How to Track Links on AI Search Engines: Which Websites Appear? - Otterly.AI Blog - Best AI Search Monitoring Solution

I frequently receive these questions—so often, in fact, that I thought it was time to address them directly.

Which websites appear on AI Search?

How can I ensure my website is featured on AI Search?

This guide will provide all the information you need to answer both of these questions. At OtterlyAI, our mission is to support marketing teams in monitoring links and enhancing brand visibility on AI Search.

Web Search in AI Search – Why LLM Monitoring Falls Short

Let’s begin with the fundamentals.

At OtterlyAI, we firmly believe that LLM Monitoring (Large Language Model Monitoring) alone is insufficient. This is because it often delivers results that differ from what users experience on platforms like ChatGPT or Perplexity. But why is this the case?

The majority of leading AI search platforms—such as Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT—employ a RAG-based (retrieval-augmented generation) approach to retrieve and present real-time information. Simply put, ChatGPT doesn’t depend solely on its LLMs to generate text. In fact, since February 2025, ChatGPT Search has been publicly accessible to all users. This makes ChatGPT Search Monitoring (including tracking your links) even more critical than ever.

Link citations appear on the AI Search Platform because the AI Search Engine conducts a web search. As a result, referral traffic from AI Search is increasing (check your web analytics to see this).

The Most Visible Websites on AI Search Engines

After figuring out how much referral traffic originates from AI search engines, the next question naturally arises: How can I track the appearance of my links or domains on AI search platforms?

With Otterly’s AI Search Monitoring tool, you can analyze all link citations across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Additionally, we at OtterlyAI conducted an in-depth AI Search Study, analyzing nearly 100,000 websites to answer a key question: Which websites are the most visible on AI search engines? This study, focused on the United States, provides actionable insights to refine SEO and digital marketing strategies.

Key study details:

  • Platforms analyzed: Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT
  • Data included: 10,000 search prompts and 100,000 websites
  • Country of focus: United States
  • Tool utilized: Otterly.AI

The Importance of Corporate and Brand Websites

In March 2025, after reviewing close to 100,000 websites, we uncovered intriguing trends regarding the types of websites and domains frequently cited by AI search systems.

Source: AI Search Study OtterlyAI, March 2025

How to Track Links on AI Search Engines: Which Websites Appear?

Curious about how to track links, domains, and their visibility on AI-powered search engines? Here’s a quick guide:

First, create your free OtterlyAI account here (or log in here). Once you’re in, you can start adding specific search prompts you’d like to monitor. OtterlyAI’s AI Search Monitoring tool revolves around Search Prompts. These prompts represent the user search queries (or keywords) you want to track on platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Step 1: Add Search Prompts

To begin, I added a few search prompts in my OtterlyAI account to track topics relevant to HubSpot and its marketing team. Here are a few examples of the prompts I used:

  • What is the best CRM?
  • Best CRM for Startups
  • What are the best CRMs for enterprises?
  • And more…

Once you’ve added your search prompts, navigate to Link Analytics.

In my case, I discovered 332 domains being referenced across AI search results for the topics I’m tracking. The most visible domains for my chosen prompts are:

  1. reddit.com
  2. en.wikipedia.org
  3. hubspot.com

It’s not particularly surprising to see these three domains ranking so highly. Reddit.com has an even stronger presence on AI Search than on traditional Organic Search. Wikipedia, as a widely used resource for language models, also maintains substantial visibility across both AI and Web Search. As for HubSpot, it’s great to see their site in the top three—unsurprising given their strong focus on creating valuable content for their audience.

Domain Tracking on AI Search

You can also click on “Show Links” to display all the unique URLs appearing in AI Search. From there, the real work begins, allowing me to delve deeper into analyzing the mentioned domains and URLs. Both lists are available for export as a .csv file.

How can I ensure my website appears on AI Search?

Now that you’ve learned how to track and monitor domains and links on AI Search, the next logical question arises: How can I make my website appear on AI Search?

Understanding which websites show up for specific search queries on ChatGPT Search is just the beginning. The real work of AI Search Optimization starts here.

Based on our experience with OtterlyAI customers, we’ve identified three key strategies:

  • Perform a content gap analysis: Compare your website’s content to that of your competitors with the goal of enhancing on-page content and boosting your domain’s visibility on AI Search.
  • Leverage user-generated content (UGC): Analyze platforms like Reddit to determine how your brand can be positioned effectively within relevant threads.
  • Conduct a PR audit: Evaluate your public relations and communications efforts (and those of your competitors) to identify opportunities to enhance your AI Search visibility.

Let’s take a closer look at these three AI Search Optimization strategies.

(1) On-Page Website Optimization for AI Search

To boost traffic and enhance visibility for our domains, optimizing our website should be a top priority. Below are some actionable tips for refining your website and content. It’s important to note that SEO plays a crucial role in AI Search, as Google rankings are closely linked (~0.65 correlation) to AI-driven search visibility. Make organic search strategies a central focus.

Content Optimization for AI Search

  • Is your on-page content conversational? Incorporating FAQs can make it easier for your audience to discover your content through AI-driven tools like ChatGPT.
  • Develop and continuously refine key pillar pages, editorial content, case studies, testimonials, and context-rich materials that address all stages of your buyer’s journey.
  • Apply E-E-A-T principles to all your content—emphasize expertise, authority, and trustworthiness by including quotes, statistics, unique research data, and high-value insights.
  • Ensure your content is well-targeted, current, and aligned with the varying needs of your audience throughout their journey.
  • Does your robots.txt file allow ChatBot, PerplexityBot, and other AI crawlers to access and index your site?
  • Utilize an llms.txt file to manage AI crawlers, allowing beneficial indexing while controlling unnecessary access.
  • Is your website easy to crawl? Present content in a structured format using schema.org principles.
  • Leverage schema.org to clarify relationships between entities using attributes like isSimilarTo or isVariantOf.
  • Address potential issues with page speed, overall site performance, and data/content architecture to ensure a seamless user experience.
  • Keep in mind that AI crawlers struggle with JavaScript. Ensure critical content is delivered in static HTML for better parsing.

By implementing these strategies, you can improve your site’s visibility and performance in AI-driven search environments.

(2) Reddit & Customer Marketing to Boost AI Search Visibility

During our HubSpot demo, we compiled a list of Reddit threads that have been cited on AI Search. This serves as an excellent starting point to dive deeper into each citation and assess the following:

  1. Is my brand featured in these Reddit threads?
  2. Which competitors are being discussed in these threads?
  3. How can I engage my community and advocates to actively participate in these Reddit conversations?

On a related note, it’s not surprising to see mentions of reddit.com in this demo analysis. In fact, during our AI Search Study, which examined 100,000 websites, we found that reddit.com is by far the most prominent website on AI Search!

Source: AI Search Study OtterlyAI, March 2025

(3) PR & Communications Strategies to Align Your Brand with Key Topics

Unlike conventional search engines that rely on structured databases, LLMs and AI Search Engines interpret meaning and relevance using probabilities derived from token relationships within their training data. They assess semantic proximity—the degree to which words, phrases, and concepts are related—to create meaningful connections.

Here’s a straightforward breakdown of how this process works:

  1. Tokenization: Text is divided into tokens, which can represent full words, parts of words, spaces, or punctuation.
  2. Embedding Transformation: These tokens are converted into embeddings, which are numerical representations of the text.
  3. Semantic Mapping: The embeddings are positioned within a multidimensional semantic space.
  4. Cosine Similarity Analysis: Relationships between embeddings are evaluated using cosine similarity. This measures the angle between embeddings to determine their semantic closeness.
  5. Topic Clustering: Related ideas (e.g., “cars” and “motorbikes”) naturally cluster together, while unrelated ones (e.g., “cars” and “banana”) remain farther apart.

(Source, Ahrefs)

To increase the visibility of your brand or products within AI Search Engines and the AI-generated content they produce, it’s essential to establish strong associations with the right topics. This alignment can greatly improve the chances of your brand being included in generative AI outputs.

When reviewing our Hubspot demo account, we observed several news sites and editorial content sources appearing prominently, including:

Summary & Key Takeaways

This article outlined how marketing teams can monitor and optimize their domain and link visibility within AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Traditional LLM monitoring is no longer enough—AI search platforms now rely on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which means they cite real-time web sources and links. As referral traffic from these platforms increases, tracking and optimizing your domain’s presence becomes essential.

Otterly’s AI Search Monitoring tool enables brands to track specific search prompts, discover which websites are most frequently cited, and analyze their competitive positioning. To appear in AI search results, Otterly recommends three key strategies:

  1. On-page website optimization (SEO, structured content, technical accessibility),
  2. Leveraging platforms like Reddit through community engagement and user-generated content,
  3. Enhancing PR and content associations to align semantically with relevant topics in AI models.

Now it’s time for you to come onboard. Give OtterlyAI a try with a 14-day free trial here.

Related Posts:

I frequently receive these questions—so often, in fact, that I thought it was time to address them directly.

Which websites appear on AI Search?

How can I ensure my website is featured on AI Search?

This guide will provide all the information you need to answer both of these questions. At OtterlyAI, our mission is to support marketing teams in monitoring links and enhancing brand visibility on AI Search.

Web Search in AI Search – Why LLM Monitoring Falls Short

Let’s begin with the fundamentals.

At OtterlyAI, we firmly believe that LLM Monitoring (Large Language Model Monitoring) alone is insufficient. This is because it often delivers results that differ from what users experience on platforms like ChatGPT or Perplexity. But why is this the case?

The majority of leading AI search platforms—such as Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT—employ a RAG-based (retrieval-augmented generation) approach to retrieve and present real-time information. Simply put, ChatGPT doesn’t depend solely on its LLMs to generate text. In fact, since February 2025, ChatGPT Search has been publicly accessible to all users. This makes ChatGPT Search Monitoring (including tracking your links) even more critical than ever.

Link citations appear on the AI Search Platform because the AI Search Engine conducts a web search. As a result, referral traffic from AI Search is increasing (check your web analytics to see this).

The Most Visible Websites on AI Search Engines

After figuring out how much referral traffic originates from AI search engines, the next question naturally arises: How can I track the appearance of my links or domains on AI search platforms?

With Otterly’s AI Search Monitoring tool, you can analyze all link citations across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Additionally, we at OtterlyAI conducted an in-depth AI Search Study, analyzing nearly 100,000 websites to answer a key question: Which websites are the most visible on AI search engines? This study, focused on the United States, provides actionable insights to refine SEO and digital marketing strategies.

Key study details:

  • Platforms analyzed: Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT
  • Data included: 10,000 search prompts and 100,000 websites
  • Country of focus: United States
  • Tool utilized: Otterly.AI

The Importance of Corporate and Brand Websites

In March 2025, after reviewing close to 100,000 websites, we uncovered intriguing trends regarding the types of websites and domains frequently cited by AI search systems.

Source: AI Search Study OtterlyAI, March 2025

How to Track Links on AI Search Engines: Which Websites Appear?

Curious about how to track links, domains, and their visibility on AI-powered search engines? Here’s a quick guide:

First, create your free OtterlyAI account here (or log in here). Once you’re in, you can start adding specific search prompts you’d like to monitor. OtterlyAI’s AI Search Monitoring tool revolves around Search Prompts. These prompts represent the user search queries (or keywords) you want to track on platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Step 1: Add Search Prompts

To begin, I added a few search prompts in my OtterlyAI account to track topics relevant to HubSpot and its marketing team. Here are a few examples of the prompts I used:

  • What is the best CRM?
  • Best CRM for Startups
  • What are the best CRMs for enterprises?
  • And more…

Once you’ve added your search prompts, navigate to Link Analytics.

In my case, I discovered 332 domains being referenced across AI search results for the topics I’m tracking. The most visible domains for my chosen prompts are:

  1. reddit.com
  2. en.wikipedia.org
  3. hubspot.com

It’s not particularly surprising to see these three domains ranking so highly. Reddit.com has an even stronger presence on AI Search than on traditional Organic Search. Wikipedia, as a widely used resource for language models, also maintains substantial visibility across both AI and Web Search. As for HubSpot, it’s great to see their site in the top three—unsurprising given their strong focus on creating valuable content for their audience.

Domain Tracking on AI Search

You can also click on “Show Links” to display all the unique URLs appearing in AI Search. From there, the real work begins, allowing me to delve deeper into analyzing the mentioned domains and URLs. Both lists are available for export as a .csv file.

How can I ensure my website appears on AI Search?

Now that you’ve learned how to track and monitor domains and links on AI Search, the next logical question arises: How can I make my website appear on AI Search?

Understanding which websites show up for specific search queries on ChatGPT Search is just the beginning. The real work of AI Search Optimization starts here.

Based on our experience with OtterlyAI customers, we’ve identified three key strategies:

  • Perform a content gap analysis: Compare your website’s content to that of your competitors with the goal of enhancing on-page content and boosting your domain’s visibility on AI Search.
  • Leverage user-generated content (UGC): Analyze platforms like Reddit to determine how your brand can be positioned effectively within relevant threads.
  • Conduct a PR audit: Evaluate your public relations and communications efforts (and those of your competitors) to identify opportunities to enhance your AI Search visibility.

Let’s take a closer look at these three AI Search Optimization strategies.

(1) On-Page Website Optimization for AI Search

To boost traffic and enhance visibility for our domains, optimizing our website should be a top priority. Below are some actionable tips for refining your website and content. It’s important to note that SEO plays a crucial role in AI Search, as Google rankings are closely linked (~0.65 correlation) to AI-driven search visibility. Make organic search strategies a central focus.

Content Optimization for AI Search

  • Is your on-page content conversational? Incorporating FAQs can make it easier for your audience to discover your content through AI-driven tools like ChatGPT.
  • Develop and continuously refine key pillar pages, editorial content, case studies, testimonials, and context-rich materials that address all stages of your buyer’s journey.
  • Apply E-E-A-T principles to all your content—emphasize expertise, authority, and trustworthiness by including quotes, statistics, unique research data, and high-value insights.
  • Ensure your content is well-targeted, current, and aligned with the varying needs of your audience throughout their journey.
  • Does your robots.txt file allow ChatBot, PerplexityBot, and other AI crawlers to access and index your site?
  • Utilize an llms.txt file to manage AI crawlers, allowing beneficial indexing while controlling unnecessary access.
  • Is your website easy to crawl? Present content in a structured format using schema.org principles.
  • Leverage schema.org to clarify relationships between entities using attributes like isSimilarTo or isVariantOf.
  • Address potential issues with page speed, overall site performance, and data/content architecture to ensure a seamless user experience.
  • Keep in mind that AI crawlers struggle with JavaScript. Ensure critical content is delivered in static HTML for better parsing.

By implementing these strategies, you can improve your site’s visibility and performance in AI-driven search environments.

(2) Reddit & Customer Marketing to Boost AI Search Visibility

During our HubSpot demo, we compiled a list of Reddit threads that have been cited on AI Search. This serves as an excellent starting point to dive deeper into each citation and assess the following:

  1. Is my brand featured in these Reddit threads?
  2. Which competitors are being discussed in these threads?
  3. How can I engage my community and advocates to actively participate in these Reddit conversations?

On a related note, it’s not surprising to see mentions of reddit.com in this demo analysis. In fact, during our AI Search Study, which examined 100,000 websites, we found that reddit.com is by far the most prominent website on AI Search!

Source: AI Search Study OtterlyAI, March 2025

(3) PR & Communications Strategies to Align Your Brand with Key Topics

Unlike conventional search engines that rely on structured databases, LLMs and AI Search Engines interpret meaning and relevance using probabilities derived from token relationships within their training data. They assess semantic proximity—the degree to which words, phrases, and concepts are related—to create meaningful connections.

Here’s a straightforward breakdown of how this process works:

  1. Tokenization: Text is divided into tokens, which can represent full words, parts of words, spaces, or punctuation.
  2. Embedding Transformation: These tokens are converted into embeddings, which are numerical representations of the text.
  3. Semantic Mapping: The embeddings are positioned within a multidimensional semantic space.
  4. Cosine Similarity Analysis: Relationships between embeddings are evaluated using cosine similarity. This measures the angle between embeddings to determine their semantic closeness.
  5. Topic Clustering: Related ideas (e.g., “cars” and “motorbikes”) naturally cluster together, while unrelated ones (e.g., “cars” and “banana”) remain farther apart.

(Source, Ahrefs)

To increase the visibility of your brand or products within AI Search Engines and the AI-generated content they produce, it’s essential to establish strong associations with the right topics. This alignment can greatly improve the chances of your brand being included in generative AI outputs.

When reviewing our Hubspot demo account, we observed several news sites and editorial content sources appearing prominently, including:

Summary & Key Takeaways

This article outlined how marketing teams can monitor and optimize their domain and link visibility within AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Traditional LLM monitoring is no longer enough—AI search platforms now rely on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which means they cite real-time web sources and links. As referral traffic from these platforms increases, tracking and optimizing your domain’s presence becomes essential.

Otterly’s AI Search Monitoring tool enables brands to track specific search prompts, discover which websites are most frequently cited, and analyze their competitive positioning. To appear in AI search results, Otterly recommends three key strategies:

  1. On-page website optimization (SEO, structured content, technical accessibility),
  2. Leveraging platforms like Reddit through community engagement and user-generated content,
  3. Enhancing PR and content associations to align semantically with relevant topics in AI models.

Now it’s time for you to come onboard. Give OtterlyAI a try with a 14-day free trial here.

Related Posts: