If a company sells software designed to help businesses monitor their visibility in AI search, there is an obvious question worth asking:
How visible is the company itself in AI search?
I have been looking at Otterly.ai as a practical AI visibility monitoring option for small businesses. But rather than simply reviewing its features and saying whether I like the product, I decided to try something different.
I asked Google AI Mode to recommend AI visibility tools for several different small-business situations.
Crucially, I did not mention Otterly in the prompts.
I wanted to see whether Google would independently identify Otterly as a suitable option — and, just as importantly, why it thought Otterly was suitable.
The results were surprisingly consistent.
Affiliate disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link to Otterly.ai. If you sign up through the link, I may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. The tests described below were carried out independently, and I have included results where Otterly did not appear as well as those where it did.
The First Test: A Completely Broad Question
I started with:
What are the best AI visibility tracking tools for a small business?
Otterly appeared.
More interestingly, Google AI Mode placed it at the affordable end of the market and described it as:
“Best for absolute budget monitoring.”
That was encouraging, but one AI response proves very little.
AI-generated answers can change considerably even when you ask exactly the same question again.
So I started testing different customer requirements.
What Happened When I Added a Budget?
The next prompt was:
I run a small business and want to track whether my company appears in AI search results, but I have less than $50 a month to spend. What tools should I consider?
Otterly appeared again.
This time Google AI Mode put it first and called it:
“The Top Dedicated Choice.”
It also highlighted Otterly’s relatively low entry price and positioned it as an accessible way for a small business to automate AI visibility tracking.
That gave us the beginnings of an interesting association:
Otterly = affordable AI visibility monitoring for smaller businesses.
But I wanted to test whether that association would survive if I removed the explicit budget requirement.
What About Daily Prompt Tracking?
Next I asked:
I run a small business and want to track about 10 to 20 customer prompts every day to see whether my company and competitors appear in AI search results. What tools should I consider?
Otterly appeared first again.
Google described it as:
“the most practical starting point for small businesses.”
This was more interesting because I hadn’t specified a price.
The requirement was now about:
- a relatively small prompt portfolio;
- daily monitoring;
- competitor visibility;
- and suitability for a small business.
Google still associated that situation with Otterly.
Would It Recommend Otterly to Someone Who Isn’t an SEO Expert?
My fourth prompt moved away from pricing and prompt numbers altogether:
I run a small business and don’t know much about SEO or AI visibility. I want a simple tool that can show me whether my business is appearing in AI answers and how I compare with competitors, without giving me lots of complicated data I won’t understand. What tools should I consider?
Otterly was again the first specialist tool.
Google described it as a practical, budget-friendly entry point with a relatively simple dashboard.
By this stage, the pattern was fairly noticeable.
Across several different prompts, Google AI Mode repeatedly associated Otterly with:
- small businesses;
- affordability;
- ease of use;
- straightforward monitoring;
- and getting started without an enterprise-level system.
But that did not mean Otterly appeared for everything.
And that is where the test became much more useful.
When Otterly Did NOT Appear
I deliberately changed the requirement.
This time I asked:
I don’t just want an AI visibility tool that tells me whether my business is mentioned. I want to understand why competitors are appearing instead of me and what I can actually do to improve my visibility. What tools should I consider for a small business?
Otterly disappeared completely.
Google suggested other platforms instead.
That is an important result.
It suggests that Google AI Mode was not simply inserting Otterly whenever someone asked about AI visibility software.
When I shifted the customer requirement from monitoring towards deeper diagnosis and optimisation, Google found other products that it regarded as a better match.
That helped clarify Otterly’s apparent positioning rather than weaken the experiment.
What Happened When I Asked for More Scale?
I tried another deliberately different requirement:
I run a small business and want to monitor about 50 important customer prompts across several AI platforms. I can spend up to $100 a month and would prefer daily tracking. What AI visibility tools should I consider?
Once again:
Otterly was not mentioned.
Google suggested a completely different group of products.
So we now had another apparent boundary.
Otterly seemed particularly visible for the smaller, lower-cost monitoring use case, but it was not being presented as the obvious choice once the requirement moved to a larger 50-prompt setup and a higher software budget.
That is exactly the kind of distinction that matters when recommending a product.
The right question isn’t:
“What is the best AI visibility tool?”
It is:
“What tool fits this particular business and what it actually wants to achieve?”
Then I Tried Describing the Problem Instead of the Product
One of my favourite tests was this:
I currently check about 10 to 15 customer questions manually in ChatGPT, Google AI search and Perplexity to see whether my small business appears. Doing this every day is becoming too time-consuming. Is there an affordable tool that can automate this for me?
Notice what is missing.
I didn’t ask for:
- a GEO tool;
- an AI visibility tracker;
- Otterly;
- a $29 plan;
- or a particular feature list.
I simply described a small-business problem.
Google AI Mode recommended Otterly first and described it as:
“Best for low-cost, prompt-level monitoring.”
That was one of the most meaningful results of the experiment.
Google wasn’t merely matching a search for “AI visibility software” with a company that sells AI visibility software.
It was connecting a business problem with Otterly as a potential solution.
But One Run Still Isn’t Enough
At this point I could have stopped.
But that would have contradicted one of the main lessons from my own AI visibility testing:
AI responses fluctuate.
So I repeated three important prompts five times each without changing the wording.
Repeated Test 1: Broad Small-Business Query
The prompt was:
What are the best AI visibility tracking tools for a small business?
Otterly appeared:
5 out of 5 times.
Its exact position and the competitors around it changed, but the way Google described Otterly was strikingly consistent.
Across the five runs it was associated with ideas such as:
- budget monitoring;
- an entry-level option;
- accessible daily monitoring;
- budget-conscious teams;
- affordability.
Repeated Test 2: Under $50 Per Month
The prompt was:
I run a small business and want to track whether my company appears in AI search results, but I have less than $50 a month to spend. What tools should I consider?
Again:
Otterly appeared 5 out of 5 times.
It wasn’t always ranked first.
In one run, another lower-cost platform appeared ahead of it.
But Otterly remained present in every response and continued to be described as beginner-friendly, straightforward and appropriate for small businesses.
Repeated Test 3: Replace Manual Checking
Finally, I repeated:
I currently check about 10 to 15 customer questions manually in ChatGPT, Google AI search and Perplexity to see whether my small business appears. Doing this every day is becoming too time-consuming. Is there an affordable tool that can automate this for me?
Otterly appeared:
5 out of 5 times.
Again, its prominence changed.
Sometimes it was first.
Sometimes it was second.
In one response it was pushed considerably further down the list.
But it never disappeared.
15 Repeated Responses. 15 Otterly Appearances.
Across those three repeated prompt sets:
| Test | Otterly appearances |
|---|---|
| Best AI visibility tracker for a small business | 5/5 |
| Small business with a budget below $50/month | 5/5 |
| Automating 10–15 manual AI searches | 5/5 |
| Total | 15/15 |
I don’t think the right conclusion is:
“Google says Otterly is the best AI visibility tool.”
The tests do not prove that.
Nor does appearing frequently in AI Mode prove that Otterly’s software is technically better than every competitor.
What the experiment does show is something narrower — and, I think, much more useful:
Google AI Mode repeatedly associates Otterly with affordable, accessible AI visibility monitoring for small businesses.
That association survived substantial changes in the generated answers themselves.
Competitors came and went.
The order changed.
Descriptions changed.
Sources changed.
Otterly’s presence was much more stable.
Presence Was More Stable Than Position
This was another interesting finding.
On the manual-monitoring prompt, for example, Otterly’s prominence moved around between runs.
Someone carrying out only one test might see Otterly at the top and conclude that it dominates the recommendations.
Someone carrying out a different single test might see it further down and reach a much weaker conclusion.
Repeating the query revealed something more useful:
Otterly remained consistently within Google’s candidate set even though its exact prominence fluctuated.
This is one of the reasons I think AI visibility needs to be measured differently from traditional keyword rankings.
There may not be a meaningful fixed “position 1” to monitor.
Instead, useful questions include:
- How often does the business appear?
- For which kinds of customer needs?
- Which competitors appear alongside it?
- How is the business described?
- Does that description remain reasonably consistent over repeated tests?
What Does Google AI Mode Seem to Think Otterly Is For?
Based on these tests, the clearest apparent association was:
Otterly is a lightweight, relatively affordable monitoring option for a small business getting started with AI visibility tracking.
It was particularly strong when the customer wanted to:
- automate a modest number of prompts;
- monitor AI visibility regularly;
- compare themselves with competitors;
- avoid expensive enterprise software;
- and keep the process relatively straightforward.
It was much less visible when the requirement changed towards:
- deeper optimisation advice;
- detailed diagnosis of why competitors were winning;
- or larger-scale 50-prompt tracking with a bigger software budget.
I actually find that reassuring.
A product does not need to be the best answer for everybody.
It needs to be a good answer for the customer it is designed to help.
So Would I Recommend Otterly.ai?
For a small business that wants to move beyond manual AI visibility checks and start monitoring a manageable portfolio of commercially important prompts, I think Otterly is well worth considering.
You can take a look at Otterly.ai and its current plans here.
That is an affiliate link, which means I may receive a commission if you subsequently purchase the service. It does not increase the price you pay.
My recommendation is not based solely on this Google AI Mode experiment.
AI Mode recommending a product does not prove that the product itself is good.
But I do think this experiment provides useful supporting evidence.
When I described the type of small-business customer I believe Otterly is particularly suited to, Google AI Mode independently and repeatedly arrived at the same product.
And when I changed the customer’s needs substantially, it sometimes recommended something else.
That makes the result considerably more useful than a simple “best AI visibility tools” list.
The Bigger Lesson
There is also a broader AI visibility lesson here.
One AI response can be interesting.
Repeated responses are much more informative.
The precise recommendations in these tests changed frequently, but repeated testing began to reveal a much more stable underlying pattern around Otterly:
affordable, accessible, lightweight small-business monitoring.
That is the kind of thing businesses should be looking for when they test their own AI visibility.
Not simply:
“Did I rank first today?”
But:
“Across the customer situations where my business should genuinely be relevant, does AI repeatedly recognise me as a plausible solution — and does it understand what I am actually good at?”
For Otterly, at least in this small experiment, the answer was remarkably consistent.