Ahrefs has introduced a new AI prompt tracking feature within its Brand Radar toolkit, allowing marketing teams to measure how often their brand appears in responses generated by major AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. This update gives organisations a more specific way to track visibility in AI-driven search and discovery environments.

This latest update reflects Ahrefs’ broader strategy to adapt SEO and brand intelligence tools for an AI-driven discovery landscape. By allowing users to define and track their own AI prompts, the company is giving organizations deeper, more actionable insights into how AI platforms reference their brand, competitors, and products in both broad and highly specific scenarios.

Moving Beyond Traditional Search Metrics

For years, marketers have relied on rankings, impressions, clicks, and backlinks to evaluate online visibility. While these metrics remain important, they no longer capture the full scope of how users find and interact with brands. AI assistants are increasingly acting as intermediaries, summarizing information, recommending products, and answering complex questions without users ever clicking through to a website.

This shift creates a blind spot for brands: even if they rank well in traditional search results, they may be underrepresented—or misrepresented—in AI-generated answers. Ahrefs’ new custom AI prompt tracking feature directly addresses this gap by giving brands a way to see how often they appear in responses generated by leading AI platforms.

Integrated into the existing Brand Radar tool, the feature enables organizations to track brand mentions across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, offering a clearer picture of AI-driven visibility that complements conventional SEO data.

What Is Custom AI Prompt Tracking?

At its core, custom AI prompt tracking allows users to define specific questions or prompts that matter to their business and monitor how AI assistants respond to them over time. Instead of relying solely on high-volume or generic prompts, marketers can now create tailored prompt lists that reflect real customer journeys, niche use cases, or buyer-intent scenarios.

For example, a SaaS company might track prompts such as “best project management software for remote teams” or “top alternatives to [competitor name].” A B2B services firm could monitor AI responses to questions like “leading cybersecurity consultants for mid-sized enterprises.” By analyzing whether and how their brand appears in these answers, teams gain a more precise understanding of AI visibility where it matters most.

This customization significantly enhances the value of Brand Radar, transforming it from a broad monitoring tool into a strategic insight platform for AI-era marketing.

Deeper Insights Through Granular Measurement

According to Ahrefs’ Chief Marketing Officer, Tim Soulo, one of the most important benefits of custom AI prompt tracking is the level of granularity it provides. Rather than looking at aggregated brand mentions across generic topics, teams can now drill down into specific prompts, contexts, and AI platforms.

This granularity allows marketers to answer critical questions, such as:

• In which buyer-focused queries does our brand appear most often?

• How does our AI visibility compare to competitors for niche use cases?

• Are there important prompts where competitors are consistently mentioned but we are not?

By benchmarking visibility at this level, organizations can move beyond surface-level awareness metrics and focus on the prompts that influence real purchasing and decision-making behavior.

How the Feature Works

The custom AI prompt tracking setup is designed to be flexible and user-friendly. Marketers begin by selecting or creating lists of prompts they want to monitor. These prompts can range from broad informational queries to highly specific, intent-driven questions.

Once the prompts are defined, Brand Radar checks responses across multiple AI assistants at set intervals, tracking how frequently each brand is mentioned. Over time, this creates a data set that reveals trends, fluctuations, and comparative performance across AI platforms.

By monitoring these responses continuously, teams can see how changes in content strategy, product positioning, or PR efforts influence AI-generated answers. This ongoing feedback loop makes AI visibility something that can be actively managed rather than passively observed.

Flexible Access for Different Organizational Needs

Ahrefs has made custom AI prompt tracking available to paid Brand Radar subscribers, with pricing structures designed to accommodate organizations of varying sizes and budgets. Users can manage their tracking needs through a combination of included limits, prepaid packages, or pay-as-you-go options.

This flexible pricing approach ensures that both smaller teams and large enterprises can experiment with AI visibility tracking without committing to rigid or overly expensive plans. As AI-driven discovery becomes more central to marketing strategy, this accessibility lowers the barrier to entry for brands that want to stay competitive.

Why AI Visibility Matters More Than Ever

The introduction of custom AI prompt tracking comes at a critical time. AI-generated responses are increasingly shaping how users perceive brands, products, and entire categories. In many cases, users trust AI assistants to synthesize information objectively, giving these platforms significant influence over brand reputation.

For marketers, this means visibility is no longer just about ranking first—it is about being included, accurately described, and favorably positioned within AI answers. A brand that consistently appears in relevant AI responses gains credibility and mindshare, even if users never visit its website directly.

By tracking mentions in AI-generated answers, teams can identify gaps in visibility and take proactive steps to address them. This might include creating more authoritative content, clarifying brand messaging, or strengthening topical relevance around key use cases.

Bridging Broad and Niche AI Visibility

One of the standout advantages of Ahrefs’ new feature is its ability to bridge the gap between broad AI visibility and niche, audience-specific visibility. While global AI prompt indexes provide valuable high-level insights, they may overlook the nuanced queries that drive actual conversions.

Custom prompts allow businesses to focus on the questions their ideal customers are most likely to ask. By combining data from global prompt tracking with insights from tailored queries, organizations can build a more comprehensive and realistic picture of their AI presence.

This dual approach helps marketers prioritize efforts more effectively, ensuring resources are allocated to prompts and topics that deliver the greatest strategic value.

Informing Smarter Content and Brand Strategies

Beyond measurement, custom AI prompt tracking has practical implications for content strategy and brand positioning. When teams understand which prompts trigger brand mentions—and which do not—they can refine their content to better align with AI interpretation.

For instance, if a brand is frequently omitted from AI responses to certain comparison or recommendation queries, it may signal a lack of authoritative content or unclear positioning. Conversely, strong visibility in specific prompts can highlight areas of competitive strength that can be reinforced through marketing campaigns or thought leadership.

Over time, these insights enable a more intentional approach to shaping how AI assistants understand and describe a brand.

Strengthening Competitive Intelligence

Another key benefit of the new feature is enhanced competitive analysis. By tracking the same prompts for multiple brands, marketers can see how competitors are positioned within AI-generated responses and identify opportunities to differentiate.

This visibility helps answer questions such as:

• Which competitors dominate AI recommendations for specific use cases?

• Where does our brand outperform others in AI mentions?

• How does AI perception shift after major announcements, product launches, or campaigns?

Armed with this information, teams can adjust messaging, content focus, and outreach strategies to strengthen their relative standing within AI ecosystems.

Brand Radar’s Evolution in the AI Era

With the addition of custom AI prompt tracking, Brand Radar evolves into a more future-ready intelligence platform. Rather than focusing solely on traditional brand monitoring signals, it now accounts for the growing influence of AI-driven discovery and recommendation engines.

This evolution reflects Ahrefs’ recognition that SEO and brand measurement must adapt alongside user behavior and technology. As AI assistants become embedded in search engines, browsers, and productivity tools, understanding AI visibility will be essential for maintaining relevance and competitiveness.

A Strategic Advantage for Forward-Thinking Marketers

Ultimately, Ahrefs’ new custom AI prompt tracking feature offers marketers a strategic advantage in an increasingly complex digital environment. By providing granular, prompt-level insights into AI-generated brand mentions, it empowers teams to measure what was previously opaque and influence how their brand is represented by AI systems.

As brands compete not only for search rankings but also for inclusion in AI answers, tools that illuminate this new visibility frontier will become indispensable. With this latest enhancement, Ahrefs positions Brand Radar as a critical solution for organizations seeking to understand, measure, and improve their footprint within AI ecosystems.

In a world where AI is rapidly becoming a primary gateway to information, the ability to track and shape brand presence in AI-generated responses is no longer optional—it is a core component of modern digital strategy.

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