How to check if ChatGPT mentions your brand (free)

Check one question free on 4 AIs

Type the question your customer asks, your brand name, and your site. Convika's free checker asks that one question on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, with no sign-up, and shows whether each AI named your brand and linked to your site. The full answers, and the sites they linked instead, open with a free account.

The rest of this guide is how to do the same check by hand, what the free checkers from Ahrefs and Semrush test instead, why the answer changes each time you ask, and what to do when you're not in it. Ahrefs', Semrush's, OpenAI's, and Google's pages quoted here were read on November 8, 2026.

The free checkers compared

The 3 free checkers answer different questions. Ahrefs and Semrush tell you how often their own prompts bring up your brand. A question-based check tells you about the one question you care about, such as "best bakery for a custom birthday cake in Leeds".

Ahrefs' and Semrush's checkers read from prompt sets their companies built from search data, so they work best for a brand people already search for. Ahrefs says as much about the index behind its checker: it "may have limited coverage for brands with little or no search volume" (Ahrefs Brand Radar). A new or local business may get an empty report there and still be named for the question that sells. Ask that question directly, by hand or with a question-based check.

Check by hand in ChatGPT

Start a chat that can't lean on what you've told it

Use a new chat. Earlier chats about your business can steer the answer toward you, which tells you nothing about what a stranger sees. If you've talked to ChatGPT about your business before, sign out or use a different browser profile.

Make sure the answer searched the web

An answer that searched shows its sources as links. If yours shows none, add "Search the web." to the question and ask again. Without a search, ChatGPT answers from what it learned in training, and a page you published last month can't be in that.

Ask the customer's question, not yours

Type what a customer types before they've heard of you: "best bakery for a custom birthday cake in Leeds", not "Is Northside Bakery good?". A question that names you only tests whether ChatGPT can repeat a name it was given. Use your customer's language, too: a question in Spanish gets its own answer.

Ask from where your customers are

ChatGPT's search can take your location into account. OpenAI's help page said in November 2024, as quoted by Simon Willison, that "ChatGPT also collects general location information based on your IP address and may share it with third-party search providers to improve the accuracy of your results" (Simon Willison). For a local business, ask from your town, or name the town in the question.

Ask 3 times and write it down

For each answer, note the date, whether it named you, whether it linked to your site, and which sites it linked instead. Then do the same in Perplexity and Gemini. For Google, search the same question: an AI Overview shows only for some searches, and its sources are the links beside it or under it.

Why the answer changes each time you ask

Ask the same question twice and you may get a different list. 3 things move it:

• The searches behind the answer. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode "may use a 'query fan-out' technique — issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources — to develop a response" (Google). Different searches bring back different pages, and the answer is written from those.
• Where and when you ask. Location, as above, and the day: a page published or updated this week can show up next week.
• Which AI. Google says AI Mode and AI Overviews "may use different models and techniques, so the set of responses and links they show will vary." ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini each run their own searches and pick their own sources, too.

So count answers instead of reading one: "named in 2 of 6 answers" says more than one screenshot. Ahrefs calls its own free check "a one-time snapshot" and points to Brand Radar for daily tracking.

What to look at in an answer

• Named or linked. Ahrefs puts the difference plainly: "A mention means the AI platform named your brand in its response. A citation means it linked to your website as a source." A mention reaches the reader of the answer. A link brings them to your site.
• Where you're named. First in a list, somewhere in it, or in a closing "also consider" line.
• The sites linked instead. These are the pages the AI trusted for this question: a directory, a review site, a "best of" list, a competitor's guide. They show what kind of page you need, and where else you need to be. How to see which sources ChatGPT cites shows the free tools that list them.
• Whether what it says is true. Prices, opening hours, the area you serve, what you sell. A wrong fact usually comes from one of the sites it linked.

What to do when ChatGPT doesn't name you

1. Let the AIs' crawlers read your site. OpenAI says sites "opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers" and recommends "allowing OAI-SearchBot in your site's robots.txt file" (OpenAI). After a change to robots.txt, "it can take ~24 hours" for OpenAI's systems to adjust. For AI Overviews, Google says a page must be "indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet."
2. Publish a page that answers the exact question. Put the answer in the first 2 or 3 sentences, with your real numbers and the date you checked them, and a table if the question compares options. Google says you don't need "new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup" for its AI features.
3. Get onto the sites the answer linked instead. Ask the "best of" lists to review you, claim your profile on the directories, and answer in the forums that come up. Leave paid or planted mentions out: Google says "seeking inauthentic 'mentions' across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem" (Google).
4. Ask again after the page has been read. A new page can't be cited until the AI's crawler has read it and, for Google, until it's indexed.

For a software product, how to get your SaaS recommended by ChatGPT and Perplexity takes these steps one at a time, with Bing and structured data.

How to keep checking

By hand, a sheet with one row per question, AI, and date is enough for a few questions.

Convika's AI answer check keeps it for you. Save your questions and brand name under AI & search in the dashboard, or from Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex over MCP. Then ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews whenever you want. For each question and AI, it shows how many answers named your brand and linked to your site, and the links each answer gave. Beside each question is one next step: Make a page that answers this, Fix this page, or, once ChatGPT's or Perplexity's crawler has read that page, a button to ask that AI again.

One check is one question answered by one AI, so a run of 5 questions on all 4 AIs uses 20. An answer that errors or comes back empty is given back.

• Packs, for checking once or now and then, with no subscription: from 100 checks for $3, on any plan, Free included, with no expiry. Other services sell checks the same way: pay-per-check tools compared.
• Pro, for a handful of questions a month: 100 checks a month, 50 questions kept, $12 a month.
• MAX, if you ask many questions every week and publish pages for the ones the AIs answer without you, with questions that ask the same thing sharing one page: 3,500 checks a month, enough to ask each of its 200 kept questions on all 4 AIs about once a week, $49 a month with hosting for the pages. How to run that loop from Claude Code.

Pick another tool if you need daily tracking of many brands, sentiment, or share-of-voice reports, or answers from AIs Convika doesn't ask: Claude, Copilot, and AI Mode. Ahrefs Brand Radar tracks custom prompts "refreshed daily", Claude included, and Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit adds "sentiment, citations, and source pages behind every mention." Peec AI and Profound track daily too. Their prices, side by side. For a small business choosing between three of them: Otterly vs Peec AI vs Profound. More trackers, by price per check: AI visibility tools compared.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if ChatGPT mentions my brand?

Ask it. Open a new chat, make sure it searches the web, and type the question a customer would ask, without your brand name in it. Ask 3 times and count how often the answer names you and how often it links to your site. A free checker does the asking for you: Convika's asks your one question on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.

Is there a free AI visibility checker?

Yes, several. Ahrefs' checker takes your brand name and needs no sign-up. Semrush's takes your domain, 3 times a day without registering. Convika's takes your own question and asks it on 4 AIs, with no sign-up to run it. Ahrefs and Semrush test prompts from their own databases, so they suit brands people already search for.

How do I check if my website is cited in Google AI Overviews?

Search your customer's question on Google and look at the AI Overview's links, if one shows: Google says AI Overviews show only "when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search, and as such, often don't trigger." For your whole site, open Search Console's Generative AI performance report, which Google rolled out to all websites on August 31, 2026. It counts impressions, "how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search," in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, date, and device. It doesn't show which searches they came from. Google's guide to optimizing for its AI features says to use this report "to measure how your content is performing in generative AI features." How to check if your site is cited in Google AI Overviews covers the check by hand, what the report leaves out, and the tools.

Why does ChatGPT give a different answer each time?

Each answer is written from the searches it ran that time, and those differ by wording, location, and day. So does the AI: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Overviews each pick their own sources. Count answers over several runs rather than trusting one.

Can ChatGPT cite my site if my robots.txt blocks OpenAI's crawler?

No, not in ChatGPT's search answers. OpenAI says sites "opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links." You can block GPTBot, OpenAI's training crawler, and still allow OAI-SearchBot.

Is Ahrefs' AI visibility checker free?

Yes. Ahrefs says: "No signup, no credit card, no limit on how many brands you can check." The free report is "a limited preview (top 5 results per section)", from Ahrefs' own prompts. Daily tracking and your own prompts are part of Ahrefs Brand Radar, which is paid.

Is Semrush's AI visibility checker free?

Yes. Semrush says you can use it "three times per day for free, without registering or creating an account." You enter a domain, and it reports from Semrush's database of prompts on ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews.

How often should I check?

Weekly, for the questions you're working on. A single answer varies, so a weekly count over the same questions shows a trend that one check can't. After you publish a page for a question, check again once the AI's crawler has read it: Convika shows when ChatGPT's and Perplexity's have.

Can I check whether Claude or Copilot mentions my brand?

Yes, by hand in each app, the same way. Ahrefs' free checker includes Copilot and AI Mode. Convika's check asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, not Claude or Copilot.

Sources

• Ahrefs: Free AI Visibility Checker (read November 8, 2026, 01:57 JST)
• Ahrefs Brand Radar (read November 8, 2026, 01:57 JST)
• Semrush: Free AI Visibility Tool (read November 8, 2026, 01:57 JST)
• OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers (read November 8, 2026, 02:03 JST)
• Google Search Central: AI features and your website (last updated December 10, 2025; read November 8, 2026, 02:03 JST)
• Simon Willison: The ChatGPT IP address mystery (November 4, 2024; read November 8, 2026, 02:04 JST)
• Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report (Search) (read November 8, 2026, 02:48 JST)
• Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search (last updated July 10, 2026; read November 8, 2026, 02:12 JST)