Otterly.ai vs Semrush: Which LLM Search Monitoring Tool is Best?

An increasing number of consumers are using AI tools to search for information. As a result, brands must think about how they can appear in large language model (LLM) results … and deliver a good search experience through these tools as well as traditional search engines.

Tools like Otterly.ai and Semrush can help you better understand where you currently stand in AI-driven search results and improve your rank or share of voice over time.

Check this chart to quickly see which tool will let you track your position on the LLMs or SERPs you’re most concerned about:

	Otterly.ai	Semrush
ChatGPT	✅	✅
Perplexity	✅	✅
Claude	⛔	⛔
Gemini	⛔	✅
Google AI Overviews	✅	✅
Google AI Mode	⛔	⛔
Traditional Google SERPs	⛔	✅
Bing SERPs	⛔	✅
Baidu SERPs	⛔	✅

Why is AI Search Monitoring Important?

At present, 13% of all Google search queries trigger an AI Overview result. And a Semrush report indicates that clicks from AI search results will surpass clicks from traditional SERPs in 2028.

So yes, your website traffic may go down as more people use AI-driven search tools, since AI responses don’t encourage clicks like traditional search engines. But the same Semrush study also found that LLM search traffic has a conversion rate that’s 4.4 times higher than Google SERPs.

This means that if you aren’t monitoring your rank in AI search engine results and actively thinking about how to improve your position, you might be leaving valuable conversions on the table.

By starting to track and optimize for AI search now, you can build an effective strategy to continue targeting key sources of high-value traffic. A good AI search monitoring tool will:

• Help you understand which LLM search tools drive the most traffic to your site
• Track your share of search and voice metrics vs. your key competitors’
• Give you new topic ideas to drive effective, AI-ready content creation

This guide will walk you through how to set up search tracking reports in both Otterly.ai and Semrush—and help you decide which one you should use going forward.

What is Otterly.ai?

Otterly.ai is a search monitoring tool that can:

• Help you turn known keywords into LLM search prompts, which is useful when you want to know what AI queries people might use to find your brand
• Monitor your brand visibility for specific prompts, either ones you developed through Otterly or that you’ve found on your own
• Check which AI answers and prompts might be driving traffic to specific URLs

You don’t need to connect APIs or maintain accounts with different AI tools to use Otterly.ai, either. The platform gathers all the data you need and presents it in one unified spot.

How Does Otterly.AI Work?

Otterly.ai tracks your brand mentions and presence for different AI search prompts—not standard short- or long-tail keywords. You can use a list of your ranking keywords, specific high traffic domains, or your brand information to generate a list of prompts that may return results about your brand.

You can repeat this process more than once and any prompts that interest you to a list.

Once you’ve developed a list of prompts, you need to associate them with a Brand Report for tracking purposes.

Once I’ve finished setting up my initial reports, Otterly.ai creates a dashboard that I can use to monitor how my brand appears across AI search engines, including the number of times the brand name gets mentioned vs. actual link citations.

This is like the LLM prompt version of a keyword position tracking report.

Otterly.ai also lets you drill down deeper into individual prompt outputs on different AI models. You can:

• See example AI outputs
• Analyze how your competitors appear in the same output
• Assess brand sentiment in AI responses
• Track AI visibility changes

Who Should Use Otterly.AI?

If you’re seeing more and more of your traffic share moving from traditional search engines to AI tools, then you can benefit from using Otterly.ai as your primary marketing research tool.

Otterly.ai doesn’t focus much on traditional SEO, but its GEO auditing, keyword-to-prompt, and prompt position tracking tools are helpful for building an AI strategy. If you still see a lot of your traffic coming from places like Google and Bing search, though, you’ll need SEO tracking and auditing tools that Otterly.ai simply doesn’t offer.

How Much Does Otterly.AI Cost?

The cost of a monthly subscription to Otterly.AI starts at $29 per month. You can track up to 10 search prompts’ results on this plan; more expensive plans are available and raise your usage limits.

What is Semrush?

Semrush is a complete SEO tool that lets you track position and optimize your site’s organic traffic for both traditional search engines and AI tools. It includes everything you need for working on SEO and GEO projects.

As an example, I regularly use Semrush to:

• Research organic keyword search volumes
• Analyze keyword search intent (which applies to both Google SERPs and AI searches)
• Track my clients’ position for different keywords across Google and ChatGPT results
• Find semantic keywords to include in my content
• Check for technical SEO and search indexing errors
• Build reports and dashboards

How Does AI Search Monitoring in Semrush Work?

If you know how to set up a position tracking report in Semrush, you can set up an AI prompt monitoring report. Unlike Otterly.ai, Semrush doesn’t require you to know or find specific full-sentence prompts. You can track your position in AI search services’ results using the same keywords you use to track and benchmark your traditional SERP rank.

To do this, just create a position tracking project in Semrush and choose ChatGPT as your search engine.

You can then add any keywords, including those already on one of your standard position tracking reports.

The resulting report shows you things like:

• A ranking overview for all tracked keywords
• The number of keywords/prompts for which you appear in the top three, top 10, and top 20 cited results
• Your average position across all tracked terms over time
• Competitors’ performance in outputs for the same tracked queries
• Brand visibility across your tracked terms

You can use Semrush to track your position in both ChatGPT results and the AI Overview—the latter is rolled into your standard Google SERP tracking reports.

If you want to track brand mentions across more platforms, including Perplexity and Gemini, then you’ll need to add on the Semrush AI SEO Toolkit. The toolkit shows you:

• Your brand’s performance in LLM results vs. your top competitors
• A sentiment analysis about your brand’s mentions in AI-powered search results
• How many searchers tend to engage with your brand through LLM results
• Your market share across AI search platforms
• The types of prompt queries (research, purchase, education, comparison, support) that result in outputs featuring your brand

I find that while Otterly.ai and Semrush show me some similar data, the Semrush AI SEO Toolkit gives me more directly actionable insights and suggestions that I can use to improve my share of search and voice in LLM results.

(Check out our guide to increasing brand mentions in ChatGPT for more details.)

Who Should Use Semrush?

Semrush is a good choice for anyone who wants to monitor their position in AI search results and do any of the following:

• Continue optimizing for traditional SERPs
• Make sure their website is technically sound
• Create content that is more likely to be picked up by both Google and AI search tools
• Run paid ad campaigns online
• Boost foot traffic to a physical storefront or other establishment

It’s used by marketing teams and small business owners alike, so there’s a Semrush plan to suit every budget and need.

How Much Does Semrush Cost?

You can actually use Semrush for free—there’s no cost to track your position on up to 10 keywords per day.

If you need to track more terms or competitors, though, you can do so with a paid plan. Semrush pricing starts at $117.33 per month (billed annually), and the AI SEO Toolkit is an additional $99 per tracked domain, per month.

The Verdict: Which AI Search Monitoring Tool Should You Use?

Otterly.AI allows you to track your share of voice and brand presence across more LLM tools, but Semrush provides the support all brands still need for traditional SEO optimization and AI-search-ready content creation.

As a result, I recommend using both Semrush and either the Semrush AI SEO Toolkit or Otterly. This is easy to do, as you can add Otterly.ai onto your Semrush account through Semrush App Center.

By combining both traditional rank tracking and AI search monitoring in one spot, you can do highly comprehensive planning and research that raises your brand above competitors … no matter how your audience searches for information.

This setup also gives you the ability to add Exploding Topics Pro, which shows you current top trends and forecasts about what’s going to be popular in the future. This way, you can not only stay on top of your current AI search engine performance but also optimize to be the first result for queries that are about to grow in popularity.

You can get a free trial of all three tools—Semrush, Otterly.ai, and Exploding Topics Pro right now. Start by signing up for our extended Semrush free trial, then visit the App Center to add on your Otterly.ai and Exploding Topics Pro trials, too.