Your site can still rank #3 on Google and have vanished from ChatGPT’s answers without any rank-tracking tool warning you. And since August, more brands than you’d imagine are running into exactly that.
In this article you’ll see what changed in ChatGPT, why your usual metrics don’t catch it, and how to set up a weekly review of your AI visibility. At the end there’s a 10-minute test you can run today.
If You Publish Content, This Affects You
You’ve spent months (or years) working on your SEO. But traffic is moving strangely and you can’t tell whether the cause is Google, artificial intelligence, or your own content. A client asks, “Are we showing up in ChatGPT?” and honesty forces you to answer, “I don’t know.”
That’s not your fault. The playing field changed, and almost nobody is measuring the new part.
What Changed: A Different Model, A Different Way of Citing
According to the trend notes Semrush shares with its affiliates, since ChatGPT’s model change on August 8, citation behavior has become less predictable. The sources it prefers, the referral traffic it sends, and the number of citations have all shifted.
Another analysis from the same source suggests that AI is moving from retrieving pages by ranking to assembling a shortlist of trusted domains. One more data point: around 87% of ChatGPT’s citations match the top 20 Bing results, so being indexed in Bing matters too.
And there’s a third important detail: AI tools rarely recommend the same brands, or in the same order, even if you repeat the question. That’s why a fixed “position” in ChatGPT makes no sense. What you can measure is how often you appear across many questions.
The Solution: Measure Mentions, Not Positions
That’s exactly what the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit does: it shows you how brands appear in AI-generated answers. These are the parts most useful for this problem:
- Visibility Overview: gives the AI visibility score of any domain and shows where it is mentioned (or not).
- Competitor Research: compares your mentions with those of your competitors and points out topics where they’re winning.
- Brand Performance: measures your share of voice and sentiment, and offers strategic recommendations.
If you want to see it with your own domain, you can access the toolkit from here: try the AI Visibility Toolkit.
My ChatGPT Test
[WRITE YOUR REAL EXPERIENCE HERE: what you asked ChatGPT about your industry, which brands appeared, and whether your site showed up or not. Add your own screenshot. This block is what makes the article unique.]
Why Your Usual Rank Tracker Isn’t Enough
A classic rank tracker measures what position you hold within a list of links. ChatGPT doesn’t give you a list: it gives you an answer with a handful of sources. Without a tool built for this, you end up optimizing blind, and that costs hours and money.
Semrush states that its prompt database exceeds 261 million prompts and feeds the Visibility Overview, Prompt Research, and Competitor Research reports. In other words, you’re working with a volume of questions you could never review by hand.
What Other Users Say
These aren’t my results, but Semrush publishes customer stories about the toolkit, for example “Sure Oak Drives New Leads from AI Visibility” and “Coalition Technologies Boosts AI Traffic and Conversions”. Read them with a critical eye and compare them with your own situation.
Semrush also offers the free AI Visibility Essentials course, which explains how to measure AI visibility and adjust your content strategy.
A 10-Minute Test You Can Run Today
- Write down 5 questions a customer in your industry would ask.
- Ask them in ChatGPT, in fresh conversations.
- Note which brands and sources appear each time.
- Repeat the same thing three days later and compare.
- If your brand drifts in and out, you already know why you need to measure regularly.
Pricing and How to Get Started
The AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99 per month for one domain, according to Semrush’s product page (check the current price before signing up). It doesn’t include its own free trial, but you can explore it with the Semrush One trial.
Conclusion: Every Week Without Measuring Is a Week Without History
AI models change often, and citations change with them. If you start measuring today, you’ll have data to understand what happened when the next change arrives; if you wait, you won’t. If you want to get started, here’s the access: go to the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit.
Disclosure: this article contains Semrush affiliate links. If you sign up for a tool through them, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.