As a founder of an early-stage startup, staying visible in all the places your potential customers look for information is crucial. With AI tools like ChatGPT becoming increasingly popular for product research and recommendations, understanding how your brand appears on these platforms is critical.
In this article, we’ll talk about:
- Why you should track mentions of your brand on ChatGPT.
- How to conduct a proper search of how your brand is shown on ChatGPT.
- Next steps on how you can optimize what’s said about your brand.
Let’s get started!
Why Track Mentions of Your Brand on ChatGPT and Other LLMs
The way people search for information is fundamentally changing. Instead of typing queries into Google, many users now ask ChatGPT and similar AI platforms for recommendations, reviews, and solutions.
Read more: The Real Reason Why Organic Search Traffic is Declining
This shift creates both challenges and opportunities. If your brand isn’t mentioned in ChatGPT responses, you could miss out on a growing channel of potential customers.
For startups with limited marketing budgets, understanding your presence in ChatGPT allows you to:
- Monitor competitive positioning in large language models.
- Identify opportunities to improve content for better AI visibility.
- Catch and correct misinformation about your brand.
- Discover new contexts where your brand is being discussed.
Is there a ChatGPT mention tracker?
Right now, there is no tool that can pull mentions directly from OpenAI because they haven’t released an API to allow this functionality. This means you can’t see the actual queries that people use when they ask about your brand or products.There are tools claiming they can track ChatGPT mentions (like SpyFu’s SpyGPT), but what they actually do is run searches on ChatGPT themselves, create a database of the responses, and then allow you to access that database.
While these tools provide some insights, they’re limited to the specific queries they’ve chosen to test. If you’re not Pepsi or a slightly bigger brand, you won’t show up in the query.
The tools right now can’t show you the full range of real-world queries where your brand might appear.
I’ve actually been approached on LinkedIn by several companies offering ChatGPT mention tracking services, but you either have to book a demo to get the price, or the price is too high to give it a proper try for most early-stage startups.
Want to connect on LinkedIn? Connect with me here. This is where I share real-time insights about how to optimize for ChatGPT.
If you encounter tools that promise comprehensive ChatGPT-mention tracking, make sure to ask how their technology works. The limitations of the current API access mean they’re likely using automated prompting rather than accessing real user queries.
The Best Way To Understand Your Brand Mentions in ChatGPT
The most reliable approach is straightforward but effective: go directly to each LLM and ask key questions about your brand.
Start with these essential queries:
- “What do you know about [your brand]?”
- “What does [your brand/product] do?”
- “What’s the best tool in [your niche]?”
These questions reveal:
- How the LLM understands your brand’s identity.
- What information is being shared about your product features and benefits.
- Whether it recommends you in competitive contexts.
Document the responses carefully, noting any inaccuracies or areas where your brand information could be improved. This creates a baseline you can use to track changes over time.
For more comprehensive insights, you can expand your questions to include:
- “Compare [your brand] to [competitor]”
- “What are the pros and cons of [your brand]?”
- “Who should use [your brand]?”
You can identify patterns in how AI systems understand and present your brand by testing these questions across multiple LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.).
How to Do a Deep Search for Your Brand
Once you’ve asked quick questions on ChatGPT, the next step is to do a deep search of the specific links and sites associated with your brand. You’ll be surprised as to where your brand may actually be mentioned!
Here’s a summary of the deep search for my name (also my brand):
- Open ChatGPT in your browser
- Go to chat.openai.com
- Log in to your account (preferably with a Plus subscription for access to GPT-4)
- Start a new chat
- Request a comprehensive search for your brand
- Type: “Find any mentions of [your business name/brand/product] online. Provide all the lists of links where it is mentioned.”
- Be specific about your brand name, especially if it’s common or could be confused with other entities
- Request a structured format for the results
- Ask ChatGPT to organize the information in a table format
- Specify these columns: “Name of Site | What was mentioned | Link”
- Analyze multiple variations of your brand name
- Run additional searches for common misspellings
- Include searches for product names, founders’ names, and other brand identifiers
- Try different phrasings like “companies similar to [your brand]” or “alternatives to [your brand]”
- Save the results
- Copy the complete response into a document or spreadsheet (or ask ChatGPT to make the table a CSV file, so you can download it)
- Date your findings so you can track changes over time
- Highlight any incorrect or concerning information for follow-up
- Repeat this process with other LLMs
- Try the same queries in Google’s Gemini
- Test in Anthropic’s Claude
- Compare results across platforms to identify patterns or discrepancies
If you need help with this process, I can provide a complimentary call to help early-stage startup founders. Book a session here.
What’s Next: What to Do if Your Brand Is Mentioned
Once you’ve gathered information about your brand mentions, it’s time to analyze what you’ve found:
Is the information correct?
Check for factual accuracy in how ChatGPT describes your:
- Product features
- Pricing
- Company history
- Target audience
Incorrect information could be steering potential customers away from your solution.
Are the topics mentioned really associated with your brand?
Sometimes LLMs associate brands with topics that aren’t actually core to their business. This can dilute your brand positioning or create confusion about what you offer.
Identify any topic misalignments that need addressing in your content strategy.
Where is ChatGPT pulling the data?
Understanding the sources of ChatGPT’s information helps you prioritize your optimization efforts. Is it from:
- Your own website
- Review sites
- Competitor comparisons
- News articles
- Social media profiles
For example, I asked ChatGPT to do a deep search of my name, Irene Chan. I wanted to know what shows up just in case potential customers want to learn more about me from ChatGPT.
I discovered that there are a bunch of Irene Chans:
- A journalist
- An artist
- And me
Once I specified that it should be me, I had to include my maiden name, Irene Enriquez Chan. I’ve been an SEO writer since 2010, so there are lots of things I’ve written. I found some forgotten links that I had, such as Gumroad.
Create an action plan based on findings
- List all outdated information that needs updating
- Identify missing content opportunities
- Note any incorrect associations that need addressing
Once you have the report, you’ll see what information ChatGPT has about you. This gives you an initial link-building list and content strategy direction:
- Approach old articles and ask them to link to your new site.
- Edit assets you own and update them with the new website information. For example, I had my old website as a freelance writer on my Gumroad account.
- Understand which sites you should get mentioned in more. For example, if your product is about LinkedIn, producing LinkedIn articles around it is important.
This approach to tracking ChatGPT mentions may be manual, but it provides actionable insights to improve your brand’s AI visibility.
If you need a fractional SEO team to help you make sense of your data and build more links for your website, learn more about how our fractional team works.
Future of ChatGPT Mention Trackers
In the future, it’s possible that you could get queries of what people actually ask in ChatGPT and even receive alerts of your brand mentions.
For example:
- Ahrefs could add a feature to allow this kind of tracking
- Google Alerts could add LLMs like ChatGPT as a source when you set up an alert
- OpenAI might create an enterprise API specifically for brand monitoring
The possibilities are endless. But as of now, there’s really no tool that can do this the way we want. The most effective approach remains direct testing and documentation.
One important consideration for the future is that entities are very important to machine learning. As LLMs continue to evolve, having a clear entity structure that defines your brand, products, and relationships in the digital ecosystem will become increasingly important for visibility.
To prepare for this future, focus on:
- Creating comprehensive FAQ sections using ChatGPT to improve your content’s question-answer relationships
- Building structured data markup on your website
- Establishing clear entity connections across the web
- Maintaining consistent brand information across all digital properties
FAQ About ChatGPT Mention Trackers
Can I track ChatGPT mentions completely for free?
Yes, you can use the free ChatGPT subscription to understand how your brand is mentioned in ChatGPT. But to do a deep search, you’ll need a ChatGPT Plus subscription.
How often should I monitor ChatGPT brand mentions?
For early-stage startups, checking key queries once a month is usually sufficient if you already have a decent amount of assets online. Monitor more frequently (weekly) if you’re actively working to improve your AI visibility or if you’ve recently launched new content or products that should be reflected in ChatGPT’s responses.
What should I do if ChatGPT provides incorrect information about my brand?
Focus on strengthening your online presence with clear, factual content across your website and authoritative third-party sites. While you can’t directly “correct” ChatGPT, you can go to the source and ask the author to correct the information.
Does improving my SEO also improve my mentions in ChatGPT?
Yes, many traditional SEO practices help improve your ChatGPT mentions since LLMs are trained on web content. However, there are additional considerations specific to AI visibility, such as structured data and entity relationships, that go beyond traditional SEO.
Can I see who is asking about my brand in ChatGPT?
Currently, no. ChatGPT doesn’t provide information about who is asking questions or what specific queries users are entering about your brand. This privacy protection means tracking is limited to testing your own queries.
How can I measure the ROI of improving my ChatGPT presence?
Track referral traffic from ChatGPT domains in Google Analytics 4 and note any increases after implementing improvements. You can also survey new customers to understand if AI tools played a role in their discovery process.
Stay Ahead with SEO and AI
Even with limited resources, early-stage startups can implement effective monitoring systems using the manual approaches outlined in this guide. The insights you gain will help you optimize your content strategy, strengthen your brand presence, and ultimately drive more qualified leads from this growing channel.
Remember, while dedicated ChatGPT mention tracking tools may emerge in the future, the direct testing approach provides valuable insights today without requiring significant investment.
Ready to take your AI visibility to the next level? Start by conducting a deep search of your brand in ChatGPT today, and use the insights to continuously refine your approach to AI optimization.
