AI Search — Competitive Analysis: SEMrush AI Visibility Toolkit & Position Tracking

Researched on April 18, 2026 from the following SEMrush product pages:

Product Group A: AI Visibility Toolkit (`/ai-seo/`)

SEMrush has built an entirely new product line around tracking brand presence inside LLM responses — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot — not just Google SERP rankings. The sub-pages (/perception/, /narrative-drivers/, /questions/) are all entry points to the same underlying product: AI Brand Narrative Tracking.

AI Visibility Overview

The top-level dashboard across the entire AI visibility product:

Overall AI visibility score and share of voice across all monitored LLM platforms
Clear priority list of what to fix to improve visibility
Monitor relevant brand mentions and citations, filterable by platform, source, or intent
Daily visibility tracking for priority prompts
Growth recommendations surfaced automatically

Prompt Research

Keyword research equivalent for the AI era:

Discover real prompts/questions people are asking AI in a given industry
AI Volume — how often a specific prompt is asked across AI platforms
Topic Difficulty — how competitive a prompt is (how many brands compete for that mention)
Intent Analysis — informational, transactional, navigational
Browse prompts by industry to uncover trending, high-value topics to base content on
Analyze AI responses for each prompt to see which brands get cited and which sources are used

AI Competitor Gap Analysis

Enter up to 3 competitor domains
Side-by-side comparison: AI visibility score, share of voice, sentiment
Identify the exact prompts where competitors are mentioned but your brand isn’t
See which sources AI platforms cite for competitors (so you can build similar authority)
Get specific, actionable steps to close visibility gaps
Topic gap analysis — topics competitors are “owning” in AI that you’re absent from

Brand Performance / AI Brand Narrative Tracking

(Covers the /brand-performance/, /perception/, /narrative-drivers/, and /questions/ pages — all are facets of the same product)

Perception tab:

How each AI platform describes and positions your brand
Positive vs negative sentiment score per platform (ChatGPT may describe you differently than Perplexity)
Overall brand health score in LLM responses
Gaps and weaknesses in how AI currently perceives you — with recommendations

Narrative Drivers tab:

What topics and attributes are driving your positive mentions (e.g., “affordable”, “fast delivery”, “local expertise”)
What topics are driving negative mentions or causing you to be excluded
Understand why AI cites you (or doesn’t)

AI Questions tab:

All questions people ask AI that relate to your brand or category
Which ones you currently appear in vs which ones you’re missing
Prioritised by potential impact

ROI Reporting (coming soon):

Generate AI visibility analysis reports in one click
Combine AI visibility with SEO and traffic metrics in a single report
Connect Google Analytics to attribute actual traffic and conversions to AI visibility efforts

Product Group B: Position Tracking (`/position-tracking/`)

Traditional keyword rank tracker extended with AI search:

Core Rank Tracking

Daily keyword position tracking on Google, Bing, and other search engines
Any location (country, city, ZIP code) — supporting local SEO clients
Mobile vs desktop separate tracking
1,000s of keywords per project

AI Search Tracking (new addition)

Google AI Overview (AIO) tracking — detects when your page appears in Google’s AI-generated summary at the top of results for a keyword
ChatGPT rank tracking — tracks whether your brand appears when ChatGPT answers a specific question; directly in the same rank tracker
Traditional and AI search competitors are treated separately (they differ more than expected)

SERP Feature Tracking

Per-keyword visibility in:

Featured snippets
Local packs (Google Maps 3-pack)
Knowledge panels
Image packs
People Also Ask
AI Overviews (as above)

% of total search visibility across all tracked keywords vs competitors
Trend chart — are you gaining or ceding share?

Alerts

Custom notifications for critical position changes
Configurable thresholds and delivery channels

Reporting

Auto-generated PDF reports using built-in PDF editor
Looker Studio dashboard integration
Historical ranking data available

SEMrush’s Core Narrative

The message across all these pages:

“AI search is not the future — it’s now. 50% of queries never leave the AI response. If you’re not mentioned in AI, you don’t exist for those users. Traditional SEO rankings no longer tell the full story.”

Supporting stats SEMrush cites:

AI-generated answers now handle a significant and growing share of informational queries
Brand mentions in AI responses directly influence purchase decisions
Businesses that appear in AI recommendations see measurably higher click-through to their site for navigational queries