We asked four AI engines which AI visibility tools they recommend
Original research · Data collected 27 July 2026 · 40 answers · Written by the Kartafla team
Everyone in this category publishes a "best tools" list. We wanted to know what the AI engines themselves say — so we asked them 10 real buying questions and counted the answers.
Profound was named most often (19 of 40 answers), but the headline finding is disagreement: only 4 of 11 tools were named by all four engines, and each engine had a different favourite. Gemini named a tool in every answer; ChatGPT named none at all in 5 of 10. The engines overwhelmingly cited third-party roundups rather than vendor sites. Kartafla — our own tool — was named 0 times.
How we checked: We asked 10 commercial questions to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini on 27 July 2026, one run per question per engine, giving 40 answers. For each answer we recorded which of 11 named vendors appeared and which URLs were cited. Every question was answered by every engine (10/10 coverage). Limitations are listed at the bottom of this page and they matter — read them before quoting these numbers.
Which tools the engines named most
Across all 40 answers, counting every time a tool was named:
| Tool | Times named | Named by |
|---|---|---|
| Profound | 19 | 4 of 4 engines |
| Peec AI | 18 | 4 of 4 engines |
| SE Ranking | 14 | 3 of 4 engines |
| Semrush | 14 | 4 of 4 engines |
| Otterly.AI | 11 | 3 of 4 engines |
| Ahrefs | 10 | 3 of 4 engines |
| AthenaHQ | 6 | 2 of 4 engines |
| Scrunch AI | 6 | 4 of 4 engines |
| Writesonic | 5 | 3 of 4 engines |
| Evertune | 1 | 1 of 4 engines |
| Kartafla (us) | 0 | 0 of 4 engines |
| Rankscale | 0 | 0 of 4 engines |
Counts are mentions across answers, not a quality ranking. A tool named often is one the engines know about — which is precisely the thing this category sells.
The engines barely agree with each other
This was the clearest finding. Only 4 of the 11 tools we tracked were named by all four engines — Profound, Peec AI, Semrush, Scrunch AI. Every engine had a different most-named tool, and the volume of naming varied enormously.
| Engine | Answers naming no tool | Total mentions | Distinct tools | Most named |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 5 of 10 | 11 | 6 | Profound (4) |
| Claude | 4 of 10 | 18 | 8 | Peec AI (4) |
| Perplexity | 3 of 10 | 21 | 8 | Peec AI (6) |
| Gemini | 0 of 10 | 54 | 9 | Semrush (9) |
Gemini named a tool in every one of its 10 answers. ChatGPT declined to name any tool in 5 of 10, often answering with criteria instead of products. In raw mentions that is roughly 4.9× more naming from Gemini than ChatGPT.
The practical consequence: "we rank well in AI search" is close to meaningless as a single claim. Visibility in Gemini says little about visibility in ChatGPT, and a tool that tracks one engine is measuring one quarter of the picture.
What the engines actually cite
Across these answers the engines cited 343 links spanning 194 distinct domains. The most-cited:
| Domain | Times cited |
|---|---|
| semrush.com | 8 |
| reddit.com | 8 |
| en.wikipedia.org | 8 |
| therankmasters.com | 7 |
| tismo.ai | 6 |
| wediacorp.com | 6 |
| nightwatch.io | 6 |
| frase.io | 5 |
| rankability.com | 5 |
| builtin.com | 5 |
Vendor websites are a small minority. What the engines lean on is third-party roundups, community discussion, and reference sites — the "10 best AI visibility tools" genre, Reddit threads, and encyclopedia entries. Citation counts per answer also varied by engine: ChatGPT cited sources in 6 of 10 answers (9.8 links on average); Claude cited sources in 9 of 10 answers (3.5 links on average); Perplexity cited sources in 10 of 10 answers (7.5 links on average); Gemini cited sources in 10 of 10 answers (13.5 links on average).
The practical consequence: the highest-leverage work for AI visibility is usually not on your own website. It is getting written about, accurately, on the sites the engines already trust.
Where we came in: 0 out of 40
Kartafla was named in 0 of 40 answers. Zero. We build an AI visibility tool, we ran this study with it, and it found that the engines have never heard of us.
We are publishing that for two reasons. The first is that a study of who gets recommended, run by a vendor who quietly omits their own result, is marketing wearing a lab coat — and you should discount any such page you find, including ours if we ever do it. The second is that it is the honest demonstration of the product's premise: a new company can be genuinely useful and completely invisible to the engines at the same time, and you cannot fix that until you measure it.
The data above also tells us exactly why. We are not in the roundups, not discussed in the communities, and not cited by the reference sites the engines lean on. That is the work, and it is the same work this study would prescribe for any brand starting from zero.
Limitations — read these before quoting the numbers
- One run per question per engine. These models are non-deterministic; ask again tomorrow and the wording, and some of the names, will change. This is a snapshot, not a ranking, and a single run cannot separate a real preference from a coin flip.
- Detection is limited to 11 named vendors. Mentions are counted for tools we listed in advance, so a tool we did not list could be recommended constantly and score zero here. Several such tools appear in the answer text — this measures our list, not the whole market.
- 10 questions is a small sample, chosen by us, in English only. Different phrasing surfaces different tools.
- We sell one of the products measured. We chose the questions and the vendor list. We have published our own zero and the full method so you can weigh that, but it is not a neutral third-party study and we are not going to call it one.
- Point in time. Collected 27 July 2026. AI answers move quickly; treat anything here as stale within months.
Frequently asked questions
Which AI visibility tool do AI engines recommend most?
Across 40 answers collected on 27 July 2026, Profound was named most often (19 times), followed by Peec AI (18) and SE Ranking (14). The engines disagree far more than that ordering suggests: only 4 of the 11 tools we tracked were named by all four engines.
Do ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini give the same answer?
No, and it isn't close. In this run Gemini named a tool in all 10 of its answers (54 mentions in total), while ChatGPT named no tool at all in 5 of 10 answers (11 mentions in total) — roughly 4.9× more naming from Gemini than ChatGPT. Each engine also had a different most-named tool. Optimising for one engine tells you very little about the others.
What do AI engines cite when recommending tools?
Mostly third-party roundups, not vendor websites. The 343 citations in this run spanned 194 distinct domains, led by semrush.com, reddit.com, en.wikipedia.org. Being written about on sites the engines already trust mattered more than anything on the vendors' own sites.
Where does Kartafla rank in this study?
Nowhere. Kartafla was named in 0 of 40 answers. We ran this study with our own tool and published our own zero, because a visibility study that quietly omits the publisher's result isn't a study.
How was this study run?
We asked 10 real buying questions to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini on 27 July 2026 — one run per question per engine, 40 answers in total — and recorded which tools each answer named and which sources it cited. Full method and limitations are on the page.