How to Track Your Rankings in ChatGPT: A Simple Guide

Want to see if your business is mentioned in ChatGPT? You can do it by hand. Just open ChatGPT and type in questions your customers might ask, like, “what’s the best software for [what you do]?” Then, write down what the AI says. The problem? This takes a lot of time, and the answers can change every time you ask. It’s a good start, but there’s a much easier way.

Why Tracking Your ChatGPT Rankings Matters

The way people look for information is changing fast. Instead of always using Google, millions of people now ask AI chatbots like ChatGPT for quick, simple answers. This change is creating a big new chance for businesses that are paying attention.

Imagine you are a customer. Someone might ask ChatGPT for “the best local pizza” or “easy accounting software.” If your business is mentioned in that AI answer, you just got a great new lead. This is the new way to get noticed online.

The New Digital Storefront

Think of being mentioned by an AI as having a shop on a busy street. This isn’t just about old-school search engine optimization (SEO) anymore. Now, it’s about making sure your brand is part of the information these AI models learn from. Getting seen here helps people trust you right away.

When your brand keeps showing up as a helpful answer in ChatGPT, it shows you are a leader in your field. This builds a lot of trust, more than regular ads can.

For business owners, this is a big deal. It’s a basic change in how customers find things to buy. If you ignore it, you are letting your competitors get ahead. The ideas are like regular SEO, but the game is completely new. If you’re just starting, you can learn more about how to rank your website on ChatGPT in our detailed guide.

Why You Need a Plan

Without a clear plan, you are just guessing. You have no idea if your brand is being suggested, ignored, or even talked about in the wrong way. A good tracking plan helps you see what’s really happening.

It lets you:

• See how visible you are: Know exactly how often your brand shows up for important search terms.
• Check on competitors: Find out which competitors are being mentioned and why.
• Improve your website: Change your website’s text to better match what AI models look for.
• Measure your progress: See if your work to get noticed by AI is actually paying off over time.

Tracking your AI rankings is a must-do for any business that wants to stay in the game and connect with today’s customers.

A Simple Manual Way to Check Your Rankings

Before we talk about fancy tools, let’s start with something you can do right now. The easiest way to see where you stand in ChatGPT is to just ask it questions, the same way a customer would. This hands-on method gives you a real look at how the AI sees your brand.

To do it right, you need to think like a customer. What words do they use when they need something you sell? For example, if you own a local coffee shop, you would want to ask ChatGPT for “the best coffee shops in Brooklyn.” This gives you a starting point to see how visible you are.

How to Write Your Test Questions

To get useful information from a manual check, you have to use realistic questions. Just typing your brand name won’t tell you much. Instead, focus on the problems you solve for people.

Here are a few examples to get you started:

• For a software company: “What is the best project management software for small teams?”
• For a local plumber: “Who are the most reliable plumbers near me for a leaky pipe?”
• For a marketing company: “Suggest a marketing company that is good with online stores.”

Using these kinds of questions is like a real customer search. It’s a good idea to keep a simple spreadsheet to write down the answers and track when your brand is mentioned. This is a basic first step for anyone wanting to understand how real-world questions turn into AI-generated answers.

Below are more examples. Try swapping the business types and places with your own to see what you find.

Example Questions for Manual Ranking Checks

Use these sample questions to check your brand’s visibility in ChatGPT by hand.

These questions are just a start. The more you can think like a customer, the more you will learn from your manual checks.

The goal is not just to see if your name shows up. It’s to understand why you show up, or why you don’t. Pay attention to which competitors are mentioned and how the AI talks about them.

This manual process gives you an idea of how to track your rankings, but it has big problems. For one, the answers can be different each time you ask. It’s also very slow if you want to check more than a few keywords. This makes it almost impossible to get a clear picture of how you’re doing over time.

The Problem with Manual Checks

Checking by hand is okay for a quick look, but it’s not a real business plan. The number of people using these tools is huge. Since it launched, ChatGPT’s use has grown very fast. Experts think it will reach 5.2 billion monthly visits by July 2025. That’s almost 20 times more in just over two years. You can see more data on this incredible growth over at Exploding Topics.

With so many people asking questions, checking a few by hand won’t give you good information. You need a better way.

This is where a tool like an AI rank tracker can help. Instead of you spending hours typing questions, a special tool can automatically check your rankings for all your keywords. It can do this across ChatGPT and other chatbots, not just one. This gives you steady, trustworthy data, saves you time, and shows you a clear picture of your brand’s visibility in the AI world.

The Limits of Manual Tracking

While asking ChatGPT questions yourself is a good way to start, you’ll quickly find its problems. Using only this method is like trying to measure rain with a spoon—you only get a tiny bit of the picture.

The first big issue is that the answers are not always the same. Ask ChatGPT the same question twice, and you might get two different answers. This is because the AI creates answers on the spot. A manual check today might show your brand, but a check tomorrow might not. This makes it very hard to make smart business choices.

The Problem of Doing Too Much

Another big problem is time. It’s easy to check a few keywords. But what about checking 20, 50, or even 100 different phrases? Imagine a local plumber trying to track rankings for “emergency pipe repair,” “leaky faucet fix,” and many other terms. The work quickly becomes a full-time job.

This takes up a lot of time that could be used for other things. So many people use these AI tools every day, which makes checking by hand unreliable. By June 2025, ChatGPT users were sending over 2.6 billion messages every day, a number that grew by almost six times in just one year. You can find more data on the incredible volume of ChatGPT messages.

No History, No Progress

Maybe the biggest weakness of manual checks is that you can’t see your history. You can see where you are at one moment, but you can’t track your progress over time.

Are your efforts to get noticed working? Is a competitor suddenly showing up more? Manual checks just can’t answer these important questions.

Without historical data, you’re guessing. You can’t connect your website work to real results, so you don’t know what’s working and what’s a waste of time.

This is why automation is so important. To truly understand how to track rankings in ChatGPT, you need a system that can check hundreds of keywords all the time and save the results. It’s the only way to see trends, measure your growth, and get a real advantage.

The manual way is a good start, but a special tool like an AI rank tracker is what makes a real plan. It automates the whole process, giving you solid data for not just ChatGPT but for multiple chatbots, so you always know where you stand.

Automating Your Insights with an AI Rank Tracker

Let’s be honest, checking your rankings in ChatGPT by hand is a good first step, but it’s not a real strategy. It’s slow, your results will be different each time, and it’s almost impossible to see if you’re making progress. This is where an automatic tool can do all the hard work for you.

An AI rank tracker is made to solve these problems. It works by automatically asking AI chatbots like ChatGPT your target questions on a regular schedule. Instead of you typing in questions day after day and copying answers into a spreadsheet, the tool does it all for you.

The Power of Consistent Data

This kind of automation is a game-changer because it gives you steady, trustworthy data. You can see exactly where your brand stands for your most important keywords—not just in ChatGPT, but across many other AI chatbots, too. Getting this wider view is key to understanding how visible you really are in the AI space.

But the best part is seeing trends. With past data, you can finally see if your rank is improving after you post a new blog, or notice if a competitor is suddenly showing up more often. This is the kind of information you need to make smart marketing decisions. For those looking to learn more, exploring various AI SEO tools can offer some valuable ideas on automated analysis.

This screenshot shows exactly how an AI rank tracker displays your performance over time.

The chart makes it very clear how your brand’s visibility is changing, letting you connect your marketing work to actual results in AI conversations.

Tracking at a Larger Scale

The huge number of people using these AI platforms makes manual tracking impossible for any serious business. Think about it: as of September 2025, there are 782 million different ChatGPT users around the world, leading to about 4.8 billion visits every single month. This massive user base is exactly why businesses need a systematic way to track their presence.

An AI rank tracker removes the guesswork. It turns a boring, time-consuming manual task into a simple, automated process, giving you the clear information you need to grow your brand’s presence in AI conversations.

By putting your tracking on autopilot, you free up your time to focus on what really matters—using the data to improve your content and connect with more customers. With a tool doing the monitoring, you can be sure you have an accurate picture of your performance.

If you want a hands-on look, you should check out our AI rank tracker at https://lpagery.io/tools/ai-rank-tracker/ to see how it can automate your keyword monitoring across multiple chatbots. It’s the most effective way to learn how to track your rankings in ChatGPT.

Using an AI Rank Tracker to Monitor Your Performance

Manually asking ChatGPT questions is a good start, but it’s not a real plan. It takes a lot of time, the answers can change a lot, and you can’t track your progress. This is where an automated tool completely changes the game.

An AI rank tracker does all the hard work for you. Think of it as your own personal helper who is always checking your rankings in ChatGPT and other AI chatbots every single day, without you doing anything.

Setting Up Your Automated Tracking

Getting started with an AI rank tracker is very simple. The first step is to enter your website and the keywords you want to watch. These should be the same words and phrases you know your customers are using to find a business like yours.

For example, a local bakery might want to track terms like:

• “best birthday cakes in downtown”
• “sourdough bread near me”
• “coffee shops with outdoor seating”

Once you’ve put in your keywords, the tool starts working. It automatically checks your rankings on a schedule—usually every day or week—and saves every result. This gives you a steady stream of reliable data you can use to make smart marketing decisions.

This simple chart shows how a tool takes over all the boring steps for you.

As the picture shows, the main benefits are all about automation: scheduled checks, detailed reports, and timely alerts. It removes all the guesswork and manual work from the process.

Understanding Your Performance Data

The real value of an AI rank tracker is in the data it gives you. Instead of just a simple “yes” or “no” on whether your brand was mentioned, you get detailed information. You can see your exact ranking position, how you compare to competitors, and how your visibility changes over time.

This helps you finally answer those important questions:

• Did that new blog series actually improve our visibility for our main keyword?
• Is our biggest competitor getting mentioned more often than we are?
• Are we even showing up for the services we want to be known for?

Tracking your performance isn’t just about collecting numbers. It’s about turning those numbers into a plan. Seeing your ranking drop for a key term is a clear sign to update your content or change your strategy.

A side-by-side comparison really shows the difference between doing manual checks and using a special tool.

Manual vs. Automated AI Rank Tracking

In the end, a manual check gives you a guess, but an automated tool gives you the facts.

If you want to see how this works in real life, you can explore the features of our ChatGPT rank tracker to get a feel for how it automates this whole process. It handles the monitoring across multiple chatbots, saving you a lot of time and giving you a much clearer picture of your AI visibility. This is how you truly understand how to track rankings in ChatGPT effectively and consistently.

Common Questions About AI Rank Tracking

When you start looking into tracking your rankings in ChatGPT, you will likely have a few questions. It’s a new thing for most of us, so let’s clear up some common questions to help you move forward.

Getting good answers now means you can build a real plan instead of just guessing.

How Often Should I Check My Rankings?

The right answer really depends on your goals and how much you are changing your website. For most businesses, checking on a weekly basis is a good balance. It gives you enough data to see real trends without worrying about small, daily changes that don’t mean much.

Now, if you’ve just launched a new product or a big marketing campaign, you might want to check more often—maybe every couple of days. On the other hand, if your industry moves slowly, checking every two weeks or even once a month could be fine. The most important thing is to be consistent.

The goal isn’t just to see a snapshot in time but to understand the direction you’re heading. Consistent tracking is what turns data into a clear story about your performance.

Do AI Rankings Affect My Regular SEO?

While they are not the same thing, your normal SEO and your visibility in AI chats are definitely connected. Think of them as two sides of the same coin. A strong SEO foundation—built on clear, well-organized, and expert content—almost always leads to better visibility in AI answers. Models like ChatGPT tend to get information from sites they see as trustworthy, which are often the same ones that rank well on Google.

Here’s how they help each other:

• Good SEO helps AI visibility: High-quality content that directly answers people’s questions is great for both search engines and AI.
• AI visibility can support SEO: When someone finds your brand through an AI chat, they might search for you directly or click to your site. Those are good signals for search engines.

They work together to build your brand’s authority. When you improve one, the other usually gets a nice boost, too.

What if My Brand Isn’t Showing Up at All?

First, don’t worry. If you’re not seeing your brand mentioned in AI answers right away, you’re not alone. That’s a very common starting point for most businesses. Your first step should be to make sure your website has high-quality, detailed content that clearly answers the questions your potential customers are asking. Get busy creating helpful blog posts, detailed guides, and clear service pages.

If you’ve already built a good content library and you’re still not being mentioned, it might be time for a better plan. A more focused approach can help you figure out exactly what you need to do to rank higher in chatbots and start getting mentioned. A good automated tool is the best way to get the data you need to make smart decisions. It takes the guesswork out of the process and shows you a clear path forward.

About the Author

Jonas Lindemann

I’m an experienced SEO professional with over a decade of helping over 100 businesses rank higher online, especially local businesses, e-commerce stores and SaaS. As the co-founder of LPagery, I specialize in practical, proven strategies for regular SEO and Local SEO success.