Rank AI Search has launched a free AI visibility scanner, The Des Moines Register reports. The tool costs nothing and lets marketers audit how their brand appears in AI-generated search results.

The launch responds to a measurable shift in referral traffic. Publishers and brands increasingly track how often AI engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews cite their domains. Visibility in those answers now functions as a ranking metric of its own.

What does the scanner actually do?

An AI visibility scanner measures brand presence inside AI-generated answers. Typical outputs include:

• How often an AI engine names a brand when users ask category questions
• Which competitor the engine cites instead
• Which source pages the AI model draws on when it answers

Rank AI Search has made this audit free. That pricing decision matters. Comparable visibility audits from established SEO toolsets have historically sat behind paid subscriptions, which priced smaller publishers out of the data.

A free tier lowers the barrier for local businesses and independent sites — the same segment The Des Moines Register serves in the Iowa market where the announcement ran.

Why does free visibility data matter now?

Search referral patterns have changed faster than most measurement stacks. Traditional rank trackers count positions in a list of ten blue links. AI engines answer the question directly and cite a handful of sources, so a site can lose most of its click traffic while its classic rankings hold steady.

That gap created demand for a new instrument. Rank AI Search built one and priced it at zero, which suggests the company expects to monetize depth — monitoring, alerts, competitor benchmarks — rather than the entry-level scan.

For brands, the practical first step is a baseline. A free scan establishes how often AI engines mention a domain today, before any optimization work begins.

Who should run it?

The clearest use cases:

• Local and regional businesses that lack enterprise SEO budgets
• Publishers watching AI-driven referral declines
• E-commerce brands whose product questions AI engines now answer inline

Each group loses the same asset when an AI engine omits them: the citation that once arrived as a search result.

What to watch next

Monitor whether Rank AI Search keeps the scanner free, how it prices deeper visibility tracking, and whether rival tool vendors respond with their own no-cost tiers. The competitive answer will arrive in pricing pages before it arrives in press releases.