8 Best AI Mode SEO Analysis Tools in 2026 (Tested Against Google's AI Search)

What is AI Mode SEO analysis?

AI Mode SEO analysis is the practice of measuring and optimizing how a website appears inside Google AI Mode, the conversational, Gemini-powered search experience, by tracking citations, mentions, and share of voice in AI-generated answers instead of blue-link rankings.

An AI Mode SEO analysis tool runs representative buyer prompts through AI Mode at scale, records which sources the AI cites, and diagnoses the technical and content factors that determine whether your pages get retrieved and referenced.

Why does this discipline exist at all? Because the ground moved. At Google I/O 2026 (May 19, 2026), Google did three things at once:

• Unified the surfaces. AI Overviews and AI Mode became one AI Search experience.
• Went global. AI Mode became available to every user, everywhere.
• Confirmed the scale. Usage had passed 1 billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter.

There is no "classic Search underneath the AI" anymore. The answer page is generated, not retrieved.

A page that ranked #3 for a decade can be invisible in the AI answer, and a page that never cracked page one can be the cited source.

Measuring which one you are is what AI Mode SEO analysis does. It is the fastest-moving corner of the broader LLM SEO discipline (sometimes called GEO).

Key takeaways: the 8 tools at a glance

Why traditional rank trackers miss AI Mode

This is not a case of legacy tools being slow to add a feature.

The architecture of rank tracking (load a results page, record the ordered list, store positions over time) does not map onto AI Mode at all. Five structural problems:

1. There is no position to track. AI Mode generates a written answer with inline citations, not a ranked list. The measurable unit is whether you are cited or mentioned, and how prominently. That is a fundamentally different metric from "position 4." Tools built around positions have nothing to record.
2. Query fan-out breaks the keyword model. Google's own documentation explains that AI Mode uses a query fan-out technique: one prompt is decomposed into dozens of background sub-queries across subtopics, and the answer is synthesized from all of them. Your citation may come from a sub-query no keyword tool has ever shown you. Tracking your head keyword tells you almost nothing about your AI Mode footprint.
3. Results are non-deterministic. The same prompt can produce different answers, and different cited sources, on different runs, for different users, in different sessions. A single snapshot is statistically meaningless. You need repeated prompt sampling to estimate a citation rate, which is why every serious tool in this list works from scheduled prompt runs rather than one-off checks.
4. Conversations, not queries. Since I/O 2026, users float from an AI answer into follow-up questions with context preserved. The third question in a session has no standalone "keyword" a tracker could ever enumerate. Visibility depends on how the model interprets the whole conversation.
5. The measurement data barely exists. Google's Generative AI performance report in Search Console (launched June 3, 2026) counts impressions only. No clicks, no position, no queries, and it began with a UK-first rollout. Referral traffic from AI answers is largely dark, so without prompt-level sampling you cannot connect visibility to outcomes at all.

How we evaluated AI Mode SEO analysis tools

We scored each tool against seven criteria, weighted toward what actually changes decisions.

Pricing was verified against published plan pages and current third-party pricing reviews in July 2026; ratings come from linked G2 pages. Where we have a full standalone review, we link it.

And a note on method: "tracks AI Mode" on a vendor page can mean anything from a dedicated module to a checkbox that samples weekly. We read the plan tables, not the headlines.

1. AI Mode coverage. Does the tool explicitly track Google AI Mode (not just AI Overviews or ChatGPT)? Is it included in base plans or a paid add-on? This one criterion reshuffles the entire ranking, as the coverage matrix below shows.
2. Citation tracking depth. Does it distinguish being cited (your URL linked as a source) from being mentioned (brand named, no link), and show which specific URLs earn citations? Mentions build awareness; citations carry clicks and authority. A tool that conflates them hides your real position.
3. Prompt sampling. How many prompts per plan, how often are they re-run, and can you localize by country? Daily beats weekly; 100 prompts beats 15.
4. Competitive share of voice. Trend lines for your own brand are vanity; benchmarks against named competitors are strategy.
5. Actionability. Does the tool tell you why you are not cited and what to fix, or just report the score? Most fail this test.
6. Reporting and integrations. White-label exports, Looker Studio connectors, GA4/GSC integration, API access.
7. Price transparency. Published tiers and predictable scaling versus quote-only pricing and credit systems.

The 8 best AI Mode SEO analysis tools in 2026

1. CrawlRaven: best budget technical + AI visibility combo

CrawlRaven is our product, so read this entry knowing that. The positioning is honest, though: it approaches AI Mode from the side most tools ignore, whether your site is technically citable in the first place.

• Profile: pairs AI-visibility tracking with a 200-point technical audit of the retrieval layer AI Mode depends on (AI-crawler access, schema validity, Core Web Vitals, content structure, and internal-link authority), packaged as white-label PDF reports agencies can hand to clients
• Key features: 200-point technical SEO audit, AI-visibility tracking, cloud crawling with automated scheduling, prioritized fix recommendations, white-label PDF reports
• Pros: a one-time $49 entry is the lowest in this list; audit + visibility in one license; free plan for 1 site with no credit card; fixes are prioritized, not just listed
• Cons: Not a dedicated prompt-analytics platform, so no prompt-volume research or persona modeling; dedicated trackers like Profound and Peec go deeper on citation analytics
• Pricing: Free plan (1 website); one-time lifetime licenses at $49 (3 websites) or $99 (10 websites, white-label), verified July 2026
• Rating: Rated on Product Hunt; as the vendor we exclude ourselves from comparative scoring

Best for: Teams and agencies that want to fix the technical factors that earn AI Mode citations and track visibility from one $49 launch license, not just watch a dashboard describe the problem.

2. Peec AI: best dedicated tracker for agencies

Peec AI is a Berlin-built AI search analytics platform designed for agencies and marketing teams running multiple brands across multiple countries.

• Profile: tracks a shared pool of seven engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Grok), with each project choosing which engines to monitor, so you never pay for engines irrelevant to a client's market
• Key features: Citation-level source analysis, competitive share-of-voice benchmarks, per-project engine selection, unlimited team seats on all plans, Looker Studio connector for blended GSC + AI dashboards
• Pros: Unlimited seats is rare at this price; clean multi-market workflows; strong citation analytics
• Cons: Founded 2025, so historical data depth is limited; only 3 engines active per plan by default (extra engines are a per-model add-on); no content optimization layer
• Pricing: Starter $95/month (50 prompts), Pro $245/month (150 prompts), Advanced $495/month (350 prompts), custom Enterprise. Verified July 2026 at peec.ai/pricing. Note: plans were repackaged since our review, which covered the earlier €89/25-prompt Starter.
• Rating: 5.0/5 on G2, though from a very small review sample

Best for: SEO agencies managing multi-country clients who want the whole team in one dashboard without per-seat pricing.

3. Profound: deepest AI Mode analytics

Profound is the category's heavyweight: $58.5M raised through Series B and a G2 Winter 2026 Leader badge.

• Profile: the differentiator is Prompt Volumes, proprietary panel data showing what real people actually ask AI platforms, segmented by region and demographics. That is keyword research for AI search, and no competitor offers an equivalent
• Key features: Prompt Volumes panel data, citation-level brand tracking with daily refresh, competitive intelligence, AI agents for automated research workflows, SOC 2 compliance, API access
• Pros: Deepest analysis in the category; 10+ platforms including Google AI Mode at the top tier; enterprise-grade security and support
• Cons: The features that justify the hype (Prompt Volumes, full platform coverage) are locked behind Enterprise pricing; Starter covers ChatGPT only; steep onboarding curve (G2 reviewers report 2–3 weeks to configure a competitive landscape)
• Pricing: Starter $99/month (ChatGPT only) and Growth $399/month (3 engines, 100 prompts), both billed yearly; Enterprise runs roughly $2,000–$5,000+/month. Verified July 2026
• Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 from 800+ reviews

Best for: Enterprise brands treating AI visibility as a core channel with budget for the Enterprise tier. The lower tiers are a taste, not the product.

4. Scrunch AI: all 7 engines on every plan

Scrunch AI positions itself as an AI customer-experience platform rather than a pure monitor. When we first reviewed it, AI Mode coverage was missing; the 2026 repackaging fixed that.

• Profile: every plan tracks all seven supported engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Meta AI); with SOC 2 compliance and GA4 integration on top, it is built for teams that need procurement-friendly vendors
• Key features: All-engine tracking on every plan, persona-based prompt modeling, GA4 integration for AI referral dashboards, hallucination detection, multi-brand agency workflows, SOC 2 compliance
• Pros: No engine-gating games, AI Mode included at entry; best-in-class GA4 integration; strong competitive analysis
• Cons: No free trial at a $250+/month entry point; weak actionable fix workflows; prompt credit system takes effort to understand; recent repricing means older reviews cite plans that no longer exist
• Pricing: Starter $250/month billed annually ($300 month-to-month) with 350 custom prompts; Growth $417/month annual ($500 monthly, 700 prompts); custom Enterprise with SSO and Data API. Verified July 2026
• Rating: 4.6/5 on G2

Best for: Mid-market and enterprise teams that want every AI surface, including AI Mode, covered on one plan with the compliance boxes checked.

5. Otterly: cheapest dedicated AI Mode monitor

Otterly is the most accessible dedicated entry point in the category, used by 20,000+ marketing professionals.

• Profile: its Link Citations Analysis shows exactly which of your URLs each AI engine references, the fastest way to learn which pages are your AI-visible assets. One structural catch for this article's purpose: Google AI Mode (like Gemini) is a paid add-on module on top of every plan, not part of the base engine set
• Key features: Prompt-level monitoring across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews (AI Mode and Gemini as add-ons), Link Citations Analysis, scheduled alerts on visibility changes, GEO URL audits, 50+ country tracking
• Pros: $29/month entry with a free trial; simplest onboarding in the category (G2 reviewers repeatedly cite easy setup); genuinely useful citation drill-downs
• Cons: Lite's 15 prompts is very restrictive; engine add-ons ($59–$149/month each) erode the budget positioning once you add AI Mode; shallow historical data for long trend analysis; monitoring only, no fix recommendations
• Pricing: Lite $29/month (15 prompts), Standard $189/month (100 prompts), Premium $489/month, custom Enterprise. Verified July 2026 against Otterly's pricing documentation
• Rating: ~4.9/5 on G2 from ~37 reviews

Best for: SMBs and solo marketers who want dedicated AI search monitoring at the lowest dedicated-tool price. Budget for the AI Mode add-on if that surface is the priority.

6. AthenaHQ: best for e-commerce

AthenaHQ is a Y Combinator-backed platform founded by former Google Search and DeepMind engineers. Its edge is commerce.

• Profile: the broadest engine list of any self-serve tool here (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, Claude, and DeepSeek); native Shopify and GA4 integrations connect AI visibility to revenue at the individual product level
• Key features: Product-level AI visibility for e-commerce catalogs, Shopify + GA4 integrations, citation intelligence, AI content optimization suggestions, blindspot detection, geographic breakdowns, unlimited seats
• Pros: Optimization recommendations, not just monitoring; nine-engine coverage including AI Mode; connects visibility to revenue data
• Cons: No free trial; credit-based system requires planning ($100 per extra 1,250 credits); dataset younger than Profound's; overkill if you are not in e-commerce
• Pricing: Self-serve $295/month ($245/month billed annually), Growth $399/month, custom Enterprise. Verified July 2026. Note: pricing has moved sharply upmarket since our review, which covered the earlier $99/month entry plan.
• Rating: 4.9/5 on G2 from 32 reviews

Best for: E-commerce brands that need to know which products, not just which pages, AI Mode recommends, tied back to Shopify revenue.

7. Semrush AI SEO Toolkit: best for existing Semrush users

Semrush's AI SEO Toolkit bolts AI Mode analysis onto the industry's most-used SEO suite. If your team already lives in Semrush, it is the lowest-friction path to AI data.

• Profile: added explicit Google AI Mode tracking in early 2026, with prompt tracking running inside the same Position Tracking workflow as your rankings; the AI Search Site Audit, which checks technical issues blocking AI bots, is genuinely distinctive among the trackers here
• Key features: Prompt tracking across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, and Gemini; Prompt Research; Brand Performance reports; AI Search Site Audit; integration with the full Semrush keyword/backlink stack
• Pros: One dashboard for rankings and AI citations; $99/month standalone entry; huge existing ecosystem
• Cons: Scaling stings ($99/month per additional domain and $60/month per extra 50 prompts); 25 base prompts is thin; narrower engine coverage than dedicated tools (no Claude, Copilot, or Grok); Semrush's 2.8/5 Trustpilot score (939 reviews, mostly billing complaints) is worth knowing before you subscribe
• Pricing: AI Visibility Toolkit $99/month per domain (25 prompts); Semrush One Starter bundles SEO + AI visibility at $199/month (5 websites, 50 prompts). Verified July 2026 at semrush.com/pricing/ai
• Rating: 4.5/5 on G2; 2.8/5 on Trustpilot

Best for: Teams already paying for Semrush who want AI Mode data in their existing workflow instead of another login.

8. seoClarity ArcAI: best enterprise option

seoClarity's ArcAI module adds AI search visibility to a full enterprise SEO platform, rather than selling AI tracking as a standalone product.

• Profile: a dedicated AI Mode tracker that distinguishes being mentioned from being cited, with on-demand AI Mode analysis alongside AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. For organizations already running seoClarity's crawls and rank tracking at scale, it folds AI Mode into existing dashboards rather than adding another vendor
• Key features: Dedicated AI Mode mention-vs-citation tracking, unified traditional + AI search dashboards, unlimited custom views, prompt research, sentiment monitoring, enterprise crawl infrastructure
• Pros: True enterprise scale; AI and classic SEO data in one governance model; strong competitive intelligence
• Cons: Quote-only pricing with no self-serve; ArcAI is not sold standalone; wildly oversized for teams that only need AI Mode monitoring
• Pricing: Custom, enterprise-only; third-party estimates put typical ArcAI deployments around $2,500–$4,000+/month. Verified July 2026
• Rating: 4.5/5 on G2

Best for: Large enterprises already on seoClarity that want AI Mode visibility governed inside the same platform as everything else.

Full comparison table: AI Mode SEO analysis tools

First the coverage question, because it disqualifies tools faster than any other criterion. Not every "AI visibility" tool actually tracks AI Mode, and several that do charge extra for it:

• Included on every plan. Scrunch AI, AthenaHQ, and Semrush's AI SEO Toolkit.
• Included, but gated by tier. Profound (Enterprise only) and Peec AI (inside its seven-engine pool).
• A paid add-on. Otterly, at $59–$149/month per extra engine.
• A dedicated module. seoClarity ArcAI, on an enterprise contract.
• Audited rather than tracked. CrawlRaven, which checks whether AI Mode can retrieve and cite you at all.

Savings math worth pre-computing, in year-one totals:

• Scrunch AI Starter. $250/month annual, so $3,000/year.
• Profound Growth. $399/month, so $4,788/year.
• CrawlRaven $99 at launch + Otterly Lite with the AI Mode add-on. Roughly $88–$178/month, or $1,150–$2,250 in year one, covering technical citability and dedicated monitoring.

And if you only need one of the two, CrawlRaven's launch-price $49 license costs less than 2% of a single year of Scrunch's entry plan.

How to choose: decision tree + use-case cheat sheet

Work through these questions in order. Most teams resolve to a tool within three steps:

1. Is your budget under $100/month? → CrawlRaven ($49 at launch) if you want auditing + visibility; Otterly ($29 + add-on) if you want monitoring only; Semrush AI Toolkit ($99) if you already use Semrush.
2. Do you already pay for an SEO suite? → Semrush users: AI Toolkit. seoClarity customers: ArcAI. Otherwise continue.
3. Are you an agency managing multiple clients/markets? → Peec AI (unlimited seats, per-project engines) or Scrunch AI (SOC 2, multi-brand, all engines).
4. Is e-commerce revenue the KPI? → AthenaHQ (product-level tracking, Shopify/GA4).
5. Is AI visibility a board-level channel with enterprise budget? → Profound Enterprise (Prompt Volumes) or seoClarity ArcAI (unified enterprise platform).

One pattern worth naming: the branches are not mutually exclusive. An agency can run CrawlRaven for client audits and Peec for ongoing tracking, and the combined cost still undercuts a single Scrunch seat. Match the tool to the job, not the category label.

How to check your own AI Mode visibility (5 steps, before you buy anything)

You can establish a defensible baseline in an afternoon with zero spend. Do this first. It will tell you which tool tier you actually need:

1. Open Search Console's Generative AI report. Under Performance, look for the Generative AI features performance report (rolling out from June 3, 2026, UK properties first). Sort by Pages to see which URLs already earn AI Overview and AI Mode impressions. Our breakdown of the GSC AI report covers how to read it and why it shows impressions only.
2. Build a 15–20 prompt panel. Write the questions your buyers actually ask, not keywords. Include comparison prompts ("best X for Y"), problem prompts, and brand-adjacent prompts where competitors might appear.
3. Run each prompt through AI Mode 3 times and log citations. Because answers are non-deterministic, one run is noise. Record every brand mentioned and every URL cited in a spreadsheet, yours and competitors'. Three runs of 20 prompts gives you a rough citation rate and share of voice.
4. Verify AI systems can retrieve you. Check robots.txt for accidental blocks on Google-Extended and other AI crawlers, confirm your key pages are indexed, and validate schema. Citations require access. This is the step a CrawlRaven audit automates across 200 checks.
5. Re-run monthly and decide with data. If your citation rate is near zero while competitors dominate, prioritize the technical and content fixes. If you are cited but want to defend and scale, that is when a dedicated tracker from this list earns its subscription. For the strategy layer on top, see our guides to LLM SEO and ranking in ChatGPT and AI Overviews.

AI Mode SEO analysis FAQs

What is AI Mode?

What is Google AI Mode? Google's conversational AI search experience, powered by Gemini. Three things define it:

• It generates. Full answers with cited sources, not a ranked list of links.
• It remembers. Context holds across follow-up questions.
• It is everywhere. Since I/O 2026 it is available to every user globally, with 1B+ monthly users and query volume more than doubling every quarter.

Is AI Mode the same as AI Overviews? They started separate, then converged:

• AI Overviews. AI summaries shown above the classic results.
• AI Mode. A dedicated conversational tab.
• Since I/O 2026. Google unified them into one seamless AI Search experience. Tools (and Search Console) still often report them as distinct surfaces, which is why coverage of both matters in a tracker.

Does AI Mode use rankings at all? Indirectly. AI Mode retrieves candidate sources via query fan-out across Google's index, so classic relevance and quality signals influence retrieval. But the final answer cites a handful of sources, so strong rankings are an input, not a guarantee.

Tracking questions

Can Search Console track AI Mode? Partially. The Generative AI performance report (June 3, 2026) counts impressions when your URL appears in AI Overviews or AI Mode. What it does not give you:

• Clicks. Not reported.
• Positions. Not reported.
• Query data. Not reported.
• Global coverage. It rolled out UK-first.

It is a free baseline, not a substitute for prompt-level tools.

How often should prompts be sampled? Daily if the budget allows, weekly at minimum. AI Mode answers shift with model updates and index changes; monthly snapshots routinely miss both losses and wins.

What metrics replace rankings? Three, all trended over time:

• Citation rate. How often your URL is linked across repeated runs of a prompt.
• Mention rate. Brand named without a link.
• Share of voice. Your citation and mention footprint versus named competitors.

Pricing questions

How much should I budget? Verified July 2026, by tier:

• Entry tools. A one-time $49 (CrawlRaven) or $29/month (Otterly Lite).
• Dedicated mid-market trackers. $95–$295/month (Peec, Scrunch, AthenaHQ).
• The Semrush add-on path. $99/month.
• Enterprise platforms. $2,000+/month (Profound Enterprise, seoClarity ArcAI).

What hidden costs should I watch for? Four, and they compound fast:

• Engine add-ons. Otterly charges $59–$149/month per extra engine, including AI Mode.
• Per-domain fees. Semrush adds $99/month per domain.
• Prompt overages. $60 per 50 prompts on Semrush.
• Credit systems. AthenaHQ charges $100 per 1,250 extra credits.

Always price your real configuration, not the advertised entry tier.

Is a free option viable? For a baseline, yes: Search Console's Generative AI report plus manual prompt sampling costs nothing. But neither gives you competitor share of voice or alerting, the two things that make paid tools decision-grade.

For the broader toolkit beyond Google's surfaces (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and the rest) see our companion guide to the best LLM SEO tools and the full 14-tool AI visibility roundup.

Sources for this guide

• Google: AI Mode in Search (query fan-out technique)
• Google Search Central: Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (June 3, 2026)
• Peec AI pricing, Otterly pricing docs, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit pricing: verified July 2026
• Profound on G2 (4.6/5), AthenaHQ on G2 (4.9/5), Otterly on G2 (~4.9/5), Scrunch AI on G2 (4.6/5), seoClarity on G2 (4.5/5), Semrush on G2 (4.5/5)
• CrawlRaven: Google I/O 2026, Every Major Search Update and CrawlRaven: GSC Generative AI Performance Reports