AI Tool Review: LLMrefs

What is LLMrefs?

The whole internet landscape is changing, and I can feel it firsthand. Most websites' traffic has dropped because searches are increasingly being performed by LLMs instead of Google. Where we used to get a click straight away and turn it into a customer, today many sites are seeing huge traffic drops because chatbots are taking their content but not sending the traffic back.

Still, we have to be visible in LLM overviews, whether we like it or not. We want to be quoted. How we monetize that visibility is up to us.

But how do you measure your AI visibility? How do you optimize your visibility score? And how do you show clients you're actually making a difference for them? That's where tools like LLMrefs come in. It lets you track how often your brand appears in AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

It gives you a visibility score, tracks your keywords across AI platforms, and tells you what to do about it. That last part is what sets it apart. A lot of tools in this space dump data on you and leave you to figure out the rest. LLMrefs actually gives you action points. But more about that later.

Who is LLMrefs for? (And Who It's Not for)

If you're a small business owner, a content marketer, or an SEO who's trying to get their head around AI search visibility, LLMrefs is a good fit. It's not overwhelming. The interface is clean, the data is easy to read, and you don't need to be a technical expert to get value from it.

It's also a solid option for anyone who's already doing traditional SEO and wants to start understanding how AI search is changing things. You don't have to go all-in on generative engine optimisation straight away. LLMrefs lets you dip your toe in without committing to a big monthly cost.

Where it's less suited is if you're running a large enterprise with a team of analysts who need deep data exports, integrations with BI tools, and enterprise-level reporting. For that, you'd be looking at something like Adobes LLM Optimizer. But for most small to mid-size businesses, LLMrefs hits the right balance.

Let's get started with LLMrefs. I want to take you on a journey through the modern jungle of GEO.

Getting Started with LLMrefs

The onboarding is straightforward. You add your URL, country and language to give the platform something to analyse, then pick from a list of suggested topics. I added four of my own on top: keywords I suspected I was already ranking well for, like AI image generators and presentation AI tools. Then you wait a little while LLMrefs builds your AI visibility report. Worth noting: you do need to sign up for a free 7-day trial with your credit card to get the full picture.

LLMrefs Review: The Keywords and AI Search Analytics

Once your report is ready, you get a clean breakdown of your keywords: share of voice, your brand's current ranking for each one, position, search volume, and the top brands in that space. LLMrefs tracks all of this across major AI models including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, visibility tracking across multiple AI platforms in one place. Some of it is sobering. I'm not ranking for keywords like "AI tool for SMEs" at all, which is frustrating but genuinely useful to know. On the other hand, I am showing up for tools like Artlist and HeyGen, which makes sense because I write about them a lot and test them regularly. If you want to track brand visibility and understand how you compare to competitors in generative AI search, this is a solid starting point.

LLMrefs Prompts: What People Actually Ask AI Search Engines

Digging deeper into the Keywords tab, you find the Prompts report. This is where prompt tracking gets really useful. It shows you the most common questions people ask LLMs about a given topic, and flags straight away which queries you're already being mentioned for with a simple checkmark. You can also filter by individual LLM if you want to focus on a specific platform. When I interviewed James from LLMrefs, he made a good point: ChatGPT is still the one to prioritise because most traffic goes through it. It has the biggest lever.

The logic here mirrors traditional SEO. As a small brand or niche website, it doesn't make sense to go after the highest-volume queries. The competition is too fierce. You're better off going deep on specific topics and building credibility in a tighter niche. Ranking for "Artlist" as a broad keyword is tough because the brand itself will always have more authority than I do. But "Where can I find user reviews for Artlist?" is somewhere I can actually compete and do. This is exactly the kind of AI search behavior insight that makes LLMrefs genuinely useful as an AEO tool.

LLMrefs Sources: Where Exactly You're Being Cited

The Sources tab shows you all the sources being cited for a given query. It's essentially an AI mentions tracker, and it's a great reality check. For presentation AI, I'm sitting at 9th position, ahead of bigger names like Beautiful AI and Prezent. My mention rate of 15.6% is decent, and position 2 for one of the queries is genuinely impressive. The limitation is that I'm only being cited for 2 brands when AI search engines reference my site.

For Artlist specifically, I'm the second most cited source with a mention rate of 27.8%. That's come from consistently writing about the tool over a long period. It's solid proof that credibility in AI search, just like in traditional search engines, is built through volume and depth of relevant content.

It also confirms something I suspected: LLMs care a lot about topical credibility and domain authority. LLMrefs monitors this clearly, and gives you a picture of exactly where you stand and where the gaps are.

Free GEO Tools on LLMrefs: An Useful AI Toolkit

LLMrefs AI Crawlability Checker

This free tool checks whether AI crawlers can actually read your page without relying on JavaScript. It's more useful than it sounds. Before the LLM era, you didn't necessarily want bots crawling your content. Today, making sure AI crawlers can access your page is a genuine priority if you want to show up in AI search results. Here's what it showed for my homepage. Content density came in at 25%, which is on the lower side but not alarming. Text length is solid at 19,680 characters, semantic HTML is in place, meta tags are complete, and AI bots are not being blocked. The page is static, built on Webflow, with a script ratio of 0.08 and a response time of 2,117ms. Structured data is present with WebPage schema. The AI-readable content preview shows you exactly what bots can see when they crawl your page. In my case, it flagged that the cookie consent message appears before the main content. Everything else looked fine, and the only recommendation was to improve content density further for better AI crawler compatibility. Not a bad result overall.

LLMrefs LLM.txt Generator

LLMrefs automatically generates a script you can add to your website's backend. It gives major AI models more structured information about your site, which helps AI-powered search engines understand and reference you more accurately. Think of it as a robots.txt but for the AI world. A small addition, but worth doing. Quick tip: When I first set up my project, I assumed the country field was just asking where I was based. It's actually tied to your project settings. If you want to check your AI SEO visibility in a different country, just create a new project and set the country there.

LLMrefs FAQ

How is LLMrefs different from other GEO and AEO tools? Most AI visibility tracking tools show you data and leave you to figure out what to do with it. LLMrefs is more actionable. It gives you specific recommendations, shows you which prompts to target, and tells you where your content is being cited and where it isn't. For small businesses especially, that makes a real difference. I love that I'm not getting lost analysis paralysis.

Does LLMrefs track Google AI Overviews? Yes. LLMrefs monitors visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, Claude and Google AI Overviews, so you're getting a picture of your presence across all the major AI search engines in one place.

Which countries does LLMrefs support? You set your country at the project level, so you can track AI visibility in different regions by creating separate projects. It's not immediately obvious when you first set it up, but once you know, it's easy to manage. I had first set it to Germany, but added a new project for the US because that's where most of my audience sits.

Do I need a credit card for the free plan? You do need a credit card for testing the pro plan for free for 7 days. Make sure to cancel it otherwise you will be charged. The free tools are available without signing up at all.

Is LLMrefs worth it for a small business? If you're already thinking about AI SEO and want to understand where you stand without drowning in data, yes. The free plan gives you enough to get started. But ultimately you should think about how important web traffic is for your business and decide based on that. I found LLMrefs one of the easier to handle tools and was completely overwhelmed with others like semrush or peec AI.