DEV Community: Lumirank.ai

5 Peec AI Alternatives Worth Trying in 2026

Lumirank.ai — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 08:53:52 +0000

More and more people now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity what to buy instead of typing a query into Google. That raises a new question for brands: when someone asks an AI about my category, does it mention me?
Tools that answer this question are called GEO trackers. GEO stands for generative engine optimization. It is like SEO, but for AI answers instead of search results.

Peec AI is one of the better known GEO trackers. It works well, but many teams run into a few limits:
Plans start at $95 per month and there is no free plan.
Entry plans track only 3 AI models. Adding a fourth model on the Pro plan costs another $85 per month.
Claude and DeepSeek are only available on Enterprise contracts.
It shows you data, but it does not help you write content or run agent workflows.

If any of these are a problem for you, here are five other tools to look at.
1. Lumirank
What it does: Lumirank checks your brand every day on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode. It shows three main numbers: how often you show up (visibility rate), how high up you appear in the answer (a prominence score from 0 to 100), and whether the tone is positive or negative (a sentiment score from -100 to +100). It also sorts the sources the AI cites into your own pages, other websites, and competitor pages. You get competitor rankings, alerts when things change, and unlimited users.
Price: Free plan with 10 prompts on 2 models. Starter is $29 per month (25 prompts, 3 models). Pro is $99 per month (100 prompts, all 6 models, with a 14 day free trial and no card needed). Scale is $399 per month (450 prompts and dedicated support).
Good: All six main AI engines are included without extra model fees, and there is no charge per user.
Not so good: No Claude, Grok, or DeepSeek tracking. No server bot logs or content agents. The API is still listed as coming soon.
Best for: Marketing teams, agencies, and businesses that want simple daily tracking across the main consumer AI tools.

2. Profound
What it does: Profound tracks up to 9 AI engines every day. Instead of using APIs, it runs real browser sessions, so the results are closer to what a normal user sees. A feature called Prompt Volumes estimates how often people ask certain questions, based on consumer panel data. Its agent workflows can turn gaps in your visibility into content briefs. It also shows which AI crawlers visit your site.
Price: There is a 7 day trial with 50 fixed prompts. After that, pricing is custom and is reported to be around $2,000 to $5,000 or more per month. Its $99 and $399 self serve plans were removed in September 2026.
Good: Demand data, agent workflows, and crawler data in one place.
Not so good: No monthly self serve plans, and you cannot change the prompts during the trial.
Best for: Large companies and agencies with a big budget for this.

3. Otterly.AI
What it does: Otterly.AI tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot every day, in more than 65 countries. Its AI Prompt Research tool helps you find the questions your buyers are asking. Its GEO URL audit checks whether a page is set up in a way that AI tools can easily cite. Higher plans add AI bot tracking (called Agent Analytics) and API access.
Price: Lite is $29 per month (15 prompts). Standard is $189 per month (100 prompts, plus bot logs and API). Premium is $489 per month (400 prompts). Paying yearly saves about 15%.
Good: Page audits and bot tracking are built in, and there are no per user fees.
Not so good: Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Claude cost extra on the standard plans, so the real price can go up quickly.
Best for: Mid sized teams and agencies that care about technical page checks and bot data.

4. AthenaHQ
What it does: AthenaHQ covers the most models on this list: 11 in total, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, and Mistral. It uses credits, where one credit equals one AI answer recorded. It gives you a single GEO score, a Content Optimization Agent, and connections to Google Analytics 4, Shopify, and Webflow.
Price: Essential is free with 300 credits a month. Starter is $295 per month ($270 if paid yearly) for 3,600 credits across all 11 models. Enterprise has custom credit amounts and SSO.
Good: The widest model coverage, plus links to your analytics and website tools.
Not so good: Credits run out fast with daily tracking. For example, 30 prompts on 4 models every day uses about 3,600 answers a month, which is the whole Starter plan.
Best for: Teams that need Claude, Grok, and DeepSeek tracking along with analytics and CMS connections.

5. Scrunch AI
What it does: Scrunch AI does tracking and also helps deliver content to AI. The Core plan tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and Copilot for 125 prompts. It tracks AI bot visits and checks if your site is easy for AI crawlers to read. The Enterprise plan adds the Agent Experience Platform (AXP), which serves clean, structured versions of your pages to AI crawlers. Sitecore bought Scrunch AI in 2026.
Price: Core is $250 per month paid yearly (about $300 paid monthly) with 5 users. Agency Core is $500 per month. Enterprise is custom.
Good: Bot tracking plus a way to actively shape what AI crawlers see.
Not so good: On Core, prompts only refresh every 72 hours after the first 14 days. Gemini is not tracked. Users are capped at 5.
Best for: Large companies, especially those already using Sitecore.

Which one should you pick?
There is no single best tool. It depends on what you need most:
Daily tracking on the main AI tools at a low price: Lumirank
Data on what people are actually asking: Profound
Technical page audits and bot data: Otterly.AI
Tracking Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, and more: AthenaHQ
Serving content directly to AI crawlers: Scrunch AI

A good way to decide is to pick two tools, run them side by side for 14 days on your own key prompts, and see which one gives you clearer answers.

Read the full article at Lumirank: Top 5 Peec AI Alternatives in 2026

ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude: Which AI Should Marketers Use?

Lumirank.ai — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 07:06:47 +0000

A plain guide to picking the right AI assistant for your marketing work
Most marketers now use an AI assistant every day. The three big names are ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. All three can write, research and summarise. But they are not equally good at every job.

This post looks at what each one does well, where it falls short, and which one fits which kind of marketer.

The short answer
Claude is the best writer.
ChatGPT is the best all-rounder and the strongest with data.
Gemini is the best for quick research and for teams that live in Google Workspace.
Claude: best for writing
Claude’s writing sounds the most human. It uses fewer stiff, corporate phrases, so its drafts need less cleanup. This makes it a good choice for blog posts, newsletters and long guides.

Claude is also good at reading long files. You can give it reports, competitor PDFs or a pile of survey answers, and it will pull out the main points. With Claude Projects, you can save your brand guidelines once and reuse them in every chat.

The downside: Claude cannot create images. For heavy spreadsheet work, ChatGPT is usually the safer pick.

ChatGPT: best all-rounder
ChatGPT is quick at short copy. Ask it for ten ad headlines, email subject lines or social media hooks, and you get them in seconds.

Its biggest strength is data. You can upload a CSV from your ad account and ask it to clean the data, work out costs and draw charts. It runs real code in the background, so the maths is more reliable. It can also make images, and custom GPTs let you build small tools for tasks you repeat often.

The downside: long articles can need some editing to sound less generic.

Gemini: best for research and Google users
Gemini pulls answers from Google Search. This makes it handy for checking recent news, trending questions and competitor launches. It can also summarise YouTube videos.

If your team works in Gmail, Docs, Sheets and Drive, Gemini fits right in. It works inside those apps, so there is no copying and pasting between tools.
The downside: its default writing can feel flat and repetitive, so expect to edit more.

How they did in a real test
Lumirank gave all three tools the same task: write a content brief for a B2B marketing analytics company. In their results, Claude’s brief was the most complete and needed the least editing. ChatGPT’s brief was well organised and close to ready. Gemini’s brief was a solid starting point but needed more detail.

What do they cost?
All three have free plans. These are fine for light use, but you will hit usage limits quickly if you use them daily. The paid plans for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini each cost about $20 a month at the time of writing. Gemini’s paid plan also comes with 2TB of Google cloud storage.

Which one should you pick?
Freelancers paying for just one tool: ChatGPT. It covers the widest range of tasks.
Content and SEO writers: Claude. Cleaner drafts and better briefs.
Social media managers: ChatGPT for lots of post ideas fast. Claude for thoughtful LinkedIn posts.
Analysts and reporting teams: ChatGPT. It handles spreadsheets best.
Google Workspace teams: Gemini.
Agencies: Claude for client writing, plus ChatGPT for client reports.
Many teams use more than one. A common setup is Gemini for quick research, Claude for writing and ChatGPT for data

Keep these limits in mind
Check the facts. All three can misread a source or quote old prices.
They don’t replace your other tools. You still need SEO tools for rank tracking and schedulers like Buffer to publish posts.
They can’t tell you how AI search sees your brand. Writing content with AI is one thing. Knowing whether ChatGPT or Gemini recommends your brand to buyers needs a separate tracking tool.
Final thoughts
There is no single winner. Pick the tool that fixes your biggest problem. Choose Claude if writing is your main job. Choose ChatGPT if you need one tool that does a bit of everything. Choose Gemini if you want fast research and already use Google Workspace.

This post is based on Lumirank’s comparison, “Gemini vs ChatGPT vs Claude: Which AI Is Best for Marketing in 2026?”

How to Use AI to Find Leads on X (Twitter) Without Sounding Like a Bot

Lumirank.ai — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 18:46:40 +0000

If you have ever tried to find customers on X (Twitter), you know the feeling. Somewhere out there, someone is posting “does anyone know a good tool for this?” about exactly the problem you solve. But by the time you see it, the conversation has moved on, or ten other people have already replied.

The good news is that AI can now do most of the watching and sorting for you. The catch is that it should not do the talking on its own. Here is a simple way to think about it.

Why the old playbook stopped working
A few years ago, plenty of teams ran bots that blasted cold DMs or dropped links under any tweet that mentioned a keyword. That approach has aged badly. X now quietly pushes down replies that look automated or link-heavy, and people have learned to spot a sales pitch from a mile away. One glance at a profile full of copy-pasted replies, and they mute you.

So the goal has changed. It is no longer about reaching as many people as possible. It is about showing up in the right conversations, at the right moment, with something useful to say.

Step 1: Listen for problems, not keywords
Most people start by tracking their industry name or their competitor’s name. That brings in a flood of news, memes and opinions, and very few buyers.

A better idea is to listen for the words people use when they are stuck. Think of phrases like “looking for an alternative to…”, “frustrated with…”, or “any recommendations for…”. These are the moments when someone is ready to try something new.

Tools like X’s own search and API, or social listening apps such as Tweet Hunter or Brand24, can watch for these phrases around the clock. A no-code connector like Zapier or Make can then pass each matching post along to the next step.

Step 2: Let AI sort the signal from the noise
Even good search terms catch a lot of noise: jokes, students, competitors, and people who are just venting. This is where an AI model earns its keep.

You can ask a model like Claude or GPT to read each post and answer a few plain questions. Is this person likely to be a real buyer? How painful does their problem sound? Does our product actually help with it? Based on the answers, the AI gives the post a score. Anything below your bar gets dropped. Only the promising ones move forward.

This one step can turn hundreds of posts a day into a short, manageable list.

Step 3: Help first, sell later
For each promising post, have the AI draft a reply that simply helps. Answer the question. Share a tip. Point out a common mistake. No links, no “check out our product”.
It feels counterintuitive, but this is what makes people curious about you. When someone gets a genuinely helpful answer, they often click on the profile to see who wrote it. That is your soft introduction.

Step 4: Keep a human in the loop
This is the most important part. The AI writes drafts, but a person on your team approves every reply before it goes out.

A simple setup is to send each draft to a Slack channel, along with the original post and its score. Someone reads it, tweaks a word or two if needed, and hits approve. It takes seconds, and it protects your account and your reputation from awkward, robotic replies.

Step 5: Move to DMs only when invited
If the person replies, thanks you, or asks a follow-up question, the door is open. Now a direct message feels natural rather than pushy. Even then, ask before sharing anything: “I wrote a short guide on this, want me to send it over?”

Once a real conversation starts, log the contact in your CRM, such as HubSpot, so nothing slips through the cracks.

A bonus: helpful replies get noticed by AI too
Public conversations on X increasingly feed into AI assistants and answer engines. When your team consistently gives clear, useful answers on a topic, that trail of helpful replies can help your brand become associated with the problem you solve, well beyond Twitter.

How to get started this week
You do not need a big budget or a big team. Start small:

Write down ten to twenty phrases your ideal customers use when they are stuck.
Set up a search or listening tool to watch for them.
Write a short prompt that tells the AI how to score each post.
Create a Slack channel where drafts land for approval.
Run it for a few days without posting anything, just to check the quality.
Then go live, with a human approving every reply.
The whole idea fits in one sentence: let AI do the listening and the sorting, and let people do the talking. Do that, and X can become a steady source of warm conversations instead of a place where your messages get ignored.

This article is a shorter take inspired by the original guide on the Lumirank blog. Read the full version here: How to Automate Twitter Lead Generation Using AI in 2026.

10 Best AI Marketing Platforms in 2026

Lumirank.ai — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 05:12:44 +0000

Using AI for marketing used to mean typing a question into a chatbot and hoping for a good answer. Today, strong teams use separate tools for customer records, writing, search rankings, video, ad images, email, and tracking whether AI assistants recommend their brand.

To keep things concrete, picture Brewleaf, a small online tea brand with three people in marketing. It sells loose-leaf tea subscriptions and teapots. The team needs to publish blog posts, test ad designs, send customer emails, and find out whether ChatGPT and Gemini recommend its tea.

Before you read

Focused tools beat a general chatbot for jobs like ads, email, or video.
Count seats and credits. A low starting price can climb once three people need logins or video use drains the monthly credits.
Check AI recommendations.More shoppers ask AI assistants what to buy, so it is worth knowing whether your brand gets named.
Test with real material. Use your own logo, colors, and photos in free trials before paying for a year.

Prices below are monthly rates listed in October 2026. Plans change often, so confirm them on each company’s site.

How these tools fit together

Most teams end up with four stages. First, they learn from customer data, using tools like HubSpot and Triple Whale. Second, they create content with Jasper for writing, Canva for design, Synthesia for video, and AdCreative.ai for ad images. Third, they send and publish, using Klaviyo for email, Copy.ai for outreach, and Surfer SEO for articles. Finally, they measure results, with Triple Whale for ad returns and Lumirank for AI mentions.

The 10 platforms

HubSpot

HubSpot is a customer database with AI built in, called Breeze AI. Its AI helpers use your customer records to write blog posts and research leads. For Brewleaf, it could find past buyers who love strong black teas and draft a launch email for them.

The catch is cost. The Starter plan is $20 per seat a month, but the AI helpers need the Professional plan, which is about $890 a month for three seats and 2,000 contacts, plus extra credits for automated tasks. It suits teams that already keep their customers in one place.

Jasper

Jasper writes marketing copy in your brand’s own voice. You give it a style guide, product details, and sample posts, and it follows them. Brewleaf could upload its tasting notes and tone rules so every caption sounds warm and knowledgeable.

Creator costs $49 a month for one user. Pro costs $69 a month and includes five seats. There is only a 7-day trial, and it handles written copy only.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo sends emails and text messages for online stores, and it predicts customer behavior, such as when someone will reorder, how much they may spend, and who might leave. It connects to Shopify. If a Brewleaf customer buys tea every four weeks, Klaviyo can send a reorder reminder around day 25 with their usual blend ready in the cart.

It is free for up to 250 contacts. Paid plans start around $20 a month, and a list of 5,000 contacts usually costs $100 to $150. The bill grows as your list grows.

Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO helps blog posts rank on Google. It studies the top pages for a search term and checks things like length, headings, and the topics they cover. As you write, it gives a live score from 0 to 100. For a post on brewing green tea, it might suggest mentioning water temperature and steeping time. It can also draft an article from an outline.

Plans start at $49 a month, and teams usually need Pro at $182 a month to share the editor. Some writers chase the score and lose natural flow.

Synthesia

Synthesia turns a written script into a video with an AI presenter, so you don’t need a camera, microphone, or studio. Brewleaf could make a one-minute video showing how to clean a teapot, then have it translated so the presenter speaks Spanish or Japanese within minutes.

There is a free plan with a watermark. Starter is $29 a month for 10 minutes of video, and Creator is $89 a month for 30 minutes. It suits tutorials better than emotional stories.

AdCreative.ai

AdCreative.ai makes ad banners and social graphics. You upload your logo, colors, and photos, add a headline, and it produces dozens of designs, each with a predicted performance score. Brewleaf could turn sampler photos into about 30 ad sizes in a couple of minutes.

Plans for images cost $29 to $39 a month, while video ads need the Professional plan at about $249 a month. Cheaper plans have strict credit limits.

Canva

Canva is a design tool with AI features called Magic Studio, which are included in its Pro and Business plans. You can resize one design for many formats in a click and remove unwanted objects from product shots. Brewleaf could adapt a single teapot photo for five social channels in minutes.

Pro costs $15 a month for one user, and Business is about $20 to $25 per user, so roughly $60 to $75 for three people. There is a generous free plan. Heavy AI use can drain the monthly credits.

Copy.ai

Copy.ai has grown from a writing helper into a tool that automates sales and outreach routines. Brewleaf could give it a list of local cafes. The tool visits each website, finds the owner’s contact details, reads the menu, and drafts a personal pitch.

The Chat plan is $29 a month for up to five seats. The routines need the Agents plan, at about $249 a month. It takes longer to learn than a simple writing tool.

Triple Whale

Triple Whale is for online stores that want a clear picture of which ads really bring in sales. Ad platforms often claim credit for the same order, so Triple Whale uses its own tracking on your store to sort this out. Its AI assistant, Moby, answers questions in plain English, such as which ad brought the most repeat subscribers.

There is a free basic dashboard. Paid plans usually run about $150 to $350 a month, depending on how much your store sells.

Lumirank

Lumirank tracks whether AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews name your brand. Every day it records whether you are recommended, which competitors appear, and which websites the AI cites. Brewleaf could watch questions like “best organic loose-leaf tea.” If a rival is being named because of a magazine review, Brewleaf would know to approach that same magazine.

The free plan covers 10 questions on 2 AI models. Starter is $29 a month for 25 questions on 3 models, and Pro is $99 a month for 100 questions on all 6 models, with a 14-day trial and unlimited team seats. It tracks AI answers, not regular Google rankings, so you still need a normal SEO tool. Lumirank also published the original article this post is based on, so keep that in mind when you read its place on the list.

What a three-person team really pays

The starting price is rarely what a team pays. Once you add seats, credits, and contact limits, the monthly cost for three people looks very different, as the chart shows.

How to choose and test your tools

Please don’t buy all ten. Find your team’s biggest time-waster and test one tool at a time.

Find your bottleneck. Look at where your weekly hours go. If ad graphics take 15 hours, try Canva or AdCreative.ai. If repeat orders are slipping, start with Klaviyo.

Test with real material. Use your actual product photos and brand guidelines, not sample templates.

Count every seat. A $49 tool for one person can pass $200 once three teammates need access.

Check sales, not just output. Use Triple Whale or your customer database to confirm that more content leads to more profit.

Watch AI recommendations. Ask your first 10 customer questions in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, and see whether your brand is named

With clear goals and honest cost checks, you can save time on repetitive tasks and keep control of your creative work and brand voice.

Originally published on Lumirank: 10 Best AI Marketing Platforms in 2026

Best SEO Practices for Getting Named in AI Answers

Lumirank.ai — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 20:54:07 +0000

Meera runs a small shop and needs simple inventory software. A few years ago, she would have searched on Google and opened several results in separate tabs. Now she asks ChatGPT or Gemini one question: "What is the best inventory software for a small shop?" Within seconds she gets three tool names, their prices, and a short note on what each does well.

Getting into that answer works differently from ranking on a search page. The AI looks things up in the background, picks facts out of web pages, checks whether other websites agree, and then writes its recommendation.

How AI tools decide which brands to recommend

When an AI tool recommends software, it doesn't answer from memory, because what it learned in training is already out of date. It searches the web as the question comes in. In simple terms, it does four things:

It splits the question into smaller searches, such as one for prices, one for reviews, and one for features.
It runs those searches on engines like Bing and Google and collects pages. Ahrefs found that only 12% of the pages AI tools cited ranked in Google's top 10 for the original question, so a page that does well on one narrow topic can still be picked up.
It reads those pages and pulls out plain facts, such as price, features, and limits.
It checks whether independent sources, like review sites, forums, and videos, say the same thing. If they do, the tool recommends the product.

So your job has three parts: make your facts easy to find, easy to read, and confirmed by other people elsewhere on the web.

Make sure AI bots can actually see your pages

Google's bot has become good at running the scripts many websites use to show content after a page opens. The bots behind AI tools are different. A study by Vercel and MERJ, covering billions of bot visits, found that none of the major AI search bots run these scripts.

That is a problem if your price table or feature list only appears through a script. Take a made-up product called StockEase. A person visiting its site sees the price, $49 a month, and the full feature list. An AI bot visiting the same page may get an almost empty page with no price and no features. When the AI builds its shortlist, it leaves StockEase out because it can't confirm the basics.

The fix is to place key facts, such as prices, features, and integrations, directly in the page itself, so they are there the moment it loads.

Access is the other thing to check. Many sites blocked AI bots to keep their writing out of AI training, and some accidentally blocked the bots that power search answers as well. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity use separate bots for training and for search, so you can allow the search ones and still opt out of training. Ask your developer to review the robots.txt file, which tells bots which pages they may visit.

Write sentences that still make sense on their own

AI tools cut a page into short passages and judge each one separately. They often lift a single sentence straight into the answer, so every key sentence should carry its own facts. Three findings help here:

Put important facts early. In Kevin Indig's review of 18,012 ChatGPT citations, 44% came from the first 30% of the page.
Use real numbers instead of repeated keywords. In a Princeton and Georgia Tech study, adding statistics raised AI visibility by about 31% and adding quotes by about 41%, while repeating keywords lowered it by about 8%.
Avoid vague words like "it" and "this plan." A sentence that depends on the one before it loses its meaning when lifted out.

Compare two opening lines for StockEase. The first reads: "Looking for the best inventory software? Our top-rated tool makes tracking stock easy and helps your business grow." The second reads: "StockEase tracks inventory in real time, supports barcode scanning, and costs $49 a month with a 14-day free trial." The first gives an AI nothing to use. The second names the product, the features, the price, and the trial.

Fresh content helps too. Ahrefs found that pages cited by AI tools were about 25.7% newer than pages in regular search results. Show the date you last updated a page, and refresh prices whenever they change.

Get other websites to talk about you

Links from other sites used to be the main sign that a website could be trusted. AI tools also look at what independent sources say about a brand, much like a careful buyer would. They read your site to see what you claim, then check reviews, forums, and articles to see whether others agree.

Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that mentions of a brand across the web matched AI visibility about three times as closely as links did. Mentions on YouTube matched it most closely of all.

Other research shows where those mentions come from:

"Best of" lists and comparison articles made up 43.8% of the sites ChatGPT cited in one study of 750 shopping questions.
Muck Rack found that 84% of 25 million AI citations came from earned news and editorial coverage, and only 0.3% from paid placements.

This explains a common surprise. A product can rank well on Google and still be missing from AI answers, because the roundups AI tools read leave it out or show old prices. To change that:

Find the lists and review pages that AI tools cite for your category.
Send those editors your current prices and feature details.
Join relevant Reddit and forum threads with helpful answers rather than sales pitches.
Encourage happy customers to post short videos showing how the product works.
Track how often you are named, not where you rank

AI answers change from one run to the next. SparkToro and Gumshoe ran 12 questions about 3,000 times in total, and the same list of brands came up twice in fewer than one in a hundred tries. A fixed rank position doesn't mean much in that setting.

A better measure is your share of answers. If you ask the same question 40 times and your brand appears 16 times, your share is 40%. That number stays fairly steady even when the wording changes. Semrush also found that cited sources shifted noticeably within six weeks, so one check by hand can mislead you.

Clicks alone won't tell the whole story either. Pew Research found that people click links inside AI summaries on only about 1% of visits. Many people read the answer, remember the name, and search for the brand later, so being named is what counts.

Checking by hand takes hours, and tools such as Lumirank can do it every day. Even without a tool, trying 10 real customer questions each month gives you a useful starting picture.

Five steps to take this week
Check which bots can visit your site. Make sure the search bots from OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and Google are allowed in.
Put key facts in the page itself. Prices, features, integrations, and limits should appear as soon as the page loads, without needing a script.
Set up Bing's free webmaster tools. Add your sitemap and switch on IndexNow, a feature that tells Bing right away when a page changes. ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot lean on Bing.
Rewrite the top of your main product pages. Use plain, specific sentences that name the product, what it does, and what it costs.
Test 15 real customer questions. Ask them in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, note which articles and videos get cited, and keep your details up to date there.

None of this replaces regular SEO, because AI tools still rely on search indexes to find pages. Many of the numbers above show a link between two things, not proof of cause, and AI tools change quickly, so test what works for your own business.

Originally published on Lumirank: https://lumirank.ai/blog/best-seo-practices-for-ranking-in-ai-answers/

Traditional SEO vs GEO and AEO: From Getting Clicks to Getting Mentioned

Lumirank.ai — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 06:24:17 +0000

Not long ago, finding software meant typing a few words into Google and opening several results to compare them. Today, many buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Mode one detailed question and get a short list of recommended products. The AI has already done the comparing, so your brand is either on that list or it isn't part of the decision at all.

Traditional SEO (search engine optimization) is about getting people to click on your page in a list of search results. AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) are about getting your brand named inside the answer an AI tool writes, even if the reader never clicks a link.

The goal changes from a click to a mention

SEO helps your page show up near the top of a results list. AEO is about writing your pages so an AI tool can pull out a clear, direct answer from them. GEO is the bigger picture: everything that decides whether an AI tool recommends your brand. The term comes from a 2024 research paper by teams at Princeton, Georgia Tech, the Allen Institute for AI, and IIT Delhi. In everyday work, the two overlap a lot, so many people treat them as one effort.

People are already clicking less. Pew Research found that when Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a regular result on 8% of visits, compared with 15% when there was no summary. They clicked a link inside the summary on only about 1% of visits.

Think of an operations manager at a 40-person architecture firm who wants billing software that works with QuickBooks. Before, they would search a few keywords and open four or five results. Now they ask one full question and read one answer that names four products. If your product is one of those four, you are on the shortlist before anyone visits your website. If it isn't, you were never compared.

One question turns into many searches

An AI tool doesn't usually search for the buyer's exact sentence. It breaks the question into smaller ones, such as "time tracking for architects," "QuickBooks sync," and "pricing for 40 users," and searches for each. Google calls this query fan-out. The result is that your page doesn't have to rank first for the main question to be used in the answer.

Ahrefs studied 15,000 prompts and found that only 12% of the pages AI tools cited ranked in Google's top 10 for the original question. For ChatGPT it was 8%.

Different AI tools also look in different places:

Google's AI features and Gemini use Google's search results.
ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot rely heavily on Bing. Seer Interactive found that 87% of ChatGPT's search citations matched Bing's top results.
Perplexity uses its own search.
Claude draws partly on Brave Search.

So it's worth making sure your site is set up in Bing too, using Bing Webmaster Tools and a feature called IndexNow that tells Bing right away when a page changes.

Make sure AI tools can read your site

AI companies use different bots for different jobs. Some bots collect text to train AI models, and others look up pages to answer questions in real time. Many websites blocked all AI bots to protect their content from training, and by doing so they also stopped showing up in AI answers. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity each have a bot used for search: OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, and PerplexityBot. If you want to appear in their answers, these should not be blocked.

There is a second problem. Many websites load prices and details only after the page opens, using scripts. Google's bot can handle that, but Vercel and MERJ studied billions of AI bot visits and found that none of the major ones can. If your price only appears after a script runs, an AI tool may see a blank space instead. The fix is to put important facts, like prices, plan details, and features, directly into the page text.

Write so each sentence makes sense on its own

AI tools don't read a page from top to bottom like a person. They pick out short pieces that answer a specific question and leave the rest. Research gives a few useful clues:

Put the answer first. Kevin Indig studied 18,012 ChatGPT citations and found that 44% came from the first 30% of the page.
Use real facts instead of repeating keywords. In the Princeton study, adding statistics improved visibility by about 31% and adding quotes by about 41%, while repeating keywords lowered it by about 8%.
Make every key sentence complete. Microsoft advises writing sentences that still make sense when taken out of the page.

Here is a simple example using a made-up product. A weak opening would be: "Our software makes billing simple for teams of all sizes." A stronger one would be: "BeaconTime connects with QuickBooks Online in both directions and costs $12 per user a month." The first tells an AI tool almost nothing. The second names the product, what it does, and the price.

Freshness matters too. Ahrefs found that pages cited by AI tools were about 25.7% newer on average than pages in regular search results. Keep your prices and features up to date, and show when the page was last updated.

What others say about you matters most

In traditional SEO, links from other websites count as votes for your site. AI tools lean more on whether several independent sources talk about your brand in a similar way. In an Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, mentions of a brand across the web were much more closely tied to AI visibility than links were: 0.664 compared with 0.218.

Most of those mentions come from places other than your own site. In one study of ChatGPT, "best of" list articles made up 43.8% of the pages it cited. Muck Rack found that 84% of the sources AI tools cited in May 2026 were earned news coverage, and only 0.3% were paid or sponsored content.

This explains a common surprise. A product can rank fourth on Google and still never appear in ChatGPT. When you check which sources ChatGPT used, you often find a few "best software" articles that either leave the product out or list old pricing. A link from a random blog won't solve that. Getting your correct details into those specific articles will.

Measuring results is different

In an AI answer there is no "position two." Researchers at SparkToro and Gumshoe asked the same kinds of questions nearly 3,000 times and found it was extremely rare to get the same list of brands twice. But if you repeat a question many times, the share of answers that mention your brand stays fairly steady. If your brand shows up in 15 of 50 answers, your share is 30%, and that is the number to follow over time.

The sources AI tools use also change quickly. Profound found that 40% to 59% of the websites cited for the same questions changed within a month. One quick check by hand can easily give the wrong picture.

Website visits alone also don't tell the whole story. Many people read an AI recommendation and then search for the brand name later. You can still catch some visits by looking for traffic tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com and the AI Assistant channel in Google Analytics 4.

Side by side

Traditional SEO

Goal: A click on your page
How people search: Short typed keywords
What builds trust: Links from other sites
How you measure: Ranking and visits

AEO

Goal: A clear, direct answer taken from your page
How people search: Direct questions
What builds trust: Accurate, well-organized facts
How you measure: Featured answers and citations

GEO

Goal: Your brand named in an AI answer
How people search: Long questions split into smaller searches
What builds trust: Mentions across other websites, videos, and reviews
How you measure: Share of answers and sources cited

SEO still matters

GEO builds on SEO instead of replacing it. AI tools don't answer product questions from memory, because what they learned is months old. They search the web as you ask and read the pages they find. If your site loads slowly, is hard to find on Google or Bing, or has thin pages, the AI may never open it. Regular search also still sends real visitors and is far easier to track than AI mentions.

It's also wise to be careful with big claims. Google's John Mueller said in 2025 that no AI system uses a file called llms.txt, and Ahrefs found that adding extra code tags (schema) to 1,885 pages did not increase AI citations. Many of the numbers in this article show a link between two things, not proof that one causes the other, and many come from companies that sell SEO tools. AI products change fast, so treat these findings as a guide and test them for your own business.

What to do this week
Check that your site settings allow the AI search bots mentioned above.
Open your pricing and product pages and make sure the key facts appear in the page text itself.
Set up your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and turn on IndexNow.
Rewrite the opening of your five most important pages so each key sentence names the product, what it does, and a real number.
Write down 20 questions your buyers ask. Ask each one several times in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Mode, and note how often your brand appears and which sources are cited.

That is a lot of answers to record, so you may want a tracking tool later. Doing the first round yourself is still worth it, because you will see exactly which articles and websites the AI trusts.

Originally published on Lumirank: Traditional SEO vs GEO and AEO: How Search and AI Answers Differ