in your brand name. Then do the same on Perplexity and Gemini. See what comes up. See what is missing. See what is wrong.

That 10-minute exercise will tell you more about your current digital visibility than any analytics dashboard.

If what you find worries you, or if you want help turning those gaps into a proper strategy, reach out to us at Adwen Plus. We will run a detailed AI visibility audit for your brand and show you exactly what needs to change.