I Asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity Who the Best GEO Tools Are — Here's What They Actually Cited

On 2026-07-12 I asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the same three questions — “best GEO tools 2026,” “how to get cited by ChatGPT,” and “AI visibility tools for small teams” — and wrote down exactly which pages each engine cited and which tools it named. Three things stood out, and I’m reporting all of them honestly, including the one that stings: the engines cited third-party roundups and comparison pages, not vendor homepages; they disagreed sharply with each other on which tools are “best”; and my own site was not cited by any of them. That last one is a baseline I’m publishing in the open — the honesty is the point, and I’ll re-run this and show whether it changes. Here’s the full write-up: what I asked, what got cited, where the engines agreed and didn’t, and what it practically means if you’re trying to get cited.

A note on what this is and isn’t: this is one operator’s single run on one day, with browsing enabled, not a controlled study across accounts, regions and repeats. AI answers vary by session, personalization and model updates. Treat it as a real, dated data point — not a law. I’m publishing the method so you can run it yourself.

Methodology

• When: 2026-07-12, a single pass per engine.
• Engines: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity (each in its standard consumer interface, with web access on).
• Prompts: three buyer-intent queries — “best GEO tools 2026,” “how to get cited by ChatGPT,” and “AI visibility tools for small teams.”
• Recorded: the sources each engine cited/linked, and the specific tools it named as recommendations.
• Not done: multiple repeats, logged-out vs logged-in comparisons, or cross-region checks. Those are the obvious next steps, and I’ll add them when I re-run.

Finding 1: the engines cite third-party roundups, not homepages

Across the three engines, the cited sources were overwhelmingly comparison articles, “best of” roundups and third-party blogs — not the tool vendors’ own product pages. The sources I recorded being cited included TripleDart, SitePoint, SE Ranking’s blog, Primacy, Scrunch’s blog, Profound’s blog, rankscope.ai, geoptie.com, botrank.ai, Architectural Digest, TechRadar, Quora Business, and YouTube.

Two patterns worth sitting with:

• Roundups win. If you want an AI engine to recommend you, being in the comparison articles it retrieves matters more than any tweak to your homepage. The models assemble their answer from the third-party content that already exists about a category — exactly the argument I made in how to get cited by ChatGPT, now visible in the citations themselves.
• The long tail is weird. Alongside the SEO-industry blogs sat Architectural Digest, TechRadar, Quora and YouTube. AI engines pull from wherever a credible-looking answer lives, including general-interest publishers and video. Discoverability isn’t confined to your niche’s usual suspects.

Finding 2: the engines cite vendors ranking themselves

Here’s the uncomfortable part. Several cited sources were the tool vendors’ own blogs — Scrunch’s blog and Profound’s blog among them — i.e., companies publishing “best GEO tools” posts that feature themselves, and getting cited for it. rankscope.ai and botrank.ai similarly surfaced as both tools and sources.

That’s not necessarily bad faith — a vendor blog can be genuinely useful — but you should know the game: some of the “consensus” AI engines repeat is manufactured by the vendors inside their own content. When you read an AI recommendation, cross-reference whether the cited source sells the thing it’s recommending. It’s why an independent, honest comparison has value the vendor roundups can’t claim — and why I keep the affiliate disclosure loud on mine.

Finding 3: the engines flatly disagreed on which tools are “best”

This was the biggest surprise. The three engines named substantially different tools, with only a little overlap:

Tools each engine named for 'best GEO tools' (2026-07-12, single run)

Engine	Tools it named
ChatGPT	Profound, AthenaHQ, Semrush, BrightEdge, Otterly, Scrunch, Peec, Writesonic
Gemini	Bluefish, Scrunch, Profound, AthenaHQ, Semrush
Perplexity	RankScope, Geoptie, Profound, BotRank, Peec

The overlap analysis:

• Named by all three: Profound only.
• Named by two: Scrunch, AthenaHQ, Semrush, Peec.
• Named by one engine only: BrightEdge, Otterly, Writesonic (ChatGPT); Bluefish (Gemini); RankScope, Geoptie, BotRank (Perplexity).

So more than half the recommended tools appeared on only one engine’s list. If you’d asked just one AI which GEO tool to buy, you’d have gotten a confidently narrow answer that another engine would contradict. The “wisdom” of AI recommendations is far less settled than the confident tone implies — and it skews toward enterprise names (Profound, AthenaHQ, Scrunch, Bluefish, BrightEdge) over the cheaper tools a small team would actually start with. That gap between what the engines recommend and what most readers can afford is exactly why an honest, budget-aware comparison is worth keeping.

Finding 4: “GEO” confused the engines themselves

Gemini did something revealing: it disambiguated “GEO” as both Generative Engine Optimization and geospatial / GIS before answering. The term collides with a decades-old meaning in mapping and location tech, and the engines feel that ambiguity in the query. If the models themselves stumble on what “GEO” means, plenty of searchers do too — which is a content gap worth filling. I did: GEO — Generative Engine Optimization vs geospatial, which one do you mean?.

Finding 5: my site wasn’t cited (the honest baseline)

marcodiversi.com was not cited by any of the three engines for any of the three prompts. I’m not going to bury that. It’s the expected result for a young domain with few third-party mentions yet, and it’s precisely the position most people reading this are in. Publishing the baseline is the point: it makes the follow-up honest. If the write-ups here start showing up in AI answers over the coming months, you’ll see the before-and-after in the open, not a curated success story.

What I’m doing about it is the same playbook I recommend: earn honest mentions in the roundups the engines actually cite, keep the comparisons genuinely useful and current, and measure — not assume. I’ll track my own AI citations and report the numbers.

What this means practically

1. Consensus across third-party roundups beats optimizing your homepage. The engines cited comparisons, not product pages. Get into the “best of” content for your category.
2. Cross-check vendor blogs. Some cited “sources” are companies ranking themselves. Weight independent comparisons higher — and be suspicious of a tool that only appears in its own content.
3. The citation set is unstable. One run, three engines, wildly different lists. Don’t over-index on a single AI answer (yours or a competitor’s); measure repeatedly over time.
4. Ask more than one engine. If you’re choosing a tool based on “what AI recommends,” ask all three — the disagreement is the signal.

I’ll re-run this — and publish the update

This is a dated snapshot, not a verdict. I’ll re-run the same prompts on a schedule, add logged-out and multi-repeat passes, and publish what changed — including whether this very page starts getting cited. The living version, updated run over run, is the AI citation tracker. If you want the current landscape while I gather more data, my best GEO tools comparison is the honest, budget-aware version of the roundups the engines lean on, and the 60-second GEO tool finder turns it into one recommendation.

Track what AI actually cites — RankScale→

Frequently asked questions

Do ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity recommend the same GEO tools?

No. In a single run on 2026-07-12, the three engines named substantially different tools — only Profound appeared on all three lists, and more than half the tools appeared on just one engine. If you ask only one AI which GEO tool is best, you get a confidently narrow answer another engine would contradict, so ask more than one.

What sources do AI engines cite when recommending tools?

Overwhelmingly third-party roundups and comparison articles, not vendor homepages. In this run the cited sources included TripleDart, SitePoint, SE Ranking's blog, Primacy, geoptie.com, botrank.ai and rankscope.ai — plus general publishers like Architectural Digest, TechRadar, Quora and YouTube. Being in the comparison content matters more than optimizing your own page.

Do AI engines cite vendors ranking themselves?

Yes, in this run some cited sources were tool vendors' own blogs — Scrunch and Profound among them — publishing "best GEO tools" posts that feature themselves. It is worth cross-checking whether a cited source sells the thing it recommends, and weighting independent comparisons more heavily.

Why does "GEO" confuse AI engines?

Because it collides with an older meaning. Gemini disambiguated GEO as both Generative Engine Optimization and geospatial/GIS before answering. The term is genuinely ambiguous, so both the models and human searchers stumble on it — see our GEO disambiguation guide for the two meanings.

Is this a scientific study?

No, and I am upfront about that. It is one operator's single run on one day, with browsing on, not a controlled study across accounts, regions and repeats. AI answers vary by session and personalization. It is a real, dated data point with a published method so you can reproduce it — and I will re-run it and post updates.