How Can I Track If ChatGPT and Claude Are Mentioning My Competitors More Than My Brand?

Quick Answer

You can manually ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity questions like “best tools for [your niche]” and see whether you or your competitors show up.

But:

• AI answers change constantly
  
• You won’t see trends
  
• You’ll miss visibility drops
  
• It doesn’t scale past a couple of competitors
  

If you actually want to track how often AI models mention your brand vs competitors over time, you need an automated AI visibility tracker like SiteSignal that:

• Tests a structured set of prompts
  
• Monitors multiple AI models
  
• Logs brand vs competitor mentions
  
• Shows where you’re missing and why
  

1. Why AI Visibility (and Competitor Mentions) Matter in 2025/2026

Generative AI is no longer a toy. it’s part of the buying process.

• A 2024 Forrester study found that 89% of B2B buyers have adopted generative AI and use it as a key self-guided information source in every phase of the buying journey. Forrester
  
• HubSpot’s 2024 survey (reported by 6sense) found that 48% of buyers use AI tools to research software, and 98% of those say AI has impacted their decision-making process. 6sense
  
• Omnicom’s 2025 “Generative Engine Optimization” report says 44% of consumers trust AI-recommended products and services, and 65% rely on Google AI Overviews for answers. Futureweek
  

In plain English:

Buyers are already asking AI tools what to use, who to trust, and which brands are “best”.

So if prompts like:

• “Best tools for SEO audits”
  
• “Platforms for website monitoring”
  
• “Tools agencies use to monitor website health”
  

return your competitors instead of you, they are winning attention before anyone lands on your site.

That’s AI visibility.
And you either show up… or you don’t.

2. How to Manually Check If ChatGPT and Claude Mention Competitors More Than You (Free but Shallow)

Let’s start with the free method you can do right now.

Step 1 – Prepare a Small Prompt List

Run questions like:

• “Best tools for [your category]”
  
• “Top platforms for [your service]”
  
• “Alternatives to [Competitor A]”
  
• “Tools agencies use for [problem you solve]”
  
• “Which brands help with [outcome you deliver]?”
  

Test each in:

• ChatGPT
  
• Claude
  
• (Optionally) Gemini and Perplexity
  

Step 2 – Record What You See

Make a simple table:

Things to look for:

• Do your competitors appear more often?
  
• Do the same 2–3 brands appear in most answers?
  
• Are you missing from prompts where you should appear?
  
• Is your brand description correct, vague, or wrong?
  

Limitations of Manual Checking

Manual checks are fine for a snapshot, but they break quickly when you:

• Track more than 2–3 competitors
  
• Care about multiple models (ChatGPT + Claude + others)
  
• Want to know if things improved from last month
  
• Need reports for clients or leadership
  

AI responses are dynamic. What you see today may be different in a week. If you’re only checking manually, you’re flying blind most of the time.

3. Manual vs Scripts vs SiteSignal (Comparison Table)

Here’s the realistic comparison of ways to track AI mentions:

Manual checks are good enough to confirm “we’re invisible” or “we show up sometimes”.

They’re not good enough if:

• You run an agency with multiple clients
  
• You’re reporting trends to management
  
• You want to see what’s happening before competitors outrun you
  

That’s where a dedicated AI visibility tracker like SiteSignal makes sense.

4. How Automated AI Visibility Tracking Works (Without the Magic Fluff)

Let’s cut the buzzwords and describe what a tool like SiteSignal actually does.

1) Prompt Library

You (or the tool) define a library of prompts that represent how real people ask about your niche, such as:

• Category prompts: “best tools for [category]”
  
• Problem prompts: “how to fix [problem]”
  
• Brand prompts: “is [your brand] good for [use-case]?”
  
• Competitor prompts: “alternatives to [Competitor A]”
  

2) Multi-Model Testing

On a recurring schedule (daily/weekly), the system:

• Sends those prompts to AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity
  
• Captures full responses
  
• Extracts which brands are mentioned, and how
  

3) Brand & Competitor Matching

The tool then:

• Detects your brand name and variants
  
• Detects competitor brand names
  
• Counts how often each one appears per model, per prompt, per time period
  

4) Trend & Gap Detection

Over time, you see:

• How your mention rate changes
  
• When competitors suddenly start appearing more
  
• Where you should appear but don’t
  
• Whether AI descriptions about you are correct
  

SiteSignal does exactly this kind of structured monitoring for you in the background, so you’re not copy-pasting prompts into chatbots every week.

5. The Metrics That Actually Matter for AI Visibility

If you’re an agency or a serious brand, you don’t need “vibes”. You need metrics.

Here are the core ones to care about:

1. Mention Rate (by Prompt & Model)

What it is:
The percentage of tested prompts where your brand is mentioned.

Why it matters:
It’s the closest equivalent to “share of shelf” inside AI conversations.

2. Competitor Spread

What it is:
How often each competitor is mentioned, compared to you.

Why it matters:
You may not need to beat everyone, but you do need to know who’s dominating.

3. Prompt-Level Winners

What it is:
Which prompts favour competitors vs you.

Example:
You might show up for “website monitoring tools” but not for “WordPress uptime tools”. That gap is actionable.

4. Entity Clarity Score (Explained Simply)

Entity clarity means:

How clearly AI systems understand who you are, what you do, and which category you belong to.

If AI can’t confidently connect your brand to your category, it will default to better-known competitors.

5. Accuracy & Misalignment Flags

Sometimes AI does mention you… but:

• Uses old pricing
  
• Describes an outdated feature
  
• Puts you in the wrong category
  

Those are misalignment issues and they’re fixable.

6. Trend Over Time

Week-on-week or month-on-month:

• Are mentions rising, flat, or dropping?
  
• Are competitors gaining faster?
  
• Are your fixes (schema, content, PR) actually moving the needle?
  

This is what turns AI visibility from “interesting idea” into something you manage like SEO or PPC.

6. Why AI Models Might Mention Your Competitors More Than You

If competitors keep winning in ChatGPT and Claude, it’s usually not random. It typically comes down to a few root causes.

1. Weak Entity Clarity

AI isn’t sure:

• What exactly your product does
  
• Which category you belong to
  
• When you’re relevant to a question
  

This happens when:

• Your positioning on the website is vague
  
• Your brand name is generic or ambiguous
  
• Different pages describe you differently
  

2. Poor or Missing Schema (In Plain Language)

Schema = small pieces of structured code you add to your site to tell machines:

• “This is our product.”
  
• “This is our company.”
  
• “This is a review, this is pricing, this is a feature list.”
  

If your site has no or weak schema, AI has to guess. Competitors who use strong Product, Organization, and SoftwareApplication schema are easier for AI to understand.

3. Thin or Misaligned Content

Your content might:

• Talk about features, but not clearly about who you’re for
  
• Skip category-defining phrases users actually search and ask about
  
• Be too generic (“all-in-one platform”) instead of specific (“AI visibility and website health monitoring platform”)
  

4. Weak External Signals (Knowledge Graph)

Think of the knowledge graph as the web of facts about your brand across:

• Your website
  
• Review sites (G2, Capterra, etc.)
  
• Directories
  
• Press mentions
  
• Social profiles
  

If those are inconsistent or thin, AI models have less confidence in you than in competitors with stronger, cleaner footprints.

5. Brand Inconsistency

Different brand names, outdated taglines, different descriptions everywhere that makes it harder for AI to confidently associate your brand with your category.

A tool like SiteSignal doesn’t just show you that you’re losing it helps you see why and where to fix it.

7. A Practical Workflow to Track and Improve AI Visibility

Here’s a simple, realistic workflow that agencies and brands can run.

Phase 1 – Baseline (Week 1)

1. Run manual checks for 10–20 prompts.
   
2. Note which AI models you appear in (if any).
   
3. List 5–10 core competitors.
   

Phase 2 – Set Up Automated Tracking (Week 1)

1. Add your brand and competitors into SiteSignal.
   
2. Configure prompt sets (top-funnel, mid-funnel, brand, competitor).
   
3. Start recurring tests across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
   

Phase 3 – Diagnose Issues (Weeks 2–4)

From SiteSignal’s visibility reports, identify:

• Prompts where competitors dominate
  
• Models where you’re basically invisible
  
• Incorrect or outdated information
  
• Patterns: missing for category questions, but present for brand-name queries, etc.
  

Phase 4 – Fix the Foundations (Weeks 2–8)

Work on:

• Clearer category positioning on your website
  
• Stronger schema (Organization, SoftwareApplication/Product, FAQ)
  
• Updating key pages to reflect how buyers actually describe your category
  
• Cleaning up external profiles (G2, LinkedIn, directories, press mentions)
  

Phase 5 – Monitor Momentum (Ongoing)

Every month:

• Review your mention rate and competitor spread
  
• Check if the fixes led to visibility gains
  
• Adjust prompts + content plan based on what’s still missing
  

Typical pattern (not a guarantee, but realistic):

• 2–4 weeks: You start seeing early movement in AI answers if your fixes are strong and consistent
  
• 6–12 weeks: Patterns settle you can see whether your brand is now “in the conversation” or still sidelined
  

8. Frequently Asked Questions About Tracking AI Mentions

Q1: Why can’t I just check ChatGPT manually once in a while?

You can, and you should for a quick gut check.
But AI answers are dynamic. What you see on one day is not a reliable indicator of:

• Trends
  
• Visibility drops
  
• Competitor surges
  

If AI becomes a meaningful buying channel for your category (and data suggests it already is), “once in a while” isn’t good enough.

Q2: Is this only relevant for big brands and SaaS companies?

No.

If buyers in your space:

• Compare options
  
• Ask for “best tools” or “top services”
  
• Rely on recommendations
  

…then AI visibility matters whether you’re a SaaS product, an agency, or a specialist service provider.

Local businesses will feel this later than global SaaS, but it’s moving in that direction.

Q3: How is AI visibility different from SEO?

SEO is about:

• Ranking pages in traditional search results (Google, Bing)
  
• Optimising for keywords, backlinks, technical health
  

AI visibility is about:

• Whether AI assistants mention your brand at all
  
• Whether they recommend you when users ask for solutions
  
• Whether they describe you correctly
  

They’re related but not the same.
You can have strong SEO and still be invisible in AI responses and vice versa.

Q4: Do I need a developer to use SiteSignal?

For most brands and agencies:

• No for the tracking itself it’s a SaaS dashboard.
  
• Maybe for implementing deeper fixes (schema, technical clean-up) if you’re not comfortable touching code.
  

Many agencies treat AI visibility as a service layer: SiteSignal for tracking, then their own team for implementation.

Q5: How much time should I budget for this each month?

Rough ballpark:

• Manual-only approach: easily 2–4 hours per week, and still unreliable.
  
• With SiteSignal: 30–60 minutes per week reviewing dashboards and prioritising actions.
  

The heavy lifting querying AI models, logging responses, counting mentions is automated.

Q6: How do I start?

Practical steps:

1. List your top 5–10 competitors.
   
2. Draft 15–30 prompts customers would realistically ask.
   
3. Do one round of manual checks so you have a “before” snapshot.
   
4. Set up SiteSignal, add your brand + competitors, import your prompts.
   
5. Let it run for a couple of weeks and then review what’s really happening.
   

Final Thoughts

If ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI systems are mentioning your competitors more than your brand, that’s not just “interesting”.

It’s a visibility leak:

• Competitors get the first recommendation
  
• They earn the trust
  
• They take the conversation and often the customer before you even show up
  

Manual checks are fine for a quick reality check.
But if you care about this channel seriously, you need structured, ongoing tracking.

That’s where a tool like SiteSignal comes in:

• It turns AI answers into measurable metrics
  
• Shows you where and why you’re losing
  
• Helps you prioritise fixes that actually affect how AI talks about you
  

In 2025, “Are we visible in AI answers?” should be a standard question in every marketing and growth meeting.

If the honest answer is “We don’t know,” that’s your first problem to fix.