The tools in this category share a name and answer different questions. Picking the wrong type means paying to measure something that was never your problem.
- Mention trackers tell you whether AI names your brand. Readability scanners tell you why it does not.
- If you already know you are invisible, tracking mentions of nothing is not useful yet.
- Use a readability scanner to fix causes, then a mention tracker to watch the effect.
What are the two types?
They get grouped together because both say visibility, but they sit at opposite ends of the problem.
| Type | Question it answers | When it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Brand mention tracker | Do assistants name us, and how often? | When you already appear and want to track share |
| Site readability scanner | Can assistants read us, and what is blocking them? | When you do not appear and need the cause |
| Prompt monitor | What do assistants say about us specifically? | Reputation and accuracy management |
Which one do I need?
Start from your symptom. If assistants never name you, a mention tracker will faithfully report zero every week without telling you why, and the why is the only actionable part.
If you already get named sometimes and want to grow or defend that, a mention tracker is exactly right, and a readability scanner will mostly confirm things you have already fixed.
Where does our free scan sit?
Firmly in the second category, and it is worth being direct about the trade. It reads your whole site the way an assistant would, returns a reproducible score from 0 to 100, and ranks what is blocking you with the fixes in plain language.
What it does not do is track how often ChatGPT mentions your brand over time across many prompts. If that is the question you have, the large established tools do it well and we would point you at them rather than pretend otherwise.
What should I check before trusting any score?
Scores in this category are not standardised, and a number without a method behind it is decoration.
- Is the score reproducible? Running twice on an unchanged site should give the same number.
- Does it tell you what to change, or only what is wrong?
- Does it read the whole site, or sample a few pages and extrapolate?
- Does it distinguish a real absence from a page it simply could not fetch? We publish our own score for the same reason.
Common questions
Are free AI visibility checkers accurate?
They are accurate about what they measure, which varies a lot between them. Check whether a tool is sampling prompts or reading your site, because those produce different numbers and neither is wrong.
Why do two tools give me different scores?
Because there is no shared standard. They weight different inputs and some sample rather than crawl. Compare a tool against itself over time rather than against another tool.
Do I need a paid tool?
Not to start. Diagnose with a free scan, fix what it finds, and only pay for ongoing monitoring once you have something worth monitoring.
Related reading
- How to Choose an AI-Visibility Tool for Your Shopify Store
- AI Visibility Drifts: Theme Updates, App Installs, and the Case for Re-Scanning
Run a free scan and get your reproducible 0 to 100 score with a prioritized fix list. Run the free scan.
Your buyers are already asking AI. This is how you get recommended.
Everything in this article is measurable on a live storefront. The Full Assessment and Roadmap reads your website the way ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity read it, and hands you every fix in plain English, ranked by what it is costing you, so the buyers who ask AI get sent to you.