Ahrefs Brand Radar: turning mentions and citations into a plan

To turn Ahrefs Brand Radar into an action plan, work from the gaps, not the totals. Use Cited Domains and Cited Pages to find where AI answers cite competitors but not you, use "found but not cited" to spot your pages that appear without being credited, and use topic share of voice to see where you are absent. Then give each gap an owner: fix on-site, earn off-site, or ignore.

This guide walks through the reports in that order and ends with a template for a monthly plan.

01What does Brand Radar measure?

Brand Radar tracks how often a brand appears in AI answers and which sources those answers use. It covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, with Claude available through custom prompts.^[1] Its help center lists Grok as paused at the time of writing.^[2]

It works in two modes. The AI visibility index uses a large pre-collected prompt database built from Ahrefs' keyword data, so you can research any brand without setup. Custom prompts track the specific buyer questions you choose, on a schedule from daily to monthly.^[1][2]

02What does Brand Radar cost, and how fresh is the data?

As of October 2026, Ahrefs' pricing page lists Brand Radar AI from $199 a month as a standalone product, and includes a small number of tracked AI prompts in its main plans: 5 on Lite ($129), 10 on Standard ($249), 20 on Advanced ($449).^[3] Custom prompt packages cost $50, $100 or $250 a month for 2,500, 7,000 or 25,000 checks.^[3] The help center describes $199 per platform and $699 for all platforms;^[2] confirm which applies to your account.

Refresh rates differ by index. Ahrefs says AI Overviews data updates every few days, while the AI chatbot index updates about once a month.^[2] That shapes your plan: chatbot-based gaps should be reviewed monthly, not weekly.

03Step 1: which of your pages are already cited?

Search your brand in Cited Domains, then open Cited Pages filtered to your domain. These are the pages AI answers already trust. Keep them accurate first, because any error on them spreads.

For each top-cited page, check:

• Are prices, specifications, locations and names current?
• Does the page state the key fact in plain text near the top, rather than in an image or a script-rendered block?
• Does it match what your other pages, listings and partner sites say?

Ahrefs' academy notes that most AI citations for a brand come from third-party websites, not its own.^[4] That makes your few owned citations valuable, and it also tells you where most of the remaining work is.

04Step 2: where are you found but not cited?

In April 2026 Ahrefs added a "found but not cited" view to the Cited Pages report, showing pages that surface in AI responses without being credited as a source.^[5] These are close to winning.

Common reasons a page is found but not cited:

• The answer is buried. The relevant fact sits below long introductions or inside tabs.
• The page covers several topics, and a more focused competitor page is a cleaner source.
• The facts are vague: "competitive pricing" instead of a number, "global presence" instead of locations.

Rewrite the opening of these pages so the direct answer comes first, with specific facts. This is usually the fastest on-site win Brand Radar can point to.

05Step 3: which domains cite competitors but not you?

This is the core of the action plan. In Cited Domains or Cited Pages, exclude your own domain and include your competitors'. Ahrefs' own walkthrough of this filter surfaced around 38,000 opportunities in its example,^[4] so you will need to prioritize.

1. 1
   Filter

   Exclude your domain, include two or three direct competitors, and limit to the platforms and topics you care about.
2. 2
   Group by domain type

   Review sites, directories, publishers, communities, partners, competitor-owned sites.
3. 3
   Score each domain

   How many responses cite it, for how many priority topics, and whether you could realistically be listed or mentioned there.
4. 4
   Pick the top 10 to 20

   Ignore competitor-owned sites. Focus on domains that list or compare several brands.
5. 5
   Assign and log

   Each domain gets an owner, an action (claim profile, pitch, contribute, correct) and a date.

Community sites deserve attention. Ahrefs' academy describes Reddit as the third most-cited domain in LLMs and suggests finding relevant threads through Cited Pages.^[4] Contribute as a clearly identified company representative with useful answers; undisclosed promotion tends to backfire with both moderators and readers.

06Step 4: which topics are you missing entirely?

Use AI share of voice by topic to find areas where competitors appear and you do not. Check the fan-out queries Brand Radar shows, the follow-up searches AI systems run while composing an answer.^[1] They often reveal the specific sub-questions your content does not cover.

Not every missing topic is worth chasing. Keep only topics that match products you sell in markets you serve. For each, decide whether an existing page can be improved or whether a new page is justified.

Also check the search demand Brand Radar attaches to each topic. A gap on a topic with real demand behind it deserves priority over a gap on a topic few people ask about. Weight the backlog by demand and business value together, so the team works on gaps that could actually move pipeline.

07What does the monthly action plan look like?

Put everything into one table that you review each month. Keep it short enough to finish.

Brand Radar measures; it does not ship any of these rows. The plan only works if someone owns the off-site rows, because those depend on outreach and follow-up. In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, roughly three times the correlation for backlinks.^[6]

08How do you track whether the plan worked?

Re-run your custom prompts on the same schedule and compare after each refresh. Track three numbers per priority topic: mentions, citations of your pages, and share of voice against named competitors. Because AI answers vary between runs, a SparkToro and Gumshoe study suggests measuring how often you appear across many runs rather than position.^[7]

For a fuller monthly cadence, see your AI visibility dashboard is live: now what?. If you are using Semrush alongside Ahrefs, the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit guide maps its reports to the same steps.

OwnlyReal is a tool-agnostic operating team that can run this plan from your Brand Radar data, shipping on-site fixes and off-site authority work through your CMS and sign-off chain. See how it works.