Pitchbox was named in 5 of the 6 answers we collected, more than any other link building tool in this measurement. We ran this on 2026-08-03: we put six buyer questions about link building tools to ChatGPT and Gemini, gave each one live web search, and wrote down every product they named and every source domain they cited. Pitchbox came out on top at 5 of 6, which is 83% of the answers.
Behind it, two names tied at 4 of 6, or 67%: Ahrefs and Semrush. Two more tied at 3 of 6, or 50%: BuzzStream and Respona. After those five, the drop is steep. Every other tool we recorded, 18 of them, was named in exactly 1 of the 6 answers. So the reliable core of this category, as far as ChatGPT and Gemini are concerned, is five products deep.
Across all six answers we counted 23 distinct product labels, and only five of those 23 showed up in more than one answer. That gap, five repeat names against eighteen one-time mentions, is the whole story of how fragile a single AI recommendation is in this category.
How the shortlist changed with the question
The shortlist was not stable. It moved a lot depending on which of the six questions we asked, and the "best free" question rewired it completely.
The plain "best link building tools" question returned the widest list, 8 names in one answer: Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz Pro, Pitchbox, Respona, BuzzStream, GroupHigh, and All In One SEO. This is the closest thing to a category consensus, and it is where Moz Pro, GroupHigh, and All In One SEO each made their only appearance across all six questions.
"Best free link building tools" produced a set with zero overlap with any other question. Its 7 names were Broken Link Checker, Backlink checker, Resource Page Finder, Guest post finder, Sponsored post prospecting tool, Infographic promotion tool, and Link parser. None of the big paid names, not Pitchbox, not Ahrefs, not Semrush, appeared in the free answer at all. These seven read like feature labels rather than standalone brands, and if you sell a free tool here you are competing in that separate contest, not against the household names.
"Most affordable link building tools" returned the shortest list of all, just 3 names: Linkody, Pitchbox, and Respona. Linkody appeared in this one question only, its single mention in the whole measurement. Pitchbox and Respona were the only two premium names the assistants were willing to call affordable.
The two people-style questions stayed close to the core. "What link building tools should I use" named 7 (Ahrefs, Semrush, Pitchbox, Respona, BuzzStream, plus PressWhizz and Prospect Discovery, which each appeared only here). "Link building tools recommendations" named 6 (Ahrefs, Semrush, Pitchbox, BuzzStream, plus Hunter and Backlink Gap, unique to this question). "Best link building tools for small teams" named 6 and was the only place Skrapp, Hunter.io, and Google Sheets showed up.
One brand landed under two labels. Hunter.io appeared once in the small-teams answer, and Hunter appeared once in the recommendations answer. Same company, two spellings, two separate single mentions, counted separately in the data. We are keeping both as they were measured rather than merging them into a number the assistants never actually produced.
Where the answers came from
The named products track the sources. Eighteen domains fed the six answers, and one sat under every single one: onelittleweb.com was a source in 6 of 6 answers, the only domain in every answer. aioseo.com and reddit.com came next at 5 of 6 each, and a second roundup, aboveapex.com, tied with quora.com at 4 of 6 each.
Community threads did a lot of the lifting. Reddit was a source in 5 of 6 answers and Quora in 4 of 6, and a third forum, blackhatworld.com, showed up once. So discussion pages, not vendor marketing, were among the heaviest feeders behind these recommendations.
Here is the finding that matters most for anyone selling in this category. Several vendors' own domains were cited, and in each case that vendor's product was also named. aioseo.com was a source in 5 of 6 answers, and All In One SEO was named. semrush.com was a source in 2 answers, and Semrush was named in 4. presswhizz.com fed 1 answer, and PressWhizz was named. skrapp.io fed 1 answer, and Skrapp was named. Being your own citable source lined up with getting named, four times over.
Two newer sites also earned repeat citations: aeoengine.ai and llmrefs.com each fed 3 of 6 answers, more than semrush.com or youtube.com at 2 each. The rest of the field, nine domains including backlinko.com, seranking.com, theupperranks.com, distribb.io, macrosnaps.com, and questiondb.io, fed a single answer apiece.
What did not appear is as telling as what did. Not one classic software review directory showed up. No G2, no Capterra, no TrustRadius, no GetApp, anywhere in the 18 domains across all six answers. In this category, on this day, the directories vendors pay to rank on fed zero AI recommendations.
What gets a link building tool named
The pattern across all 6 answers is simple: the source list decides who gets named, not market share. The five tools that recurred, Pitchbox at 5 of 6 down to Respona at 3 of 6, are the five whose source pages recurred. If your tool is in the pages these assistants read, it gets named. If it is not, it does not, whatever your market share.
That points at a short to-do list. Get into the one roundup that appeared in all six answers, onelittleweb.com, and into aboveapex.com, which fed 4 of 6. Get talked about on Reddit, which fed 5 of 6, and Quora, which fed 4 of 6. Publish citable comparison content on your own domain, the move that four vendors here (All In One SEO, Semrush, PressWhizz, Skrapp) can be seen doing successfully. And do not count on G2 or Capterra to carry you, because in this measurement they carried no one.
The fan-out matters here too. Because "best free" and "most affordable" pulled entirely different pages, a free or low-cost tool needs to be present in the free-tool and budget roundups specifically. Ranking on the generic "best tools" page did nothing for the free query, which shared zero names with it.
The full list, counted
These are the products by how many of the six answers named each. Share is that count out of 6. Hunter and Hunter.io are the same brand under two labels, listed separately because the measurement counted them separately.
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Pitchbox | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| Ahrefs | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Semrush | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| BuzzStream | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Respona | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Linkody | 1 of 6 | 17% |
| All In One SEO | 1 of 6 | 17% |
| Hunter | 1 of 6 | 17% |
| Hunter.io | 1 of 6 | 17% |
Eighteen products in total tied at 1 of 6. The four singles shown here are a representative slice of that tail, including the affordable-only name (Linkody) and the double-labelled brand (Hunter and Hunter.io).
Where Glotier fits
Glotier does not sell a link building tool, so we are correctly absent from all six of these answers. We did not expect a mention and we are not going to invent one. This is a category we measured, not one we compete in.
But the measurement itself is the thing we do build. We ran the same six-question fan-out, the same product and source capture, that we run for a customer's own category, so a link building vendor could see exactly this: which of the six buyer questions name you, which name a rival, and which pages fed each answer. The check is free, needs no account, and takes about a minute.