AEO fundamentals

Which AI engines should I track for AI visibility?

By Arnav Mukherjee, founder of TofuBofu · July 5, 2026

When we were building our scanner, the very first design argument was the most basic one: which engines do we even check? There are dozens, new ones launch monthly, and it is tempting to build a wall of logos and claim you cover them all. We resisted that, and picked four. That decision taught me the real answer to this question, which is less "which engines exist" and more "where do your buyers actually ask, and where does your effort compound."

You cannot chase every engine, and you do not need to. Here is how to prioritize.

Start with the four that carry the load

For B2B service companies, four engines cover the overwhelming majority of buyer research: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. This is where the questions your buyers ask actually get asked. Everything else, for now, is a rounding error against these four, and the effort you spend earning citations here carries over to the rest.

Google AI Overviews belongs in the picture too, but with an asterisk we will get to: it shares so much with Gemini that you rarely optimize for it separately. Track the four well and you have real coverage. That is the whole prioritization: depth on the majors beats a shallow sweep of everything.

How the four differ, and why it matters less than you think

The engines are not identical. Their biggest difference is how much they lean on live retrieval versus trained knowledge, and which sources they trust.

Perplexity is retrieval-first and cites its sources openly. Gemini draws on Google's ecosystem, including its search index and business reviews. ChatGPT and Claude blend trained knowledge with live browsing, with Claude tending to be the more cautious about who it names.

But here is the liberating part: the inputs they reward are nearly identical. Structured data, content written for the specific questions buyers ask, and third-party validation help you on all four. You are not running four separate optimization projects. You are doing the work once and being rewarded four times. That is precisely why tracking all four together is worth it: one improvement, measured across every engine your buyers use.

Where Google AI Overviews fits

Google AI Overviews is the AI answer that appears above traditional Google results. It is a distinct surface with real reach, but because it lives inside Google's ecosystem, it shares signals with Gemini. The structured, well-cited, specific content that earns you a place in Gemini tends to help you in AI Overviews as well. Treat it as part of your Google-side coverage rather than a separate campaign. If you serve local buyers, this is also where your Google Business Profile does extra work.

Why breadth still matters

If the inputs are shared, why not just track one engine and assume the rest follow? Because being present across more platforms is itself a signal, and it compounds. An analysis by Profound found brands present on four or more platforms are about 2.8 times more likely to be cited. Different buyers reach for different engines, and the more places you show up consistently, the more the whole system treats you as a real, corroborated answer.

So the goal is not to obsess over a single engine's ranking. It is to be reliably citable across the majors, and to measure all of them so you can see where you are strong and where a competitor is quietly winning.

How to prioritize for your business

Want the detail on how each one decides? We keep an engine-by-engine breakdown in the AI engine guides, covering ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.