For years, companies have optimized websites to win positions on Google. Now a different discovery problem is emerging: what happens when a prospective customer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity which company they should consider? Muse Platforms is entering that market with AskHercules.app, a new AI visibility platform designed to show smaller businesses, experts and creators how they appear inside AI-generated answers—and where they may be losing ground to competitors.
The launch reflects a broader shift in how online discovery works. Traditional search typically gives users a list of links to evaluate. AI assistants increasingly compress that process into a synthesized response, often naming a relatively small number of companies, products or experts and citing selected sources.
For a founder-led business, professional-services firm or B2B software company, that creates a visibility problem that a conventional search-ranking report may not capture.
Ask Hercules is designed to measure whether an organization is mentioned, cited or recommended by major AI assistants and then translate those observations into actions a business can take. Muse Platforms says the product currently evaluates visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.
The platform is organized around three functions: Audit, Fix and Track.
The Audit component examines how a company or individual appears in AI-generated responses, including mentions, citations, competitor gaps and the questions most relevant to potential buyers. The Fix layer then recommends changes intended to make information easier for AI systems to extract and interpret. Those recommendations cover areas such as website readability, structured data, entity recognition, content relevance and citation authority.
Track closes the loop by monitoring changes over time.
That workflow is significant because AI visibility is not simply another version of a Google ranking. Large language models and answer engines can synthesize information from multiple sources, and the sources selected by one system may not be the same as those selected by another. Research published in 2026 has found substantial differences in brand visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, reinforcing the idea that there is no single universal AI-search ranking.
Muse Platforms, founded by Colleen Nagle, says Ask Hercules is built around its Crawl Readiness Index™ and KSM™ framework. Those systems are intended to evaluate whether AI systems can extract information about an organization, identify it as a distinct entity and find credible evidence supporting its expertise.
That emphasis on entities and evidence is important. Generative AI optimization is moving beyond simply inserting keywords into webpages. An AI system needs to establish what an organization is, what it does, who is associated with it and whether independent sources provide enough evidence to support a recommendation.
The emerging market is already crowded. Platforms including Profound, Scrunch, Otterly, Peec AI and AthenaHQ are competing for companies seeking visibility monitoring across AI search and answer engines, while established SEO vendors such as Ahrefs and Semrush are adding AI-search capabilities to existing search-marketing products.
Ask Hercules is differentiated primarily by its intended audience. Rather than positioning the platform solely as an enterprise marketing intelligence system, Muse Platforms is targeting small and midsize businesses, consultants, independent experts, founders, thought leaders and creators. Agency functionality is also available for teams managing multiple clients.
That positioning could matter. Enterprise vendors can afford dedicated SEO, content, PR and analytics teams to monitor emerging search channels. Smaller organizations often cannot. A self-service platform that connects diagnosis with specific technical and content recommendations could make AI visibility more accessible to those businesses.
The need is becoming clearer as AI-assisted discovery develops. Gartner reported in January 2026 that 51% of surveyed consumers had changed their research habits because of generative AI; among those respondents, many said they were using more specific, question-based or conversational queries.
At the same time, businesses should not interpret AI visibility as a replacement for conventional SEO. Gartner’s research indicates that consumers continue to use traditional search and social channels alongside generative AI. The analyst firm has explicitly advised marketers to build strategies spanning both traditional and AI-driven discovery.
Trust presents another constraint. Gartner found that 53% of surveyed consumers expressed distrust or a lack of confidence in the reliability and impartiality of AI-powered search results.
That makes the company’s emphasis on credibility more consequential than the language of “visibility” might suggest. Getting an AI system to mention a company is only useful if the resulting description is accurate and supported by credible evidence.
For enterprise teams, the arrival of products such as Ask Hercules points toward a new layer in the digital marketing stack: AI answer monitoring. SEO teams may need to track rankings and organic traffic while also measuring AI mentions, citations, competitive share of voice and the accuracy of machine-generated descriptions.
The broader direction is already visible in analyst research. Gartner published a March 2026 market guide specifically covering Answer Engine Visibility Tools, describing the category as a response to brands needing to optimize for LLM-powered search as users incorporate answer engines into discovery and purchasing journeys.
Ask Hercules therefore enters a market that is still being defined. Its longer-term test will not simply be whether it can tell businesses where they appear in AI answers, but whether its recommendations can consistently help them become more understandable, authoritative and accurately represented across an increasingly fragmented AI ecosystem.
For smaller businesses, that may be the more important promise: not gaming an AI model, but making the company’s existing expertise easier for both machines and prospective customers to find.
Market Landscape
AI visibility is becoming a distinct software category alongside SEO, analytics and content optimization. Gartner’s Market Guide for Answer Engine Visibility Tools, published in March 2026, signals that the category has moved beyond an experimental marketing tactic into an emerging area for technology buyers.
The competitive field ranges from enterprise-focused platforms such as Profound to monitoring and optimization products including Scrunch, Otterly, Peec AI and AthenaHQ. Traditional search platforms are also extending into the category, giving companies the option of adding AI-answer monitoring to established SEO workflows.
The market’s central challenge is measurement. AI responses are probabilistic, change between queries and differ by model. A brand that appears prominently in ChatGPT may receive less visibility in Gemini or Perplexity. That makes longitudinal tracking, competitor benchmarking and citation analysis more useful than treating AI visibility as a single static score.
The opportunity is significant, but the strategic lesson for enterprises is straightforward: AI search should complement—not replace—strong technical SEO, authoritative content, structured data, digital PR and a credible web presence.
Top Insights
- Muse Platforms launched Ask Hercules to measure how B2B companies and experts appear across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, addressing a growing AI-discovery challenge.
- The platform combines auditing, recommendations and tracking, giving smaller businesses a workflow for identifying citation gaps, improving entity recognition and monitoring AI visibility.
- AI visibility is becoming a distinct marketing discipline, with Gartner now tracking an emerging market for Answer Engine Visibility Tools alongside traditional SEO.
- Enterprise search strategies are becoming multi-channel, as buyers increasingly use conversational AI alongside Google, social networks and conventional websites during research.
- Credibility remains critical, with Gartner finding that 53% of surveyed consumers distrust or lack confidence in AI-powered search results, limiting the value of visibility without trustworthy information.
