Show HN: Hikoo – Track and optimize how AI search engines talk about your brand

Hey HN! We're building Hikoo, a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) platform for businesses that want to understand and improve how they appear in AI-powered search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews).

The problem: 60% of searches now end without a click, and 83% when AI Overviews are present. Your SEO can be perfect, but if AI engines don't mention you, you're invisible to a growing share of users.

What Hikoo does: - Monitors how AI engines answer queries relevant to your business - Tracks your brand's presence, sentiment, and ranking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini - Identifies gaps: queries where competitors get cited but you don't - Gives actionable recommendations to improve your AI visibility

We're two co-founders based in France, currently serving 6 clients (agencies and SMBs). Starting at €30/mo — we wanted to make this accessible, not just an enterprise play.

Would love feedback from the HN community. What would you want to track about your brand in AI search?

tryhikoo.com

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2 points

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Niout

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a month ago

2 comments

13pixels ・ a month ago

Interesting tool. We've been looking at this space (GEO) as well.

One big challenge we've hit is the lack of determinism. Unlike Google where rank #1 is fairly stable, ChatGPT/Gemini answers vary wildly based on user history, location, and random seed.

How do you define a 'rank' in a conversational interface? Is it just frequency of mention over N runs? Or do you try to map 'top' recommendations to positions?

  • gab4hikoo ・ a month ago

    Great question, this is honestly one of the core technical challenges we've had to solve.

    You're right that determinism is fundamentally different from traditional search. Our approach is statistica and we measure frequency of mention + positioning within the response.

    So it's more like a visibility score built from hundreds of data points across platforms. Think of it as share of voice in AI responses rather than a fixed SERP position.

    We also track the variance itself, some brands get consistent mentions regardless of prompt phrasing, while others are highly volatile. That variance is actually a useful signal.

    Would love to compare notes on what you've been exploring in the space. Feel free to reach out (email in profile).