And that’s where Ahrefs’ Brand Radar comes in.
It’s one of the fastest-growing tools in AI brand visibility, with 100M+ prompts, 6+ AI indexes, and requires zero setup.
Below, I share my favorite use cases and actionable workflows to turn Brand Radar’s insights into measurable growth for your brand. Let’s dig in.
Unlike traditional SEO metrics, AI answers are non-deterministic—they change from query to query, and even the same prompt can return different citations each time.
That makes it difficult to track brand visibility in AI search manually.
Most AI tools only let you track a handful of prompts to see how results shift over time. Brand Radar goes further: it aggregates thousands of prompts and responses across multiple AI search platforms.
Instead of only monitoring what you already know, it gives you a database of potential opportunities and ideas, helping you spot new growth angles as they emerge.
You can search for specific brands, products, people, and/or topics to see how various AI search platforms respond to them, while also uncovering fresh opportunities you might not have thought to check.
But, at the core of Brand Radar are filters. This is where the magic happens.
The filters let you isolate exact scenarios where the entity you searched appears or where it doesn’t but should. For example:
| Use case | Filter settings |
|---|---|
| Get stats about only your branded searches. | Query contains {your brand} |
| Get stats about all your brands and sub-brands. | Query contains {your brand} AND {sub-brand 1} AND {sub-brand 2} etc. |
| Analyze when and how AI includes your content in responses. | Response contains {your brand} |
| See how often AI answers link to your content. | Citation contains {your domain} |
| Analyze how often a particular page gets cited in AI responses. | Citation contains {URL} |
| See how an entire content hub or website segment performs in AI search. | Citation contains {path} |
| Find branded content gaps you need to fill, so you control the answer. | Query OR response contains {your brand} AND citation does not contain {your domain} |
| Find when AI does not recommend your brand for a branded query. Rare situation. Indicates a perception problem. | Query contains {your brand} AND response does not contain {your brand} |
| Find unbranded queries for which you have strong visibility. | Query does not contain {your brand} AND response OR citation contains {your brand} |
| Discover unbranded topics that AI strongly connects to your brand. | Citation contains {your domain} AND response AND query don’t contain {your brand} |
| Assess your topic coverage in AI responses. | Query OR response contains {topic} AND citation contains {your domain} |
| Assess brand gaps against competitors in AI responses. | Citation doesn’t contain {your domain} AND citation contains {competitor 1} OR {competitor 2} etc. |
| Find content angles or niches in your industry that aren’t covered by established competitors. | Query contains {your topic/industry} AND citation does not contain {your competitor’s domain(s)} |
The combinations are endless. You can also nest filters within filters by creating groups.
For instance, if you wanted to check queries that don’t include your brand and where the response or citation does, here’s how you could set that up:
Once you understand how the filters work, the next step is putting them into action.
10 Brand Radar workflows you can use today
Brand Radar does more than spot where your brand shows up. It can also help you turn those insights into workflows that improve visibility, close gaps, and strengthen your competitive position in AI search.
Below are ten practical ways to do exactly that.
When auditing your brand for performance in AI search, you’ll need to assess both the outcome (mentions in AI responses) and the causes (brand searches and visibility across the web).
Brand Radar allows you to analyze both.
Start by entering your brand name and benchmarking your current mentions, citations, impressions, and AI Share of Voice:
- Mentions are the number of results that mention the entity at least once.
- Citations are the AI results that cite the entity at least once as a source.
- Impressions are mentions that are weighted by Google search volume to estimate potential exposure.
- AI Share of Voice is the percentage of brand impressions out of the total impressions for responses that mention any tracked brand.
You can do this across 6+ AI indexes, like AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, to see which platforms frequently mention your brand in their responses.
You can also easily check growth in your brand’s search demand and web visibility over time:
If you manage multiple brands, you can add all of them to the brand field to track them as a group and get their combined metrics:
These stats are great for getting directional feedback on whether your brand’s visibility is growing or declining in AI search.
One of the most valuable things Brand Radar does is help you protect your narrative by checking how your brand is actually mentioned in AI responses.
It’s important to spot inaccuracies, outdated messaging, or negative sentiment before they spread, and correct the sources shaping them.
For instance, you can check for things like:
- Incorrect company details, like name, address, or phone number, pulled from outdated sources.
- Inconsistencies in brand messaging, like old taglines or content from past website designs.
- Brand sentiment, like whether your brand is mentioned positively or negatively.
- How high up your brand is mentioned within the response
- How many other brands are also mentioned in the response
- Whether your brand stands out as a clear choice within the response
You can do this by searching for your brand and navigating to the AI responses tab in Brand Radar. Then, choose the AI index you want to analyze:
You’ll see a list of responses that look like this:
If you see thousands of responses, it helps to filter them into smaller groups. For example, you could look at:
- Queries containing your brand to see what AI says about you for your branded searches.
- Queries containing a specific topic to see how strongly AI connects your brand to the topic.
- Queries containing a competitor’s name to see how often AI recommends your brand instead of or alongside the competitor.
- Responses containing your brand to see a list of all queries (including unbranded) you show up for.
- Citations containing your website, even if the query or response doesn’t mention your brand.
Look for patterns in what AI answers say about you, especially when they get things wrong or when your branding is inconsistent. It helps to list these queries and the sources cited so you can overcome misinformation and brand inconsistencies.
Repeat this process for every AI search platform you want to analyze. You may notice that different patterns emerge for each platform.
AI visibility isn’t just about whether your brand shows up. It’s also about what topics AI search platforms strongly associate you with.
Brand Radar lets you measure these connections by searching for your brand and key topics at the same time:
It’s best to search for one topic at a time to gauge the strength of your brand’s connection.
For example, within AI search, Toyota is more strongly connected to the topic of hybrid cars than SUVs (above) since it has a higher AI Share of Voice and search demand:
You can also run a brand search on its own and use the filters to assess things like:
- Queries containing both your brand and main topic. This helps you see what topics or product categories searchers strongly connect to your brand name.
- Queries containing your brand and responses containing a specific topic. This helps you see what topics AI systems mention when talking about your brand.
- Queries containing the topic and responses containing your brand. This helps you see what unbranded searches AI systems select your brand to be part of the answer.
You can use these insights to benchmark the topics you already have a strong association with in AI answers.
To benchmark your brand’s AI visibility against competitors, search your brand and then add one or more competitors like so:
You can also use our AI suggest feature to automatically populate your top competitors:
The Overview tab will show your brand against your competitors. You can assess each brand’s AI visibility metrics like mentions, impressions, and AI Share of Voice.
You can also see a platform breakdown to assess visibility in any AI search tools that matter most to you.
When you click into each platform, you’ll be able to access the exact AI responses and queries that mention each brand:
- Only brand: This report will show you queries and AI answers where the only brand mentioned is the one you’ve selected. It is great for assessing brand-specific queries and responses.
- With others: This report shows queries and/or responses that contain all the brands you’re comparing. It is great for assessing topics that are likely to mention you alongside competitors.
- Others only: This report shows queries that only mention the other brands you’re comparing against. It is great for finding topics that mention your competitors but not you.
These reports show directional growth over time and help you identify competitors that may be gaining in AI visibility rather quickly.
You can also use them to find topic gaps where competitors are mentioned, but your brand isn’t. Start by adding a topic to your search and then compare the AI Share of Voice of each brand for the topic:
You can also go to the Others only report to see AI responses about the topic that only contain your competitors to get a sense of content gaps you may need to fill.
Analyze the responses to see what topics, features, and attributes each brand is connected to:
These AI responses are a great data source for analyzing your positioning against competitors and also seeing how LLMs view your brand compared to theirs.
This gives you leverage. You’re not just tracking competitors, you’re spotting where to expand visibility before they pull ahead.
You can also check out the Cited domains and Cited pages reports to identify the top sources mentioning each brand:
These reports show you the websites that are frequently cited in AI responses and how visible each brand is within them. Look for sources that mention your competitor more than you and see how you can increase your mentions within them, too.
There are so many possibilities here, depending on what competitive insights matter most to your stakeholders.
Brand Radar can support your content strategy by:
- Identifying pages or content hubs that should be cited in AI responses but aren’t
- Finding topic gaps against your competitors
- Uncovering untapped topics your competitors have yet to discover
For example, you can run a blank search in Brand Radar by leaving all fields empty. Then, use the citation filter and add a specific URL:
This will show you all AI responses that cite this URL. To analyze an entire website segment, use the path setting instead.
If you search for specific pages that are core to your brand but they’re not being cited in many AI responses, this could be an opportunity to rewrite the content and optimize it better for AI visibility.
Optimize the pages with:
- Clearer, more direct writing
- Using BLUF (bottom line up front)
- Hierarchical heading structure
- Declarative sentences
You could also use AI Content Helper to remove any guesswork. Just add the main query you’d like to optimize the page for and the page URL.
Then, the tool will help you identify the best intent for the content automatically:
Our team has designed AI Content Helper for the AI era. It uses similar math and processes to AI search engines.
For example, it identifies related fan-out queries and calculates cosine similarity for each topic. As you write, a colored highlight appears showing you how well you cover each topic in your content:
Since you’ll be working with existing content on the live page, start by assessing how self-contained each topic is. You may need to reorganise the structure if your topics are scattered all over the place.
Once you’ve contained sections on like topics together, then work on rewriting them for clarity.
That’s where starting with the bottom line up front helps. It’s the idea of starting with the most important information. Humans and AI search engines prioritise introductory sentences, so don’t waste your words here. Get straight to the point instead.
You can also use Brand Radar to help you uncover opportunities your competitors have yet to write about, expanding your topical coverage.
Start by entering your main topic:
Then, check out the queries and answers for each AI search platform you care about showing up on. Try filtering the queries or responses to exclude your brand and competitors.
You’ll be left with a list of untapped queries for which you can create content to increase your AI visibility before your competitors. Pop these into AI Content Helper to get instant content roadmaps you can send to your writers straight away.
There are two ways to find your most popular pages getting mentioned in AI responses.
The first is in Brand Radar and is ideal if you have not set up AI tracking in your web analytics tool. Enter your brand name and navigate to the Cited domains report.
By running a blank search, you will see all AI queries and responses in our database that cite your domain (once you follow the next steps), ensuring you don’t miss anything. But you may find more results that seem irrelevant or of weaker intent.
Scroll until you see the list of all domains and click on the value under “Pages” for your website:
If you ran a blank search, try using the Domain name filter (under the graph) to narrow your search:
Either way, you’ll end up with a list of pages on your website that show up in AI responses ranked in descending order.
The second method is to check your analytics tool against this list to see which pages people click on from AI platforms. Just because you’re cited in AI responses doesn’t mean people will click the pages.
You can use tools like Ahrefs’ Web Analytics to get this data.
What you’re looking for is a list of the top pages visited most from AI platforms:
Cross-check these pages against those in Brand Radar. For each one, check the responses the page is cited in:
That way, you can identify the patterns of queries and responses that lead to higher click-through rates to your website from AI searches.
You can repeat this process for each AI index to identify click-through patterns between AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and so on.
Different AI platforms prefer different types of content. With Brand Radar, you can analyze cited pages to see which formats dominate for your topic — whether it’s statistics posts, lists, expert guides, tool comparisons, or original research.
To find these, search for either your brand, a competitor, or a topic. Then, check out the Cited pages report:
Look for patterns in the type of content that is most frequently cited for the topic. Once you know the formats AI leans on, you can adapt your content strategy to match.
The goal is to align your content with what AI already trusts, so your brand has a higher chance of being cited, and so you retain control over the narrative in AI-generated responses.
You can easily measure the growth or decline of your brand mentions around the web in Brand Radar’s Web Visibility reports:
This report shows you all the places around the web where your brand is mentioned. By checking the Web pages report, you’ll get a full list of the exact pages and your brand mention within them.
It is worth analyzing your brand mentions on other websites for a few reasons:
- Update outdated information about your brand
- Provide correct information to minimize inaccurate responses in AI search
- Find potential partnership opportunities with sites that frequently mention you positively
- Assess general brand sentiment around the web (positive, neutral, negative mentions)
- Get your brand mentioned closely to your preferred topics or other big brands in your industry
As a low-hanging fruit opportunity, you could also check out the Cited domains and Cited pages reports to find pages that both mention your brand and get cited most in AI answers.
Your brand mentions on these pages make a bigger impact on how your brand is represented in AI responses. This is important to monitor because most AI citations for your brand come from third-party websites, not your own.
For example, in AI Overviews, Zapier, YouTube, and Reddit are cited more frequently for queries about Ahrefs than our own website:
Sixteen pages on Zapier’s site that mention Ahrefs is all it takes to be cited in 1,431 AI responses that also mention Ahrefs.
The brand mentions on these pages are more valuable than on pages that are not being cited in AI responses. Not only are AI search platforms frequently referencing this content, but they are also using it to summarize information about your brand.
In most cases, the websites cited more than yours are chosen because they have comparison content or recommend the best tools for various situations:
While you won’t be able to control all of the information about your brand on third party sites, you can at least identify patterns and figure out why AI responses may include misinformation about you.
And, where possible, reach out to make your online brand footprint more consistent, one mention at a time.
If you create new content or want to boost the visibility of specific pages on your site, it can help to get more links directly to those pages.
Over the years I’ve spent auditing websites and their SEO visibility, many sites have had very few links to internal pages, preferring to promote the homepage most. While that’s great for brand visibility, it can lead to gaps in topic alignment and authority.
To close those gaps, run a topic search in Brand Radar and check out the Cited pages report:
If you see your content showing up in the results, do a quick audit to ensure information accuracy and freshness. Also make sure to increase the business value within the content by adding your most important product features and research.
If you see someone else’s content, add it to your outreach prospecting list to get mentioned within the content. It also helps to work with the PR team (if your company has one) to align online brand visibility efforts.
When it comes to user-generated content, like on forums and social media, you could consider joining the conversations that frequently get cited in AI responses.
For example, you can use the domains filter to get a list of all subreddits:
You can also look for mentions of competing products and aim to join the conversations to raise more awareness of your product.
Just don’t overdo it, many of these communities dislike obvious brand promotions.
If you do want to add a strong promotional message in these spaces, consider paying for ad real estate. While it may not directly help with visibility in AI responses, it will get you in front of new audiences who check out the thread because it’s been cited in traditional and AI search results.
Start by tracking whether people are searching for your brand in AI search.
Enter your brand name and then head to the Search demand tab.
The search volume graph shows whether search demand is growing based on how many branded searches occur over time.
Rising search volume indicates more people are looking for your brand. Rising search query count shows keyword breadth where users are asking more diverse questions about you, from long-tail queries to feature-specific searches.
Drill down into the Search queries report to see the exact branded keywords people use. It will be pre-filtered to show queries that contain your brand name:
This reveals how audiences frame questions about your product, which features get attention, and what associations they’re making with your brand.
Check out these reports every once in a while and monitor new branded queries that are being searched on different platforms.
Next, benchmark and monitor visibility against competitors.
Add your top competitors to the search and head to the Overview tab:
Here you can monitor your AI Share of Voice alongside top competitors.
You can also add specific topics you wish to monitor over time to see how much share you capture in that space or whether you’re losing visibility to competitors.
By monitoring demand, mentions, and share trends over time, you can refine your strategy and connect AI visibility to broader marketing impact.
Take control of your AI visibility with Ahrefs’ Brand Radar
Staying visible in AI search isn’t a one-time task, it’s a discipline.
By continuously monitoring demand, mentions, and share of voice, you can adapt your strategy and ensure your brand shapes the narrative where people search.
Ready to see how your brand stacks up? Explore Brand Radar and start turning AI visibility into measurable growth today.
