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What AI reads before it recommends SEO Tools tools

One question, put to the two AI engines that hand back the pages they opened.

The question, as it was asked

“What are the best SEO and content optimization tools?”

asked Sep 18, 2026 · Perplexity and Google AI Overviews · US English

These are not the leaderboard's engines. The leaderboard and the debate ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. This page asks Perplexity and Google, because they are the two that disclose what they read. What an engine reads here does not explain a rank there.

Who they named

The companies each engine's answer named, in the order it first mentioned them. Order of mention is not a rank — neither engine ranked anything.

PerplexityPerplexity named 20 companies
  1. 1SEMrush×2#1
  2. 2Ahrefs×2#2
  3. 3Google Search Console×2#10
  4. 4Screaming Frog SEO Spider#8
  5. 5Sitebulb—
  6. 6Moz Pro#4
  7. 7SE Ranking×2#12
  8. 8Surfer SEO×2#3
  9. 9Clearscope×2#5
  10. 10MarketMuse#7
  11. 11Frase×2#6
  12. 12PageSpeed Insights—
  13. 13Lighthouse—
  14. 14Schema Markup Validator—
  15. 15Google Analytics—
  16. 16Google Keyword Planner—
  17. 17Looker Studio—
  18. 18Botify—
  19. 19Oncrawl—
  20. 20Lumar—

Named here, not on our leaderboard

10 companies the engines named are not on our leaderboard at all.

SitebulbPageSpeed InsightsLighthouseSchema Markup ValidatorGoogle AnalyticsGoogle Keyword PlannerLooker StudioBotifyOncrawlLumar

What they read

Every page each engine retrieved while answering. Retrieved is not the same as relied on — the engines report the pages they pulled back, and no engine tells anyone which of them changed its answer.

PerplexityPerplexity retrieved 45 pages from 39 sites· 6 of those pages sit on a company's own site

Most-read sites

developers.google.comown site4 pages
support.google.com3 pages
overthetopseo.com2 pages
aionx.co1 page
alexbirkett.com1 page
busyworth.com1 page
clustermagic.ai1 page
comparegen.ai1 page
consumercat.com1 page
cswebsolutions.ca1 page

Every page retrieved

Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Overviews retrieved 7 pages from 5 sites

Most-read sites

onelittleweb.com×22 pages
zapier.com2 pages
brandumark.com1 page
lowfruits.io1 page
tryanalyze.ai1 page

Every page retrieved

The regulars

This is the first check for this category, so there is nothing to count across weeks yet. From the next one, each site carries how many of the last 5 checks it was retrieved in.

What these numbers rest onOne question · the dates · how often each engine was asked

This page is about one question, not about the category. It says: when a buyer asks this exact question, here is what each engine retrieved and who each one named. It does not say these are the pages AI reads about this category — measured, one question finds only about a third of the sites the engines keep returning to across a whole market.

  • Retrieved, never cited. The engines hand back the pages they pulled; none of them says which ones it leaned on.
  • Per engine, never pooled. The engines read mostly different webs, so a combined page count would describe a list neither of them produced. The only cross-engine facts here are that both engines read a site and that both engines named a company.
  • Counts, never rates. Every number here counts a named thing. There is no percentage anywhere on this page.
  • An engine we could not read is said so plainly and enters no count. It is never shown as a zero.

When an engine returns nothing — the call fails, Perplexity answers without searching, or Google shows no overview — it is asked again, up to 3 times in all. Whatever the last attempt gave is what is published, with the number of attempts beside it.

  • Perplexity — asked once on Sep 18, 2026
  • Google AI Overviews — asked once on Sep 18, 2026

We do not open the retrieved pages. Everything here comes from what the engines themselves handed back. Both engines are asked from the United States, in English.

These are not the leaderboard's engines. The leaderboard and the debate ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. This page asks Perplexity and Google, because they are the two that disclose what they read. What an engine reads here does not explain a rank there.

Methodology version 1.0.0Read the full methodology →

Earlier checks

This is the first check for this category, so there are no earlier weeks to link to yet. From the next one, each week's check is kept on that week's archive page.