# Which AI optimisation software improves visibility the most?

Canonical: https://whatisgeo.app/which-ai-optimization-software-improves-visibility/
Publisher: Adapt Progress Evolve Limited
Updated: 2026-10-25

> No independent evidence ranks any AI optimisation software by how much visibility it adds. Most tools measure visibility; the improvement comes from changes to your site and content, which you can test for yourself.

Software can help you see your AI visibility and can speed up the work of changing it. What it cannot show you is proof that the software itself caused an improvement. This page explains where tools help, what the evidence for any change actually rests on, and how to test any product yourself, ours included. None of it requires buying anything.

## Is there a tool that improves AI visibility the most?

Nobody can honestly name one. We know of no independent study that compares products by the visibility they added to the same sites, from the same starting point, over the same period. Without a study like that, "the most" has nothing to be measured against.

What can be said is narrower. Some tools are good at showing you what AI assistants say about you. Some help you produce or restructure content faster. Neither of those, on its own, tells you that your visibility rose because of the software.

## Measuring visibility and changing it are different jobs

A tracker watches. You give it prompts, it records which brands and sources appear in the answers, and it shows you a trend. That is useful, and [how to measure AI visibility](/how-to-measure-ai-visibility/) covers it in detail. But a thermometer does not lower your temperature.

An optimisation tool, in the loose sense the market uses, suggests or makes edits: rewrites, structural changes, schema suggestions, content briefs. The edits are what might make a difference. The software is how they get delivered.

Plenty of products do both jobs under one login, which is fine. The trouble starts when the measuring half gets the credit for the changing half. A dashboard showing mentions going up tells you that mentions went up. It does not tell you why.

For an overview of the categories of product available, see [generative engine optimisation tools](/generative-engine-optimization-tools/). That page does not rank products by results either.

## What actually moves visibility, and what each claim rests on

The evidence comes in two kinds: what the platforms document, and what one research paper found. Treat them differently.

### What the platforms document

**Google.** Google's guidance on AI Overviews and AI Mode says you can apply the same foundational SEO best practices as for Search overall. To be eligible as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet, and Google states there are "no additional technical requirements". It also says specific optimisation is not required for these features. Any tool claiming a special method for Google's AI features is claiming something Google's own documentation does not support.

**Crawler access.** Whether an AI system can reach your pages is something you control, and the platforms document it:

| Platform | Crawler | What the documentation says |
| --- | --- | --- |
| OpenAI | OAI-SearchBot | Used to surface sites in ChatGPT's search features. Sites that opt out will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. |
| OpenAI | GPTBot | A separate setting, for indicating whether content may be used to train OpenAI's foundation models. |
| Perplexity | PerplexityBot | Used to surface and link sites in Perplexity search results; Perplexity recommends allowing it. |
| Perplexity | Perplexity-User | Fetches pages when a user asks a question. Perplexity says it generally ignores robots.txt because a user requested the fetch. |
| Anthropic | Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User | Anthropic says blocking either may reduce your site's visibility in user search results or user-directed web search. |
| Anthropic | ClaudeBot | Collects content that may be used for training; blocking it signals that future material should be excluded. |

Checking these in your robots.txt costs nothing, and the platforms state the effect themselves. Google's same guidance also lists making sure crawling is allowed in robots.txt "and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure", so check your firewall too. For more detail, see [AI crawlers and robots.txt](/ai-crawlers-robots-txt/).

### What the research found

Aggarwal et al.'s GEO paper (accepted to KDD 2024) is the most cited study of content changes for AI answers. Its conditions matter:

- It used GEO-bench, a benchmark the authors built of 10,000 queries, about 80% of them informational.
- The engine they tested was their own two-step setup: fetch the top five Google results for a query, then have gpt-3.5-turbo write an answer from them. They sampled five responses per query to reduce statistical variation.
- Visibility was scored with the authors' own metrics: a position-adjusted word count of the cited text, and a "subjective impression" score rated by GPT-3.5.

Under those conditions, the authors report that adding citations, quotations and statistics improved the position-adjusted metric by 30 to 40% relative to unchanged content, while keyword stuffing gave little or no improvement. They also report improvements of up to 37% in a test on Perplexity.ai, and they found that results varied by domain.

Read it for what it is: a controlled experiment on one benchmark, using a 2023 model and metrics defined by the authors. It does not show that the same edits will lift your brand in live ChatGPT answers today, and it tested no commercial software. It supports making certain kinds of content changes. It says nothing about which tool to buy.

## Why 'best tool' rankings cannot answer this

Most of the top results for this question are lists, often published by a vendor or by an affiliate paid per sign-up. Many say "we tested" without saying how.

A ranking only means something if it states a method. Which prompts? How many runs? Which sites, starting from what baseline, changed in what way, over what period? Without those answers, a ranking is an opinion with a number attached.

Variation is a problem underneath all of this. Google says AI Mode and AI Overviews may use different models and techniques, so the responses and links they show will vary, and that AI Overviews often do not appear at all. The GEO researchers sampled every answer five times for the same reason. You can see it yourself by asking an assistant the same question several times in fresh chats and comparing the answers. If the answer changes when you repeat the question, one snapshot before and one after proves very little.

Measurement can still tell you a lot. It just has to be repeated and controlled before it means anything.

## How to test whether a tool helped you

You can run a fair test on any product. It takes discipline more than money.

1. **Fix your prompt set before you start.** Write down the questions your customers would plausibly ask. Do not change them mid-test or add the flattering ones afterwards.
2. **Record a baseline, repeatedly.** Run each prompt several times over several days, in each assistant you care about. Note whether you are named, how you are described and which sources are cited. The repeats show you your normal spread.
3. **Change one thing at a time.** If you rewrite fifty pages, fix robots.txt and publish a new guide all in one week, you will not know which change did what. Make one change, log the date and leave it alone.
4. **Keep a control.** Leave a comparable set of pages and prompts untouched. If both groups move, the tool is not what moved them.
5. **Measure again the same way.** Same prompts, same number of repeats, same assistants. Compare the shift with your baseline spread.
6. **Check the cause.** Did the cited page actually change? Did a crawler start reaching it? If you cannot point to a clear cause, be wary of giving the software the credit.

The test works however you do the recording, whether in a spreadsheet or in a tool. For the changes themselves, start with [how to improve AI visibility](/how-to-improve-ai-visibility/).

## Questions to ask a vendor before you pay

You do not need to be adversarial, just to get straight answers.

1. Does the product measure, change content, or both? Which feature does which?
2. What is the method behind any claim of improvement: which sites, what baseline, what time window?
3. How does it handle answers varying between runs? How many times is each prompt run?
4. Is the evidence your own or independent? If it is your own, where is it published?
5. Can I export the raw prompts, answers and citations so I can check them without your dashboard?
6. What happens to my data and history if I cancel?

Treat any statistic a vendor quotes as the vendor's own claim, made on its own terms. How tools collect their data also differs a great deal; [AI search optimisation tool data accuracy](/ai-search-optimization-tool-data-accuracy/) covers what to check.

## What to do first if you have a small budget

Put in your own time before you spend money.

Check that the crawlers you want can reach your site, using the platform documentation above. Get the ordinary SEO basics right, since Google says those are what its AI features rely on. Write your prompt set and run a baseline by hand; a spreadsheet will do. Then change one thing and watch what happens.

Software can come later, once you know which question you need it to answer. Saving time on recording and reporting is a fair reason to buy a tool. "It will raise our visibility" is a claim you cannot check before you pay, so do not buy on that promise alone. The home guide's section on [measuring progress](/#measurement) has more on setting up a routine you can repeat.

## From the same studio

These are made by the studio that publishes this guide.

- [visibilitytoai](https://visibilitytoai.com/): If you want the recording step of the test done for you, it runs buyer questions across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity and records whether your company is named and cited; put the same vendor questions to it as to any other tool.

## Questions people ask

### Which AI optimisation software improves visibility the most?

Nobody can honestly name one. We know of no independent study that compares products by the visibility they added to the same sites under the same conditions. Test any tool on your own site with a fixed prompt set, a repeated baseline and an untouched control.

### Can software guarantee my brand appears in ChatGPT or AI Overviews?

No. Google says a page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear as a supporting link, and that AI Overviews often do not show at all. Being eligible is no promise of inclusion, and no vendor controls what an assistant chooses to say.

### What is the difference between an AI visibility tracker and an optimisation tool?

A tracker asks AI assistants questions and records whether you are named or cited. An optimisation tool suggests or makes changes to your content. Many products do both, so ask which feature does which.

### How do I know if an AI visibility tool is working?

Fix your prompts, record a repeated baseline, change one thing at a time, keep an untouched control and then measure again the same way. Credit the tool only if the change is bigger than your normal run-to-run spread and you can point to the cause.

### What are the best AI visibility analytics for search optimisation?

Look for tools that show you the raw prompts and answers, run each prompt more than once, list the cited sources and let you export the data. We do not name a winner, because there is no independent method to rank them.

## Sources

- [Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2024), arXiv:2311.09735](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735)
- [Google Search Central: AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)
- [OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers](https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots)
- [Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers](https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots)
- [Anthropic: Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler)