Search AI is Birdeye’s AI-powered search optimization platform designed to help multi-location businesses stay visible in the age of AI-driven discovery. As engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity reshape how consumers find and choose brands, traditional SEO alone is no longer enough. With Search AI, businesses can discover how they appear in AI-generated answers, track brand mentions and rankings across platforms, and gain actionable insights to enhance their visibility. This guide will walk you through how to use Search AI to understand your presence, optimize performance, and ensure your brand becomes the go-to answer in AI search.
Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Grok Support
The Ranking report includes expanded platform coverage and flexible reporting views to help you analyze your performance more effectively.
You can now include Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Grok in your reporting by selecting them in the Search AI report configuration settings.
Once enabled, data from these platforms will be reflected alongside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity across the report, giving you a more complete view of how your brand appears in AI-generated answers.
NOTE:
All reports—Citations, Visibility, Ranking, Accuracy, and Sentiment—will reflect data from the selected AI sites, including these newly added Google AI and Grok experiences.
Brand and Location-Level Reporting
You can now analyze citation data at both the brand level and location level:
Use the By brand and By location toggle available at the top right corner of the report to switch between views.
The brand view provides a consolidated performance overview across all locations.
The location view allows you to drill down into individual location performance.
This gives you two perspectives of the same report, helping you understand both overall brand visibility and location-specific performance.
Accessing Ranking Reports
Go to Search AI from the left navigation rail.
Expand the Reports section and click Ranking.
Summary
The Summary section provides a quick overview of how your locations rank across supported AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
It highlights the average rank of your business locations when AI platforms generate ranked lists of businesses in their answers.
You can also use the date filter to view ranking data for a specific reporting period and track how your rankings change over time.
Check Brand Ranking
For answers that show up as a ranked list on AI engines, the Brand Rankings tab shows how your locations rank across AI platforms for each theme.
Each theme is represented by a horizontal bar.
Rankings are grouped into:
Rank 1–3 (green)
Rank 4–10 (yellow)
Rank 10+ (red)
Locations not tracked (grey): When the Google page is disconnected, opted out, has no keywords configured, the listing is not synced or fixed, the business is a service area business, or the report generation is in progress.
Themes where your locations rank in the top 1–3 positions appear as green bars, indicating strong visibility across AI platforms.
Hover over any bar to see a detailed breakdown in a pop-up — showing exactly how many locations fall into each rank group.
Use the tabs at the top to switch between ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and All (combined view). This view can also include Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Grok if selected in your report configuration.
Click the generate summary icon located beside the time period filter. A quick summary will be generated for the current view, providing concise insights.
Here’s how the generated summary appears.
Scroll down to view the theme rankings in a table format, where each row represents a theme and displays how many locations fall into each ranking group.
To view the specific locations contributing to a ranking group:
Hover over the desired theme row in the table and click View locations.
A right-side drawer will open, displaying the locations grouped by ranking category, such as Rank 1–3, Rank 4–10, Rank 10+, and Locations not tracked.
Use the tabs within the drawer to switch between ranking groups and see which locations fall into each category.
View Ranking by Locations
You can also see how many themes each location is ranking for across AI sites. The table lists your locations. For each location, you’ll see how many themes it ranks in.
Use the tabs at the top to switch between ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and All for platform-specific rankings.
How are you ranking for your top 5 themes
This section shows how well your locations rank for the top five most important themes tracked in Search AI. It displays the percentage of locations that appear within ranks 1–10 for each theme across AI platforms.
The chart helps you quickly understand how consistently your locations appear in AI-generated ranked lists for the most relevant topics.
Each line in the chart represents one of the top five themes, and the percentage indicates how many of your locations are ranking within the top 10 results for that theme.
Hover over any point in the chart to view the exact ranking percentage for each theme during the selected reporting period.
Use the tabs at the top to switch between ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or All, allowing you to compare how your themes perform across individual AI platforms or across all platforms combined.
