Conducting AI research with SE Ranking’s AI Search Competitive Research module

If you want to understand how a brand really shows up across today’s AI answers, SE Ranking’s AI Search tool puts everything in one place. AI Search was specifically developed to help brands—be it yours, a client’s or a competitor’s—evaluate their visibility across Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and, of course, ChatGPT—all while using the same workflow. Benchmark yourself against competitors, discover the prompts and topics that surface your brand, and spot quick wins where rivals get mentioned or linked and you don’t. It’s also perfect for content planning—think size guides, how-to care pages, and comparison content AI loves to cite—and for source-first outreach, so you can earn inclusion in future answers. Here’s how the tool helps day to day. First, it shows whether your brand is mentioned or linked in AI answers and how this compares to others in your space. Second, it helps you discover which queries trigger those answers so you can prioritize the exact topics to optimize. And third, it uncovers

trendlines to help you understand momentum—are you gaining ground in AI answers or falling behind? Put simply, AI Search tells you where you appear, why you appear, and what to do next. To start working with the tool, go to the Research tab using the navigation menu, followed by Competitive Research. Then, enter your brand, and don’t forget to select the country for analysis and choose if you want to get results for the entire domain with subdomains, only the domain, or an exact URL. Click Analyze when you’re ready. Once the report loads up, go to the AI Search subtab to access data on AI search engines and chatbots. Here, you’ll see what period you’re getting data for right at the top, and using the engine switcher dropdown, you can instantly change the visible data from AI Overviews to AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity. The view refreshes, but the layout stays consistent for the most part so you can compare apples to apples across engines. When AI Overviews are selected, you’ll first see four performance cards: Mentions that shows how often your brand appears in AIO answers (along with the share and dynamics), Link presence shows

how many times your domain is actually linked from those answers (again with the share and dynamics), Average position reveals your typical placement inside AIOs and remember that lower is better here, and AIO traffic provides an estimate of visits driven from AI Overviews to your site. Below, two trend charts help you read momentum over time: Link presence dynamics plots link counts alongside Average position so you can see visibility and prominence together, while Traffic dynamics contrasts Overall traffic, Organic, and Traffic from AIOs to show whether increased AI exposure is turning into real sessions. Right below the charts, the query table lists the prompts and questions that trigger your brand in AI Overviews. For each row you’ll see the prompt, search volume, estimated Traffic, a Type badge showing whether you’re getting a Link or only a Mention, and a snippet with the source URLs the overview cites. Use the top controls—Include/Exclude, Search volume, Type, and Filter—to zero in on high-value opportunities.

Click Show more in any snippet to inspect the exact references and context. This is where you identify wins to double down on and gaps to close with targeted content updates, structured data, and outreach to the sources already being cited. When you switch to AI Mode, the layout remains familiar: a table of prompts with a Type badge (which could either be a Link or a Mention) and a snippet built from the sources Google’s chat experience cites—which, by the way, is great for confirming which tutorials or guides (like YouTube or wiki-style explainers) are earning the link. In ChatGPT, you’ll see rows labeled Mention or Link along with richer, paragraph-style snippets and the exact references it leans on. Use this to spot topics where you’re mentioned but not yet linked and strengthen those pages or cited sources. Plus, we provide similar metrics on Gemini and Perplexity to help you craft content that matches what these AI platforms prefer to show. To compare AI Overviews data for several domains, switch on Compare with competitors with your Analyzed brand in place,

then add rivals to get clickable, high-level cards for Missing, Common, and Unique keywords, as well as Coverage, plus a Key metrics comparison table that lines up each brand across Keywords or Prompts, Mentions, Link presence, Average position, Traffic from AIOs, and Coverage. Use the keyword toggles here—which are also clickable—as well as the Competitors filter in the table below to zero in on the exact prompts where a competitor wins a Link or Mention, review the snippet sources, and turn those gaps into immediate content or outreach actions. Here are a few practical ways to turn this into wins: Category benchmarking: Add two or three direct competitors and scan the Key metrics comparison to learn who dominates which themes. Use Coverage and Link presence to prioritize the topics where you’re closest to overtaking them. Prompt selection: Build a working list of prompts/queries from the table that already trigger brand mentions across engines. These become your north star for content briefs and tracking.

Source-first outreach: Look at the snippet sources AI engines cite most for your priority topics. Those are the publications and reference pages to contribute to, update, or partner with—so your brand becomes a default citation next time. Content planning: Lean into how-to, care/cleaning, sizing/conversion, and comparison pages—formats that consistently appear in AI answers. Map each opportunity query to a specific page update or net-new page. Measure momentum: Use the Link presence dynamics and Traffic dynamics charts to see whether your changes move the needle. If positions rise but links don’t, revisit on-page clarity and the trust signals AI engines use to select sources. And there you have it! Save time and grow your brand’s visibility across AI answers with SE Ranking’s AI Search—one place to analyze AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, and more. Note that AI Search is currently available with the AI Search add-on which also offers AI results tracking of up to 200 prompts, and access to SE Visible—our standalone product that monitors and benchmarks brands across AI platforms, tracking mentions,

links, sentiment, prompts, and sources, with competitive comparisons and trend insights. If you have any questions, reach out to our team or visit the Knowledge Base. Thanks for choosing SE Ranking, and happy optimizing!