Documentation

SurfRank is an AI visibility analytics platform that helps businesses track, measure, and improve how their brand appears inside AI-generated answers. As discovery shifts from traditional search to AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity, SurfRank provides the insights businesses need to stay visible.

With SurfRank, you can monitor your brand's presence across 12 major AI engines, compare your visibility against competitors, receive actionable recommendations for improvement, and track your progress over time with the proprietary SurfRank Visibility Score™.

Getting started with SurfRank takes just a few minutes.

1. Visit app.surfrank.ai and click "Get Started"

2. Sign up with your email or use Google/social sign-in

3. Verify your email address

4. Complete your profile with your brand or company name

5. Add your first website to start tracking

Once your website is added, SurfRank begins analyzing your AI visibility across supported engines. Initial results are typically available within minutes.

After creating your account, add your website to begin tracking AI visibility.

1. From your dashboard, click "Add Website"

2. Enter your domain name (e.g., yourbrand.com)

3. Optionally add competitor domains to track

4. Select your industry and target keywords

5. Click "Start Analysis"

SurfRank will begin querying AI models about your brand and industry, building your visibility profile. The initial analysis covers all AI engines available on your plan.

Your SurfRank dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of your brand's AI visibility.

The Visibility Score™ is your unified score across all tracked AI engines, combining mention frequency, prominence, sentiment, competitive position, and citation quality.

The Engine Breakdown shows your score per AI platform (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, etc.), helping you identify where you're strong and where you need improvement.

The Competitor Comparison shows how your visibility stacks up against tracked competitors across all engines.

The Trend Chart tracks your visibility over time, so you can measure the impact of your optimization efforts.

The Recommendations panel provides prioritized actions to improve your AI visibility based on your current profile.

The SurfRank Visibility Score™ is a proprietary metric that measures your brand's presence across the AI ecosystem on a scale of 0 to 100.

Scores are updated after each analysis cycle. Higher plans include more frequent analysis and broader engine coverage.

SurfRank tracks visibility across 12 major AI platforms:

• ChatGPT (OpenAI) — The most widely used AI assistant

• Gemini (Google) — Google's AI with deep web integration

• Claude (Anthropic) — Known for nuanced, detailed responses

• Perplexity — AI-powered search engine with citations

• Grok (xAI) — Real-time information with social media integration

• DeepSeek — Advanced reasoning and research capabilities

• Meta AI — Powered by Llama models across Meta platforms

• Microsoft Copilot — Integrated across Microsoft products

• Mistral — European AI with strong multilingual support

• Qwen (Alibaba) — Leading AI in Asian markets

• Xiaomi — AI integrated into consumer technology

• Google AI Overviews — AI-generated summaries in Google Search

Engine availability varies by plan. Free plans include 1 engine, Core plans include 4, and higher plans include all 12.

On Free and Core plans, you can select which AI engines to track based on your priorities.

Consider selecting engines based on where your target audience is most active. For example, if your customers are primarily in Asia, including Qwen may be valuable. If your audience uses Google heavily, prioritize Gemini and Google AI Overviews.

Expansion, Full Spectrum, and Authority plans include all engines automatically.

SurfRank analyzes your AI visibility by running structured queries across your selected AI engines.

Analysis frequency depends on your plan. Free plans include periodic analysis, while higher plans offer more frequent automated analysis cycles.

Each analysis generates a detailed report with the following sections:

Overview — Your overall Visibility Score™ and how it changed since the last analysis.

Engine Breakdown — Per-engine scores showing where you're strong and where to improve.

Mention Analysis — Detailed breakdown of how each AI model mentioned (or didn't mention) your brand, including direct quotes from AI responses.

Competitor Comparison — How your visibility compares to tracked competitors across all engines.

Sentiment Analysis — How AI models describe your brand — positive, neutral, or negative.

Recommendations — Prioritized action items to improve your visibility, ranked by potential impact.

SurfRank is an AI visibility analytics platform headquartered in Singapore. Founded to help businesses navigate the shift from traditional search to AI-powered discovery, SurfRank tracks brand visibility across 12 major AI engines.

Mission: To make AI visibility measurable, actionable, and accessible for every business.

Tagline: "Surf the AI Wave, Rank 1st on AI."

SurfRank logos are available in dark and white variants for use on different backgrounds.

Primary brand color: Teal (#0E918C) Dark color: #0A0F1F Font: Inter

For logo files and brand assets, please contact support@surfrank.ai.

For press inquiries, interviews, partnership opportunities, or media requests, please reach out to our team.

We welcome opportunities to discuss AI visibility, the future of brand discovery, and how businesses can prepare for AI-powered search.

Please allow 1-2 business days for responses to media inquiries.

SurfRank's Google Analytics integration bridges the gap between AI visibility scores and real-world website traffic. By connecting your GA4 property, you can see exactly how many visitors arrive at your website from AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and more.

**What it does**

When users interact with AI assistants and click through to your website, Google Analytics records where that visitor came from. SurfRank reads this data and breaks it down by AI engine, giving you a clear picture of which platforms are actually driving traffic to your site.

**Key features**

• AI Referral Traffic Breakdown — See sessions, users, and page views from each AI engine

• Traffic vs Visibility Correlation — Compare your SurfRank visibility score against actual AI-driven visits over time

• Date Range Controls — Analyze AI traffic across 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or a full year

• Per-Engine Metrics — Understand which AI platforms send the most engaged visitors

**Why it matters**

Your SurfRank visibility score tells you how well AI engines know your brand. The GA4 integration shows you whether that visibility is converting into real website visits. Together, they give you the full picture: awareness to action.

SurfRank values transparency. Here's exactly what we access when you connect Google Analytics.

**What we read**

SurfRank queries your GA4 property for aggregate traffic metrics only:

• Session source — Where visitors came from (e.g., chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai)

• Session count — How many visits from each source

• User count — How many unique visitors from each source

• Page views — How many pages were viewed per source

• Average session duration — How long visitors stayed

• Bounce rate — Percentage of single-page visits

• Date — When the visits occurred (for trend charts)

All queries are filtered to AI-related referral sources. We only look at traffic coming from known AI platforms.

**What we don't access**

• No personal visitor data (names, emails, demographics)

• No individual user behavior or browsing paths

• No conversion or e-commerce data

• No Google Ads or campaign data

• No real-time or streaming data

• No modification to your GA4 settings, properties, or filters

**How we store your connection**

• Your Google OAuth refresh token is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before storage

• We never store your Google password

• Access can be revoked at any time by disconnecting in SurfRank or removing access at myaccount.google.com/permissions

• We request the minimum scope required: analytics.readonly

**Data freshness**

GA4 data may be delayed by up to 24-48 hours. This is a Google Analytics limitation, not a SurfRank one. The data you see in SurfRank reflects the same data available in your GA4 dashboard.

AI referral traffic measures how many people visit your website after interacting with an AI assistant. Here's how it works and what the numbers mean.

**How AI traffic is detected**

When someone uses ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or another AI assistant and clicks a link to your website, their browser sends a referrer header identifying where they came from. Google Analytics captures this automatically as the session source.

SurfRank monitors these AI-related sources:

• ChatGPT (chatgpt.com, chat.openai.com)

• Perplexity (perplexity.ai)

• Claude (claude.ai)

• Gemini (gemini.google.com)

• Microsoft Copilot (copilot.microsoft.com)

• Meta AI (meta.ai)

• You.com (you.com)

• Phind (phind.com)

• DeepSeek (deepseek.com)

**What the metrics mean**

• Sessions — Total visits from AI platforms. One user visiting twice counts as two sessions.

• Users — Unique visitors from AI platforms.

• AI Traffic % — What percentage of your total website traffic comes from AI engines.

• Visibility vs Traffic — How your SurfRank visibility score correlates with actual AI-driven visits over time. Rising visibility should lead to rising AI traffic.

**What this data can't capture**

AI referral tracking has some natural blind spots:

• Copy-paste traffic — When someone copies a URL from an AI chat and pastes it into their browser, there's no referrer. This traffic appears as "direct" in GA4.

• Search-after-AI — When someone learns about your brand from AI and then searches for you on Google, this shows as organic search traffic.

• Mobile app traffic — Some AI mobile apps may strip referrer headers.

• Search grounding — When Gemini or Copilot cite your page through Google search results, the click goes through Google, not the AI domain.

Because of these limitations, the AI referral numbers in your dashboard represent a lower bound. Your actual AI-influenced traffic is likely higher.