LLM SEO tools: why sampling beats snapshots
Every LLM visibility tool shows you mentions. Almost none tells you how many runs produced them — and with probabilistic models, that's the difference between a measurement and a screenshot. Here's the method that survives scrutiny, free tools to test it yourself, and our tracker that runs it monthly.
The 5 signals every tool on this page ultimately measures, probed on your domain live.
LLM SEO in one paragraph
LLM SEO (also sold as GEO, AEO or LLM visibility) is getting language models to name your brand when users ask for recommendations. It splits into the same two layers as everything else in this field: can models read you (crawler access, structure, extractable answers) and do models pick you (whether sampled answers actually name you against competitors). A tool that only shows you mentions without the technical layer tells you the score but not the game.
The measurement trap: one run is a coin flip
LLMs sample from probability distributions. Ask the same engine the same question five times and your brand can appear in two, three or five answers — same day, same model. Any tool showing a single-run "you rank #2 in ChatGPT" screenshot is selling noise; the honest unit is a rate over repeated runs.
Don't take our word for it — our free Answer Consistency Test runs your prompt 5 times on a live engine and shows you the spread. It's the most convincing 60 seconds in this niche.
What an honest LLM tracking setup looks like
- A fixed prompt set — same 8 buyer questions every month, so movement is real, not sampling drift.
- Repeat runs — we ask the live-web engine 3× per prompt and report a Wilson 95% confidence interval. We publish our N; ask any vendor for theirs.
- Honest engine labels — Perplexity sampling is live web; GPT-4o and Gemini sampling is model-memory, which we say out loud instead of implying it's the ChatGPT product UI.
- The technical layer alongside — mention drops are diagnosed against the 5-signal audit from the same month, so "we slipped" comes with "here's what changed".
That's exactly what the tracker ships monthly, from $20. Method details on the methodology page, with sources.
Free check → one audit → monthly tracker
Plans, method and the live proof strip are on the tracker page; checkout runs on the audit page (crypto, packages — no auto-renew).
Frequently asked questions
Start with a number, not a subscription
The free 5-signal check gives you a baseline in 20 seconds. If you want it re-run monthly with sampled AI answers and a fix list in your inbox, that's the tracker — from $20/mo.