● The short answer
Combine a few free tools with a monthly routine. Set up Google Alerts for your brand name and variations, use review and social notifications, check Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for links and branded queries, search Reddit and forums, and run the same questions through AI assistants each month. Paid listening tools add coverage and speed for larger brands.
Key takeaways
- Brand mentions now happen across reviews, news, social, forums and AI answers.
- Free tools like Google Alerts, review notifications and Search Console cover the basics.
- Run a fixed set of AI prompts monthly to see how assistants describe you.
Why monitoring matters more now
Your reputation is being written in more places than ever: review sites, local news, Reddit threads, Instagram comments, newsletters, podcasts and AI answers. You cannot respond to, correct or build on what you do not see. Monitoring also feeds visibility work. An Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands found branded web mentions were the strongest correlate of appearing in Google's AI Overviews, so knowing where you are mentioned, and where you are not, tells you where to focus.
The how is where we come in.
What we walk through with you, for your business:
- What to monitor and how
- Setting up a monitoring routine
- When to pay for a tool
- Our take
Every business is different, so the plan is too. Tell us where you want to show up and we will show you what it takes.
Talk to usMore questions
Is Google Alerts enough to track brand mentions?
It is a useful free starting point, but it misses many mentions, especially on social media, forums and newer pages. Pair it with review notifications, manual Reddit and social searches, Search Console link data and monthly AI checks. Larger brands usually add a paid monitoring tool for broader coverage.
How do I track what AI says about my brand?
Choose a fixed list of questions customers actually ask, run them in several assistants on a set schedule, and record whether you are named, how you are described and which sources are cited. Consistency matters more than volume, since answers vary between runs and over time.
Sources
Want us to check this for your business?
Send us your URL. We will show you where you are found, trusted and missing across AI answers, search, maps and reviews, in plain English.
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