# AI Brand Monitor — Perplexity, Google AI & Duck.ai (`brick_joey_yto/ai-brand-monitor`) Actor

Track whether AI answer engines recommend your brand. Runs your prompts through Google AI Overviews and Duck.ai, extracts brand mentions, ranks and cited sources — schedule it to monitor AI visibility over time. From $1/1,000 results.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/brick\_joey\_yto/ai-brand-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [William Billings](https://apify.com/brick_joey_yto) (community)
- **Categories:** AI, SEO tools, Marketing
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.40 / 1,000 ai answer analyzeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## AI Brand Monitor — Track Your Brand in AI Answers

Monitor whether ChatGPT-class answer engines mention **your brand** vs competitors — and which sources they cite. Built for SEO/GEO teams, agencies, and brand managers tracking visibility in the AI-search era.

### What it does

Send a list of prompts ("best crm for small business") plus your brand and competitors. For every prompt × engine you get one structured row:

- **`mentionedBrands`** — which tracked brands appear in the answer, in order
- **`brandPositions`** — per-brand rank (1st mention = rank 1), character index, mention count
- **`primaryMentioned` / `primaryRank`** — did YOUR brand (first in list) get cited, and where
- **`citations` / `citedDomains`** — every source URL the engine cited (domain, title, snippet)
- **`answerText`** — the full AI answer for manual review
- **`hasAiOverview`** — whether an AI answer rendered at all (real signal: absence matters)

### Engines

| Engine | Notes |
|---|---|
| `perplexity` | Structured citations, fast. Anonymous endpoint — occasionally rate-limits; retries rotate sessions automatically |
| `duck_ai` | DuckDuckGo's private AI chat (GPT-class model). Reliable, anonymous |
| `google_ai_overview` | Best-effort. AIO presence varies by query/geo; `hasAiOverview: false` is real signal, not an error |

### Example input

```json
{
  "prompts": ["best crm for small business", "top project management tools 2026"],
  "brands": ["HubSpot", "Zoho", "Pipedrive", "Asana", "Monday.com"],
  "engines": ["perplexity", "duck_ai"],
  "proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]}
}
```

`brands[0]` is treated as your brand — its mention/rank get dedicated fields.

### Use cases

- **GEO / AI SEO** — track whether answer engines recommend you, weekly, on a schedule
- **Competitive intelligence** — which competitors get cited for your category keywords
- **Source-gap analysis** — `citedDomains` shows which publications drive AI visibility; pitch them
- **PR monitoring** — watch share-of-voice in AI answers after launches or campaigns
- **Agency reporting** — scheduled runs export straight to CSV/JSON for client dashboards

### Scheduling

Pair with an Apify Schedule (e.g. weekly) and your dataset becomes a time series of brand visibility — the metric SaaS GEO tools charge $100-500/mo for.

### Notes

- Residential proxies are recommended — AI engines gate datacenter IPs harder
- Per-engine failures are recorded per row (`error` field) — one engine failing never kills the run
- AI answers are non-deterministic; track trends over multiple runs rather than single results

# Actor input Schema

## `prompts` (type: `array`):

The questions buyers might ask AI engines — e.g. 'best CRM for small business', 'top running shoes 2026'. One result row per prompt per engine.

## `brands` (type: `array`):

Brand names to detect in answers. The FIRST entry is treated as your brand (reported as primaryMentioned + rank); the rest are competitors.

## `engines` (type: `array`):

Which answer engines to query. Perplexity is fast and fully anonymous; the browser engines run headed and are best-effort.

## `maxResults` (type: `integer`):

Cap on total result rows (prompts x engines).

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Recommended: enable Apify residential proxies for Google queries (datacenter IPs may see fewer AI Overviews or CAPTCHAs).

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "prompts": [
    "best CRM for small business"
  ],
  "brands": [
    "HubSpot",
    "Zoho",
    "Pipedrive"
  ],
  "engines": [
    "perplexity"
  ],
  "maxResults": 100
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Dataset containing per-engine answer analysis

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "prompts": [
        "best CRM for small business"
    ],
    "brands": [
        "HubSpot",
        "Zoho",
        "Pipedrive"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("brick_joey_yto/ai-brand-monitor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "prompts": ["best CRM for small business"],
    "brands": [
        "HubSpot",
        "Zoho",
        "Pipedrive",
    ],
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("brick_joey_yto/ai-brand-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "prompts": [
    "best CRM for small business"
  ],
  "brands": [
    "HubSpot",
    "Zoho",
    "Pipedrive"
  ]
}' |
apify call brick_joey_yto/ai-brand-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,brick_joey_yto/ai-brand-monitor"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/cXArH8H5YasIDFMRa/builds/QXpsHHQHnJ0qv9cnm/openapi.json