Who writes the “best AI visibility tools” lists?

Almost always: a company that sells one. We read every article ranking for the buying questions on this site and checked who published each. Here is the count, and here is every source, so you can check it yourself.

Every source below was read on or before 2026-09-07 · data current through 2026-09-07

28 of 30

ranking articles behind this site’s boards are published by a company that sells a tool they rank, or earns a commission on one. 26 of the 30 put their own product in first place.

Every board on AI SERP works the same way: take the articles that currently rank for a buying question — the pages an assistant retrieves before it answers you — and count which products each one names. Doing that for six questions meant reading 30 articles and, for each, answering a boring question first: who published this, and what do they sell?

The answer was consistent enough to be the finding. On the flagship question — the 5 articles ranking for “best AI visibility tools” — not one source is independent. Across all six questions, 2 of 30 sell nothing in the category. The rest are vendors ranking their own field, and 26 of them ranked themselves at the top of it.

This is not a scandal, and nobody is hiding it

Publishing a “best tools” list about your own market is ordinary content marketing, and most of these articles say who wrote them. The affiliate ones carry a disclosure. Nothing on this page was uncovered — all of it is on the pages themselves, linked below.

The problem is what happens next. An assistant asked “what are the best AI visibility tools?” retrieves these pages and summarises them. It does not weight a vendor’s list differently from a review, and it does not mention that the pages behind its answer were written by companies in the running. The disclosure is on the article. It does not survive the summary.

So the answer you get back is the field’s own marketing, averaged, with the labels stripped off.

Except one, which is not disclosed

NoGood’s list is the exception to “nobody is hiding it”. It ranks Goodie AI first, and introduces it like a third party:

The platform was created by a team led by the person that literally coined the term 'Answer Engine Optimization.' NoGood

Goodie AI’s own site names that person, and who else they founded:

Goodie is the brainchild of Mostafa Elbermawy, founder of NoGood, a leading growth marketing agency Goodie AI

So the article ranking the tool first, and the tool it ranks first, were founded by the same person — and the article does not say so. We found no such disclosure on the page.

Counted as ranking itself first, which is what its row shows. Both quotations are linked above so the claim can be checked against the pages themselves, and if a disclosure is added, or we have this wrong, the row is corrected within 48 hours.

Where the byline does not show it

2 sources in this corpus read as a personal blog with nothing to sell, which is how they would have been counted without checking who signs the paycheque:

blog.timsoulo.com on “Peec AI alternatives” — a personal blog with no disclosure on the article; its author is Ahrefs' CMO, which his own homepage states, and the article ranks Ahrefs Brand Radar first
blog.timsoulo.com on “Scrunch AI alternatives” — a personal blog with no disclosure on the article; its author is Ahrefs' CMO, which his own homepage states, and the article ranks Ahrefs Brand Radar first

timsoulo.com titles itself "Tim Soulo - CMO @ Ahrefs"; the article page itself carries no affiliation notice.

Counted as ranking itself first, which is what the row shows. The affiliation is public on the author’s own site — it is simply not on the article. If we have this wrong, the row is corrected within 48 hours.

And one that says so on the page

Not every vendor leaves the reader to work it out. AIclicks puts it in the article itself:

Disclosure: AIclicks appears on this list and it's our AI visibility tool. AIclicks

It still ranks itself first, and its row still says so. But the disclosure is the thing this page is asking for, and it is worth saying that somebody wrote it down.

All 30 sources, and what each one sells

Every article read for a board on this site, grouped by conflict. Links open the original. Each board carries the same list with the date we read it and an archive snapshot.
Publisher	Label	What they sell	Self #1
Published by a company selling a tool it ranks — 27 of 30
AI Brand Report	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells AI Brand Report	Yes
AI Rank Lab	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells AI Rank Lab	Yes
AIclickson “Best AI visibility tools 2026”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells AIclicks.io	Yes
AIclickson “Profound alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells AIclicks	Yes
AIclickson “Scrunch AI alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells AIclicks	Yes
AirOps	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells AirOps	Yes
Analyze AI	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Analyze AI	Yes
Arfadia	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells generative engine optimization services	—
blog.timsoulo.comon “Peec AI alternatives”	written by the vendor's CMO	a personal blog with no disclosure on the article; its author is Ahrefs' CMO, which his own homepage states, and the article ranks Ahrefs Brand Radar first	Yes
blog.timsoulo.comon “Scrunch AI alternatives”	written by the vendor's CMO	a personal blog with no disclosure on the article; its author is Ahrefs' CMO, which his own homepage states, and the article ranks Ahrefs Brand Radar first	Yes
Evertune	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Evertune	Yes
Frase	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Frase	Yes
Geoptie	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Geoptie	Yes
GetMinton “Scrunch AI alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells GetMint	Yes
GetMinton “AthenaHQ alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells GetMint	Yes
LLM Pulseon “Scrunch AI alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells LLM Pulse	Yes
LLM Pulseon “AthenaHQ alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells LLM Pulse	Yes
NoGood	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells AEO and GEO marketing services, and Goodie AI - the tool it ranks first	Yes
Omnia	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Omnia	Yes
Radarkiton “Peec AI alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Radarkit	Yes
Radarkiton “AthenaHQ alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Radarkit	Yes
Rankabilityon “AthenaHQ alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Rankability	Yes
Rankabilityon “Best AEO tools for agencies”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Rankability	Yes
Ranketta	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Ranketta	Yes
Writesonicon “Peec AI alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Writesonic	Yes
Writesonicon “Scrunch AI alternatives”	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells Writesonic	Yes
ZipTie	vendor-authored	publishes this list and sells ZipTie	Yes
Earns a commission on tools it ranks — 1 of 30
Zapier	affiliate links	earns commission on tools it links to	—
Sells nothing in the category — 2 of 30
Anyleads	independent	sells nothing in this category	—
StoryLab.ai	independent	sells nothing in this category	—

What we do about it

We do not drop the conflicted sources. Dropping them would leave 2 articles to cover 6 boards, and — more to the point — it would misrepresent the corpus. Those pages are what an assistant actually reads. Excluding them would measure a search result that does not exist.

So we count them, and label every one. A tool’s score on a board is how many of these sources name it: a measure of coverage in the retrievable corpus, not a verdict on the product. A red square on a row means that article is published by the tool in it. Where a vendor’s own list is one of the sources putting that vendor on top, the board shows you so, instead of laundering it into a number.

Our own conflict, stated in the same terms

AI SERP sells sponsored slots — two per board, above the answer, labelled paid on every row, priced by an open auction whose rules are on terms. It would be absurd to publish this page and not say so.

What separates that from the lists above is where the money can reach. The measured ranking is not for sale at any price, and neither are the outbound links: every tool on every board links to its own site, free, whether or not it has ever paid us. A sponsor buys a labelled box. It does not buy a row, a rank, or a mention. And we sell nothing that competes with anything on the boards — there is no AI SERP visibility tool for a board here to rank first.

If that ever stops being true, this is the page that has to change.

Check it yourself

Every source above links to the original article.
Each board lists those sources with the date we read them and links the Internet Archive snapshot where one is publicly available. Missing or older snapshots are labelled rather than presented as if they captured the reading.
The method is written out in full on how this is measured.
If we have this wrong about your article, it is corrected within 48 hours. Write to corrections@theaiserp.com.