Alternatives to manually asking ChatGPT which tool to buy

Lots of founders and marketers check their AI visibility the same way: open ChatGPT, type "what's the best tool for X?", and see if their product comes up. It's a reasonable first step. But as a way to make decisions, it has real problems, and there are better options at every budget.

What's wrong with asking by hand

One answer isn't a result

ChatGPT gives a different answer each time. You might be named first on Monday and not at all on Tuesday, with nothing changing in between. One answer is a coin flip, not data. See why AI gives different answers each time.

Your history changes the answer

If you've talked to ChatGPT about your product, it may remember. Then it mentions you because of that memory, not because it would recommend you to a buyer. Your own checks look better than reality.

It only covers one assistant

Buyers also use Gemini and Claude, which often give different answers. Checking all three by hand triples the work.

It doesn't scale

Ten buyer questions, three runs each, on three assistants, is 90 chats. Every week. Most people stop by week three, which is just when the trend would have become visible.

You don't see why

A manual check tells you whether you were named. It rarely tells you why a rival was named instead, which is what you need to change the answer.

Option 1: A better manual process (free)

If you want to keep doing it by hand, do it properly:

1. Use a temporary chat or a logged-out browser every time.
2. Write a fixed list of 5 to 10 buyer questions and don't change the wording.
3. Ask each question three times and record named or not, position and rivals.
4. Keep a spreadsheet with a row per question per week.
5. Note the sources cited, because they explain the answer.

Our guide to checking whether ChatGPT recommends your product walks through it step by step.

Good for: a first look, or a very small list of questions.

Option 2: A free one-off check

A free checker asks the questions for you, in clean sessions, and reports the result. Citemark's free AI visibility check asks ChatGPT and Claude 5 buyer questions about your product and shows a score, which questions you're named in and the rivals named instead. It takes about a minute and needs no sign-up.

Good for: a quick, honest baseline, and a list of rivals to watch.

Not good for: trends. It's one moment in time.

Option 3: A tracking tool

A tracking tool asks your buyer questions on a schedule, on several assistants, and keeps every answer. You get:

• A score and its trend, so you can tell real changes from noise.
• The rivals named instead of you, per question.
• The pages each answer cited, so you know what to fix.
• Alerts when you drop out of an answer.

Citemark is one of these. Starter is $19 a month for 50 buyer questions on ChatGPT and Gemini, with your top 10 checked daily. Pro adds Claude for $49 a month. Other tools in the category start from $29 a month and go up to enterprise pricing; see the best AI visibility tools for founders for an honest comparison.

Good for: anyone who wants to improve their visibility, not just look at it once.

Option 4: Ask your customers

Don't forget the simplest signal. Add "How did you hear about us?" to your sign-up form, with "ChatGPT or another AI assistant" as an option. It won't tell you which questions you win, but it tells you how much AI matters to your business, which tells you how much time to spend on it.

What manual checking really costs

It's worth doing the sum. Say you track 10 buyer questions on ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, three runs each, once a week:

• 90 chats a week, at about a minute each to ask, read and record.
• That's an hour and a half every week, or around six hours a month.
• Plus the time to build and maintain the spreadsheet, and to spot patterns in it.

If your time is worth even $30 an hour, that's well over $150 a month of effort, for weekly data with gaps whenever you're busy. A tracking tool does it daily, never skips a week, and keeps every answer so you can go back and read them.

That doesn't mean everyone needs a tool. If AI isn't a meaningful source of customers for you yet, the free check once a month is plenty. But if it is, manual checking is the expensive option, not the cheap one.

Which option to choose

Most teams do the free check first, then decide whether a tracker is worth it based on what they see.

What to do once you know

Whatever method you use, the next step is the same: work out why rivals are named and you aren't, then fix the biggest gap first. The playbook for getting recommended by ChatGPT covers it in order.

Stop asking by hand

Run the free AI visibility check to get a clean baseline in about a minute. To have it done every day, start a 7-day Pro trial with no card.