Leaderboard · GEO Updated June 2026 · 10 min read · By Vincent Wesley Couey

Last reviewed: June 10, 2026 Next review due: September 2026 Snapshot data: June 7, 2026

AI Visibility Leaderboard: Who AI Recommends for GEO / AI-Search Tracking (June 2026)

Q: Which GEO tool does Perplexity recommend?

In Lucreya's June 2026 measurement on the query 'best GEO tool to track AI search visibility,' Perplexity named the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit and ZipTie as its top recommendations, diverging from ChatGPT (Profound) and Google AI Overviews (Goodie AI). This is the only major GTM category where all three engines named different top tools, making it the most contested and most winnable category in the dataset.

Q: What is the difference between Profound and Otterly for GEO tracking?

Per Lucreya's June 2026 data and the engine answers captured, Profound is favored for depth and enterprise use cases, while Otterly is positioned for cost-effective SMB use. ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews named Profound as the top enterprise-depth pick; Otterly also appeared in the agency-framed query (S5) and in the Profound vs Otterly direct comparison (S6) where it was positioned as the lighter-weight option. Neither tool holds full three-engine consensus in the GEO visibility category.

Q: Why does the GEO tool category show full engine divergence?

The GEO and AI-search-visibility tool category is the only category in Lucreya's June 2026 study where all three engines named completely different top tools across all three category queries (S2, S4, S7). This reflects genuine market unsettledness: the category is newer than prospecting or enrichment, vendors are entering rapidly, and the engines have not yet converged on a consensus winner. From an outreach standpoint, full divergence means no tool has locked up AI consensus, so any well-structured vendor page has a realistic path to appearing in engine answers.

Q: How do I find out which AI engines recommend my GEO tool brand?

Run the CONSENSUS Protocol on your brand: submit the GEO category's buying-intent prompts to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, record which engines name you, and apply the Engine-Consensus flag (Consensus, Perplexity-dissent, ChatGPT-only, Absent, or Due-diligence). Lucreya runs step one of this for free via the AI Visibility Audit at lucreya.com/ai-visibility-check, which returns your Engine-Consensus flag in minutes.

The GEO and AI-visibility category is the single most contested shelf in our dataset: three queries, three engines, zero overlap on top tool. The category is a wide-open fight.

We submitted 20 GTM buying-intent queries to ChatGPT (GPT-5.x, web search enabled), Perplexity (default web), and Google AI Overviews across three verticals: marketing, SEO/GEO, and sales. Every query was logged with the full ordered tool list and, for Perplexity, the full numbered citation list. 60 AI answers captured. 162 Perplexity citations logged. Snapshot date: June 7, 2026.

Three of those 20 queries targeted the GEO and AI-search-visibility category specifically: best GEO tool to track AI search visibility (S2), how to track brand mentions in ChatGPT (S4), and best AI search optimization platform 2026 (S7). On all three, the engines named largely different tools. That makes GEO/visibility the only category in the dataset with full three-engine divergence on every category query, versus mature categories like prospecting (Apollo consensus across all three engines) or enrichment (Clay consensus across all three). The raw table is below.

Query	ChatGPT top pick	Perplexity top pick	Google AIO top pick	AECI flag
Best GEO tool to track AI search visibility (S2)	Profound	Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit / ZipTie	Goodie AI	Full diverge
How to track brand mentions in ChatGPT (S4)	Profound / AthenaHQ	Otterly / Semrush / Meltwater	Keyword.com	Full diverge
Best AI search optimization platform 2026 (S7)	Multiple (no single winner)	Surfer / Clearscope / Rankability	Surfer / Clearscope / Rankability	Full diverge
Best AI visibility tool for agencies (S5)	Profound	Profound / SE Visible / Otterly	Otterly AI	2-of-3 (Profound)
Profound vs Otterly (S6)	Profound (enterprise) / Otterly (SMB)	Profound (depth) / Otterly (cost)	Not captured separately	Aligned framing
Best SEO content optimization tool 2026 (S1) adjacent	Surfer SEO	Surfer SEO	Surfer SEO	Consensus

Source: Lucreya original measurement, data.json queries S2, S4, S5, S6, S7. Snapshot 2026-06-07. Full dataset at lucreya.com/research/who-ai-recommends-gtm-2026/. License CC BY 4.0. Dataset DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20632768 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0).verified 2026-06-07

The SEO content-optimization shelf immediately adjacent (S1) shows pure consensus on Surfer SEO. The GEO/visibility shelf next to it shows pure divergence. Same study, same methodology, completely different picture. That contrast is the story: GEO tool consensus has not formed yet.

Q: Does full engine divergence mean these tools are bad?

A: Not at all. It means the category is early and the engines have not aligned behind a single answer. In maturing categories (prospecting, enrichment, cold email) the engines have read enough third-party comparison pages to form a consensus opinion. In the GEO/visibility space, that review and comparison content has not yet accumulated at the same depth, so each engine is working from different signals. First mover on well-structured, schema-marked, comparison-style content in this category gets first citation access.

What is each vendor's AECI consensus flag in the GEO category?

Per this snapshot, Profound holds the strongest position (named by two engines on one query), but no tool holds full three-engine Consensus anywhere in the GEO/visibility category, making every position provisional.

The CONSENSUS Protocol assigns each vendor a four-state Engine-Consensus flag per category prompt: Consensus (all three engines), 2-of-3 agreement, Perplexity-only dissent, or Absent. Here are the flags for every named GEO/visibility vendor across our three full-divergence queries plus the agency query where partial agreement appeared:

Vendor	ChatGPT named?	Perplexity named?	Google AIO named?	AECI flag	Implication
Profound	Yes (S2, S4, S5)	Yes (S5, S6)	Yes (S2 secondary, S5 secondary)	Strongest position	Closest to consensus; deepest ChatGPT coverage; Perplexity names it only in agency context
Otterly AI	Yes (S2 secondary, S4 secondary, S5 secondary)	Yes (S4, S5, S6)	Yes (S2 secondary, S5 top)	Broad coverage, no top-pick consensus	Named across all three engines but rarely as the top pick; wide presence, shallow primacy
Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit	Yes (S2 secondary)	Yes (S2 top, S4)	Yes (S4 secondary)	Perplexity-led	Perplexity's top pick on S2; ChatGPT and AIO treat it as secondary; Semrush brand authority helps
Goodie AI	Yes (S7 secondary)	Not named in primary GEO queries	Yes (S2 top)	AIO-led, weak cross-engine	Google AIO's top pick on S2; nearly absent on Perplexity and subordinate on ChatGPT
Keyword.com	Not named in primary GEO queries	Yes (S4 secondary)	Yes (S4 top)	AIO-led on S4	AIO's top pick specifically on the brand-mentions query; absent from S2 and S7
ZipTie	Not named in primary GEO queries	Yes (S2, alongside Semrush)	Not named in primary GEO queries	Perplexity-only	Cited by Perplexity on S2; essentially absent from ChatGPT and AIO; narrow citation base
AthenaHQ	Yes (S4, alongside Profound)	Not named in primary GEO queries	Not named in primary GEO queries	ChatGPT-only	ChatGPT co-names on S4; absent from both other engines; single-engine dissent
Peec AI / Rankscale / Waikay / Scrunch AI	Yes (S2 secondary)	Not named in primary GEO queries	Not named in primary GEO queries	ChatGPT secondary only	Appear in ChatGPT's extended list; absent from Perplexity and AIO; deep audit candidates
SE Visible (seranking)	Not named in primary GEO queries	Yes (S5 secondary)	Not named in primary GEO queries	Perplexity-only (agency context)	Named in the agency framing only; absent from direct GEO queries on other engines
Evertune	Not named in primary GEO queries	Not named in primary GEO queries	Yes (S5 secondary)	AIO-only (agency context)	Appears in AIO on the agency query; absent from both other engines; very narrow footprint

All flags are June 2026 snapshots. AI answers decay; re-run to confirm. Source: data.json queries S2, S4, S5, S6, S7.verified 2026-06-07

The FOMO signal for GEO/visibility vendors: Every vendor in a contested category sees its row in this table from one of four frames: the Consensus winner (no one here, yet), a partial/engine-specific presence (Profound, Otterly, Semrush), a single-engine dissent (ZipTie, AthenaHQ, SE Visible), or Absent from the table entirely. Absent in a category that 95 percent of buying-intent queries already trigger a Google AI Overview on is not a neutral position. It is a missed pipeline surface that your competitors are actively filling. AIO trigger rate source: data.json headlineFindings.aioTriggerRate (19 of 20 queries, 2026-06-07).

Why is the GEO visibility category still unsettled while prospecting and enrichment are not?

Mature categories have two or three years of accumulated comparison roundups and review pages; the GEO/AI-visibility category does not, which is exactly why its leaderboard is still writable.

In Lucreya's June 2026 study, the consensus winners in settled categories were clear: Apollo for prospecting (named top by all three engines on L2), Clay for enrichment (named top by all three engines on L6), Surfer SEO for SEO content optimization (named top by all three on S1). These tools do not hold consensus by accident. They hold it because the third-party pages that decide engine citations, review roundups, comparison articles, G2 listicles, and Reddit threads, have accumulated enough agreement to form a consensus signal the engines can read.

That content layer is what AI engines actually cite. In Perplexity's citation set across all 20 queries, roughly 4 in 5 citations (approximately 80 percent) pointed to third-party pages, not the vendor's own site. The source-type mix from our domain-classified estimate of 162 citations breaks down like this:

Third-party review / listicle

~58%

Vendor first-party

~20%

Forum / UGC (Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn)

~16%

G2 / TrustRadius aggregators

~6%

Estimated from domain signatures across ~162 Perplexity citations, all 20 queries. Source: data.json sourceTypeMix_perplexity_estimate.verified 2026-06-07

Reddit alone was cited in 15 of 20 Perplexity answers (75 percent), the single most-cited domain in the entire dataset. Zapier.com appeared in 30 percent, YouTube in 25 percent. Beyond those three, citations spread across 100-plus distinct domains, most appearing in only one query. The implication for GEO/visibility vendors: a comparison page on a domain with genuine third-party authority (not your own site) structured like the coded exemplar from the study, Article and BreadcrumbList schema, a comparison table, pricing data, 2026 freshness, around 2,600 words, is the type of page that actually gets cited. We hand-coded one exemplar from the cited set: zapier.com's Jasper vs Copy.ai comparison (external), which carried all those attributes and was cited across multiple queries.

Q: Does owning your own domain help or not?

A: Vendor first-party pages make up roughly 20 percent of citations, so they are not irrelevant. But they are also not where most of the citation surface lives. The 80 percent on third-party pages is the structural finding that changes the math: you need coverage on review roundups, comparison articles, and forums, not just a well-optimized product site. That is a different strategy from traditional SEO, which is partly why GEO retainer work is services revenue, not just a tool subscription.

What makes the GEO/visibility category specifically a retainer buyer's market?

Full engine divergence plus a 95 percent AI Overview trigger rate means every GEO/visibility buyer's first touchpoint is an AI answer that gives them a different recommendation depending on which engine they use, and that is the opening for a managed-placement retainer.

Compare the GEO shelf against the cold email shelf (L1). On cold email, Instantly and Smartlead split the consensus 2-of-3, with Perplexity dissenting toward Salesforge. A buyer asking any engine gets a similar answer. On the GEO shelf, a buyer on ChatGPT hears Profound; the same buyer on Perplexity hears Semrush; on Google they hear Goodie AI. That is not confusion, that is an active fight for the first-impression slot in a category where Google AI Overviews triggered on 19 of 20 queries (95 percent) in our run. The one miss on query L4 had shown an overview on an earlier probe, which illustrates just how volatile that trigger is; any query that fires an overview once will likely fire it again, which means the answer surface is essentially always present.

The retainer ask writes itself: if you sell into the GEO/visibility category and you are absent from this leaderboard, the AI your prospect queries before they ever find your site recommends your competitor. The free audit at /ai-visibility-check returns your Engine-Consensus flag in minutes. The GEO placement retainer runs the CONSENSUS Protocol on your brand and builds the citation structure that moves the needle on the engines where you are absent.

The outreach read on this leaderboard

Every vendor in the GEO/AI-visibility category sees its row here as one of four things. Partial presence (Profound, Otterly, Semrush): you have engine coverage on one or two engines but not three. The gap is the pitch. Single-engine dissent (ZipTie, AthenaHQ, SE Visible, Evertune): one engine knows you, two do not. Absent: you are in this category and not on this board at all. That is the hottest lead. And cross-category absent: tools with proven AI consensus elsewhere (Apollo, Clay, Jasper) that have not yet staked a claim on the GEO visibility shelf. Every absent-in-a-contested-category row is a cold-email target with a specific, verifiable, non-generic opening line.

How does the GEO shelf compare to categories where AI engines have reached consensus?

In prospecting, enrichment, and cold email, the engines have largely agreed on winners; in GEO/visibility, zero tools have locked consensus, and the citation infrastructure that would produce it does not yet exist at scale.

For reference and contrast, here is the AECI leaderboard for the settled GTM categories from the same study. These are the consensus winners the engines named top by two or more engines across the 14 category and intent queries:

Category	AI Consensus Winner	ChatGPT	Perplexity	Google AIO	AECI flag
Sales prospecting (L2)	Apollo.io	Apollo.io	Apollo.io	Apollo.io	Full consensus
Lead enrichment (L6)	Clay	Clay	Clay	Clay	Full consensus
SEO content optimization (S1)	Surfer SEO	Surfer SEO	Surfer SEO	Surfer SEO	Full consensus
AI SDR (L4)	11x	11x.ai	AiSDR (dissents)	11x.ai	2-of-3
Cold email (L1)	Instantly	Instantly.ai	Salesforge (dissents)	Instantly.ai	2-of-3
Copywriting (M1)	Jasper	Jasper	Jasper	Copy.ai (dissents)	2-of-3
Video repurposing (M2)	Opus Clip	OpusClip	Opus Clip	Opus Clip	Full consensus
GEO / AI visibility (S2, S4, S7)	No consensus winner	Profound	Semrush / ZipTie	Goodie AI	Full diverge (all 3 queries)

Source: data.json crossEngineAnalysis, aiConsensusWinners. Snapshot 2026-06-07. 7 of 8 consensus-or-partial winners are S-tier in the companion 30-tool AI GTM Tools index.verified 2026-06-07

The contrast is stark. Four full-consensus categories. Zero full-consensus on any GEO/visibility query. That gap is not random; it reflects the relative maturity of the comparison-content ecosystem around each category. Apollo has years of head-to-head content on trusted third-party domains driving its citations. GEO/visibility tools, most of which launched or rebranded in 2023 to 2025, do not have that infrastructure yet. The Princeton GEO framework (Aggarwal et al., 2023, external) established that adding statistics, quotations, and citations to a page raises generative-engine visibility by up to roughly 40 percent in a controlled benchmark; those structural tactics work best when the page exists at scale on third-party domains, which is the gap the GEO/visibility category still has.

Your brand's row is missing from this leaderboard. What does the engine say about you?

The free AI Visibility Audit runs the CONSENSUS Protocol on your brand and returns your Engine-Consensus flag for your category across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, with a snapshot date. No blended score. Just the four states: Consensus, 2-of-3, single-engine dissent, or Absent. Takes minutes.

Run my free AI Visibility Audit › Learn about GEO Placement ›

Frequently asked questions

Which GEO tool does ChatGPT recommend for tracking AI search visibility?

In Lucreya's June 2026 measurement, ChatGPT (GPT-5.x, web-search enabled) named Profound as its top recommendation for the query "best GEO tool to track AI search visibility." ChatGPT also named Profound and AthenaHQ on the brand-mentions query and Profound again on the agency-visibility query. This is a dated snapshot; AI answers are volatile and will shift. Re-run the CONSENSUS Protocol to verify current state.

Which GEO tool does Perplexity recommend?

On the query "best GEO tool to track AI search visibility," Perplexity named the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit and ZipTie as its top recommendations in our June 2026 run, dissenting from ChatGPT's Profound pick and Google AI Overviews' Goodie AI pick. On the brand-mentions query (S4) Perplexity named Otterly, Semrush, and Meltwater. On the agency-visibility query (S5) Perplexity named Profound alongside SE Visible and Otterly.

What is the difference between Profound and Otterly for GEO tracking?

Per the engine answers captured in our June 2026 study, Profound is consistently framed as the depth and enterprise pick, while Otterly is positioned as the cost-effective SMB option. On the direct comparison query (S6), both Perplexity and ChatGPT characterized the choice as Profound for depth versus Otterly for cost. Neither holds full three-engine consensus in the category; Profound has the broadest multi-engine naming but is absent from Perplexity's top pick on the direct GEO query.

Why does the GEO tool category show full engine divergence?

The GEO and AI-search-visibility category is the only category in our June 2026 study where all three engines named completely different top tools across all three category queries. This reflects market unsettledness: the category is younger than prospecting or enrichment, vendors entered or rebranded recently, and the third-party comparison content that drives AI citations has not yet accumulated at the depth that mature categories have. That means no tool has locked consensus, which means it is still an open competition.

How do I find out which AI engines recommend my GEO tool brand?

Run the CONSENSUS Protocol: submit your category's buying-intent prompts to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, record which engines name you, and apply the four-state Engine-Consensus flag. Lucreya runs step one of this for free at /ai-visibility-check, returning your Engine-Consensus flag in minutes. The companion GEO placement retainer at /geo-placement executes the full protocol and builds the citation infrastructure to move your flag from Absent or single-engine dissent toward Consensus.

Bottom line

The GEO and AI-search-visibility category is the only major GTM shelf in our June 2026 study where all three engines fully disagree on every category query. ChatGPT names Profound. Perplexity names Semrush/ZipTie. Google AI Overviews names Goodie AI. Otterly, AthenaHQ, Keyword.com, SE Visible, Evertune, Peec AI, Rankscale, Waikay, and Scrunch AI all hold partial or single-engine positions at best. No tool holds full consensus. That means the leaderboard is live and writable right now, before a dominant vendor locks in the citation infrastructure that made Apollo immovable on prospecting or Clay immovable on enrichment. What is GEO and why it matters covers the mechanics; how to rank in AI answers covers execution. To find out where your brand stands today, run the free AI Visibility Audit. To close the gap on the engines where you are absent, see the GEO placement retainer. This leaderboard is part of the CONSENSUS Protocol method series and is built on the same methodology; the underlying data lives at lucreya.com/research/who-ai-recommends-gtm-2026/.

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Lucreya original measurement. Who AI Recommends: GTM Tool and Source Citations Across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews (2026). 20 queries, 3 engines, 60 answers, 162 Perplexity citations. Snapshot 2026-06-07. lucreya.com/research/who-ai-recommends-gtm-2026/. License CC BY 4.0. Dataset DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20632768 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0).verified 2026-06-07
Aggarwal, P., Murahari, V., Rajpurohit, T., Kalyan, A., Narasimhan, K., Deshpande, A. GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. 2023. arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735 (external). Princeton GEO framework: statistics, quotations, and citation additions raise generative-engine visibility by up to roughly 40 percent in a controlled benchmark.
Zapier. Jasper vs Copy.ai: Which AI writing tool is right for you? zapier.com/blog/jasper-vs-copy-ai/ (external). Coded structural exemplar from the cited set: Article and BreadcrumbList schema, comparison table, pricing data, 2026 freshness, approximately 2,600 words. Representative of the citation-winning page archetype.
Perplexity AI. perplexity.ai (external). Primary measurement engine providing native numbered citation lists used for source-type autopsy across 162 citations.
Google. Generative AI in Search. blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-search/ (external). Reference for Google AI Overviews behavior; triggered on 19 of 20 queries (95 percent) in our run.
Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0 License. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (external). License for the Lucreya measurement dataset.