The AI Visibility feature is available on the Pro, Business and Premium plans.
More shoppers now ask AI assistants like ChatGPT or Perplexity what to buy, instead of searching on Google.
AI Visibility shows you whether you are in those answers. You choose the questions your customers are likely to ask. Smart SEO then asks those questions on the AI platforms you select, several times a week, and measures how often your brand is mentioned, cited and recommended, and how you compare to your competitors.
What AI Visibility tracks
A few terms appear throughout the feature:
Topic: a subject your customers ask about, for example sustainable sneakers or gifts for coffee lovers.
Prompt: a question asked inside a topic, written the way a shopper would ask it, for example "What are the best sustainable sneaker brands for running?". Every topic needs at least one prompt.
AI platform: the assistant that answers your prompts, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview or Copilot.
Region: the country the prompts are asked from. AI answers differ by country, so each region is tracked separately.
Crawl: one round in which every active prompt is asked on every enabled platform in every enabled region. Every plan crawls 3 times per week.
For each crawl, AI Visibility records:
Visibility: how often your brand appears in AI answers.
Avg. position: where your brand appears in the answer when it is mentioned. Lower is better. Position 1 means you were mentioned first.
Share of voice: your share of all brand mentions, compared to your competitors.
Citation rate: how often AI answers link to your website as a source.
Sentiment: whether answers describe your brand positively, neutrally or negatively.
Before you start
Your plan. AI Visibility is included in Pro, Business and Premium. Your plan sets how many prompts, platforms and regions you can track. See Plan limits below.
Remove your storefront password. AI assistants cannot read or cite a password-protected store, so your visibility stays low until the password is removed. You can still finish the setup with a password on, but the brand profile will be built from your catalog data rather than your live site.
Allow about 10 minutes. The setup has five steps. Smart SEO suggests most of the content for you, so the work is mainly reviewing the suggestions.
Where to find it
In your Shopify admin, open Smart SEO > AEO & GEO, then click Configure on the AI Visibility card.
Click Set up AI Visibility to start the setup.
If you leave the setup before finishing, your progress is saved. The button changes to Continue setup so you can pick up where you left off.
AI Visibility Setup
Step 1: Brand profile
Smart SEO researches your brand and fills in the profile for you. This takes up to a minute, and you'll see Getting your store info... while it works.
If your store is password-protected, Smart SEO cannot extract the data properly, make sure you check all the fields:
Look at each field and correct anything that is not relevant to your business:
Website URL: identifies your brand in AI answers and citations. Smart SEO should automatically pull your website domain.
Your brand name
Description: a short overview of your brand.
Industry: for example Retail or Beauty.
Content language: the language your prompts are written in.
Brand identity: a few adjectives that describe your brand, for example eco-friendly, premium, handmade.
The rest of the setup is built from this profile, so accurate details lead to better topics, prompts and competitor suggestions.
You can click Regenerate to research the brand again:
Once the brand profile details are accurate, click Continue.
Step 2: Topics & Regions
This step sets what is tracked, where, and on which AI platforms. Once you complete step 1, Smart SEO will suggest topics and country based on your brand profile:
You can adjust all the details manually:
Topics to track - Smart SEO suggests topics based on your brand profile. To add a new topic, type the topic and press Add, or click the AI generate button to get more suggestions.
You can add more topics later from the Topics tab.
Regions to track - Add the countries where you sell. Every topic is tracked in each region you select. Your store's country is preselected.
AI platforms to track - Choose which LLMs/AI engines you want to track your prompts for. A default set is preselected.
Tip: each prompt runs on every selected platform in every selected region. Add regions and platforms only where you actually sell and where your customers are likely to ask.
Once you're done, click the Continue button at the bottom right.
Step 3: Prompts
Smart SEO writes prompts for each of your topics. Click a topic to review its prompts.
You can remove any prompt you don't want to track or edit it to suit your products.
You can also add manually additional prompts or generate them with AI:
Your plan's prompt allowance is shared across all topics. The Tracked prompts bar shows how much of it you have used.
Every topic needs at least one prompt before you can continue. If a topic has no prompts, go back and remove the topic, or remove a prompt from another topic to free up a slot.
Once you have the prompts you like, click Continue.
Step 4: Competitors
On this step, you can choose which competitors to track for the same prompts, so you can compare your performance with theirs:
To add more competitors, to add a competitor yourself, enter their domain under Competitor domain, for example competitor.com, then click Add.
Or you can ask the AI to suggest more competitors by clicking the AI generate button:
Click Continue.
Step 5: Summary and first crawl
Review the number of topics, prompts, platforms and regions, and how much of your prompt allowance they use. Then click Start tracking.
Your first crawl starts right away and usually takes a few minutes. You'll see how many responses have been collected so far. You can leave the page while it runs and come back later.
Reading your results
After the first crawl, AI Visibility opens on five tabs: Dashboard, Topics, Prompts, Citations and Settings.
Use the filter bar at the top to narrow any view by AI platform, Region, Period (last 7, 30 or 90 days, or all time) and Brands.
The status line next to the tabs shows the Last crawl and an estimate of the Next crawl.
Dashboard
Here is a breakdown of the stats you see on the dashboard:
Visibility: how often each brand appears in AI answers over time. Switch between daily and weekly views, and line or bar charts.
Score breakdown: your average position, share of voice, citation rate and sentiment.
Platform breakdown: your mentions and citations on each AI platform.
Top topics: the topics where you are most visible.
Competitor rankings: where you rank against your competitors. Your brand is marked You.
Recent changes: notable changes, such as a topic's visibility rising or dropping, a new competitor appearing, or a competitor gaining on you.
After your first crawl there is only one data point, so the daily and weekly views look the same. Trends appear from the second crawl.
Topics
The Topics tab shows how visible you are in each subject you track by combining the results of all the Prompts that are part of the given Topic.
You can think of topics like "keywords" in terms of conventional SEO.
The cards at the top summarize all your topics stats:
Topics (how many you track)
Avg visibility across topics
Visible topics (topics where your brand appears)
Avg position across topics.
The table itself lists every topic with its Visibility, Avg. position, Share of voice and Sentiment. You can click the arrow next to a topic to show its prompts and their scores without leaving the page.
A topic marked Crawling... is being processed right now, and its numbers update when the crawl finishes.
Use the All, Active and Paused filters and Search topics to find a topic.
Topic details
Click a topic to open its detail page:
You can find detailed data about the given topic:
Average position and Share of voice over time, for your brand and your competitors
Sentiment: how AI answers describe your brand within this topic
Top brands and Top domains: the brands mentioned most often in this topic's answers, and the websites used as sources
Recent chats: the actual AI answers. Click View answer to read the full answer and the sources the assistant used, with your brand highlighted.
Managing topics
Add a topic: click Add topic, name it, and add at least one prompt. To get suggestions, click Suggest with AI. The window shows how many prompt slots you have left on your plan.
Pause or activate topics: select one or more topics and click Pause or Activate. A paused topic's prompts are not asked during crawls, and its history stays available.
Delete topics: select them and click Delete. The topics and all of their prompts are removed from tracking. This cannot be undone.
Prompts
The Prompts tab shows how you perform on each individual question, across all your topics.
The cards at the top show your total Prompts, Active prompts, Avg visibility across prompts and your Top performer: the prompt where your brand is most visible.
The table lists every prompt with its Visibility and Avg. position. Filter by All, Active or Archived, choose a single topic under Topic, or use Search prompts.
Some prompts show a label:
Crawling...: the prompt is being asked right now.
Topic paused: the prompt belongs to a paused topic, so it isn't asked until you activate the topic again.
Not covered by your plan: you have more prompts than your plan allows, so this prompt isn't asked. A banner at the top shows how many prompts are affected.
Prompt details
Click a prompt to open its detail page. It shows the same charts and Recent chats as a topic, for that single question.
Managing prompts
Add a prompt: choose a topic, type the question the way a shopper would ask it, and click Add prompt.
Archive or activate prompts: select one or more prompts and click Archive or Activate. An archived prompt is no longer asked and frees a slot in your prompt allowance. Its history stays available.
Delete prompts: select them and click Delete. This cannot be undone.
Tip: if you have reached your plan's prompt limit, archive the prompts that matter least to you to make room for new ones.
Citations
This tab shows which websites AI assistants use as sources when they answer your prompts. Use it to find where you are missing.
Domains and URLs list the most-used sources, with how often each one is retrieved and cited.
Gap score marks your best opportunities: sources that AI assistants use often but that rarely mention your store. A review site, a marketplace or a forum with a high gap score is a good place to earn a mention or listing.
Domain movers and URL movers show sources that are new, trending or losing ground compared to the previous period.
Click a domain or URL to see which topics cite it, which platforms use it most, and which brands appear alongside it.
Changing your setup
To change your AI Visibility settings, open the Settings tab.
Project: edit your brand details, or pause or resume the project.
Competitors: add, track or untrack competitors. Competitors found in AI answers appear here as Auto discovered. The ones you added are marked User added. Your plan limits how many competitors you can track at the same time.
Regi
ons: add, enable or disable countries.
AI platforms: turn platforms on or off.
Plan usage: how many prompts, platforms and regions you are using out of your plan's limit.
Changes apply from the next crawl. New regions, platforms, topics and prompts show on the dashboard once that crawl has finished.
Pausing the project stops all crawls. Your existing data stays available. Click Resume project to start crawling again.
Plan limits
| Custom Pro (legacy plan) | Pro | Business | Premium |
Tracked prompts | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 |
AI platforms | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
Regions | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Tracked competitors | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
Crawl frequency | 3 times per week | 3 times per week | 3 times per week | 3 times per week |
If you change plans:
Upgrading raises your limits immediately.
Downgrading to a smaller paid plan keeps all your topics and prompts. Any prompts above the new limit stop being crawled, and the Prompts tab shows how many are affected. Archive prompts to choose which ones stay tracked.
Downgrading to Free pauses AI Visibility. Nothing is deleted, and tracking resumes automatically when you upgrade again.
Uninstalling Smart SEO stops all tracking, and your AI Visibility data is scheduled for deletion. See Uninstalling Smart SEO.
Troubleshooting common issues
"Your storefront is password-protected" AI assistants cannot see or cite a password-protected store, so your own visibility stays low. Remove the password in Shopify admin → Online Store → Preferences. Tracking continues on the next crawl. If this happened during setup, go back to the Brand profile step and click Regenerate so the profile is built from your live site.
"The website could not be analyzed" The brand research could not complete for your store. Fill in the brand profile fields yourself and continue. Everything after this step works the same way.
"The suggestions could not be generated. Please try again in a minute." Suggestions for topics, prompts and competitors are generated by AI and can occasionally time out, or hit a limit if you ask for many in a row. Wait a minute and try again.
"You have reached your plan's prompt allowance" Remove or archive a prompt to free a slot, or upgrade for a larger allowance.
"The first crawl could not be started" Your setup is saved. The crawl starts automatically at the next scheduled run. You don't need to do anything.
My brand is not showing up at all This is common for smaller or newer brands, and it is exactly what AI Visibility is designed to show you. Start with the Citations tab and look for high gap score sources where you could earn a mention. Also make sure AI assistants can read your catalog. See Help AI assistants discover your products with LLM Catalog.
I added a region or platform but see no data for it New regions and platforms are included from the next crawl. Check Next crawl in the status line at the top of the page.
The numbers change between crawls even though I changed nothing AI assistants don't give the same answer twice. Some movement between crawls is normal. Use the weekly view and the 30- or 90-day period to follow the trend rather than single crawls.