How do you track AEO performance?
You track AEO performance by monitoring brand mentions and citations inside AI tools directly — asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews your target questions regularly and recording whether and how your business is mentioned. Combine that with referral traffic from AI platforms in your analytics, branded search volume growth, and share-of-voice against competitors in AI answers. There's no single dashboard for this yet, so it takes manual checks plus a few emerging tools.
Manual Prompt Testing Is Still the Baseline
There's no Search Console for AI answer engines yet, so the most reliable method is manual: run the same set of target questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews on a schedule, and log whether your brand is mentioned, cited with a link, or missing entirely.
Do this monthly with a consistent question list, not randomly. Trends matter more than single results — a model's output changes between sessions and updates, so you're tracking direction, not a fixed score.
Watch AI Referral Traffic in Analytics
Check your analytics for traffic sourced from chat.openai.com, perplexity.ai, and similar referrers. It's usually a small number today, but it's growing, and it tells you something rankings can't: whether AI is actually sending people to you, not just mentioning you.
Segment this traffic separately from organic search. It behaves differently — often higher intent, since the user already got context from the AI before clicking through to you.
Branded Search and Share of Voice
If AEO is working, branded search volume for your company name tends to climb, because people hear about you inside an AI answer and then search to verify or learn more before buying.
Also track share of voice — how often you appear compared to named competitors across the same set of prompts. A slow climb in citation frequency relative to competitors is the clearest sign AEO effort is paying off.
My working checklist
- Run the same 15-20 target questions through AI tools monthly
- Log mentions, citations, and links, not just presence
- Track referral traffic from AI platforms separately in analytics
- Monitor branded search volume and share of voice vs competitors
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