The owner of a consultancy checked one morning what ChatGPT says about their category. They typed in a question a client might ask. The answer named four specific companies. Theirs was not among them. Two of the four were firms they had never heard of in ten years of work. That same day they commissioned an audit of their presence in AI.
Checking individual answers needs no specialist tooling. A comparable audit, however, needs a protocol, complete records and coding rules. You can start with a free category-fit assessment.
Before opening any AI system, you have to know what to look for. Your buyer does not ask "do you recommend company XYZ?" They ask about the problem they need to solve. So ask yourself: what does my ideal customer type into ChatGPT when looking for the solution I offer?
Example buyer questions by category: SEO agency: "Which SEO agency is good for an online shop?", "How do I find a good SEO specialist?" IT company: "Which development firms do you recommend for building mobile apps?", "Which IT company specialises in e-commerce?" Accountancy practice: "How do I choose an accountant for a start-up?", "Who handles bookkeeping for technology companies?" Law firm: "Who is good on employment law for employers?", "Which firm is recommended for corporate work?" Training provider: "Where can I learn project management?", "Best Excel training for companies"
In short: A useful technique: ask three current clients what they typed into Google or an AI system before they found you. Those are real phrases, not guesses.
ChatGPT is the starting point because it has the widest reach. A free account is enough, and the current default model has web access.
Start a new conversation - do not continue an old one, so earlier context cannot influence the result. Enter your test questions and observe: Does your company appear by name? If so, in which position and how is it described? Who else appears? That is your competition in AI. Which attributes does AI ascribe to the recommended companies? Does AI give any sources or links?
Test the same question three times - ChatGPT gives different answers on each run. If your company appears in one of three attempts, that signals weak presence. If it appears every time, that is a good sign.
Perplexity deserves separate measurement because it shows sources alongside the answer. Do not assume, though, that its user profile matches your B2B audience. Confirm that in conversations with clients and in your buying-journey data.
In Perplexity, pay attention to one extra element: the sources. Click through the cited pages - those are the pages Perplexity treats as authoritative in your category. If your site is not among them, that is a concrete thing to fix.
Note: Reddit accounts for a substantial share of citations in Perplexity. If your company is active in relevant subreddits or comparable communities, Perplexity is more likely to notice you.
Google AI Overviews - the AI answer box at the top of results - appears on a large share of queries. Go to Google and enter your test phrases. If an AI Overview appears, check whether your company is mentioned and whether your page is among the sources.
An important difference: 92% of Google AI Overviews citations come from pages in the organic top ten. Conventional SEO therefore matters more here than in ChatGPT. If you do not rank, you will not be cited by Google AI. But 47% of citations come from outside the top five, so content quality - not only position - counts.
Establishing that you are absent is only half the information. The more important question is who appears instead of you. Note the companies AI names in answer to your questions. That is your real competition in the AI channel, even if you outrank them in Google.
For each competitor, ask what they have that you do not. Typical answers: a stronger LinkedIn presence, an active blog with specific articles, mentions in industry publications, a Wikipedia entry, or activity on forums and Reddit.
| Test result | Assessment | Priority | | --- | --- | --- | | Appear in over 70% of answers, in positions 1-3 | Good visibility | Maintain and monitor | | Appear in 30-70% of answers | Average visibility | Optimise content and mentions | | Appear in under 30% of answers | Weak visibility | A full AI Visibility strategy | | Do not appear at all | No visibility | Diagnosis and urgent action | | AI describes you unfavourably or inaccurately | Reputation problem | Immediate intervention |
Manual tests are a good starting point, but they have limits worth knowing. First, AI generates different answers each time - what you see is a sample, not a stable result. Second, different locations and accounts can produce different results. Third, you cannot see how you compare against all competitors - only against whatever AI happened to generate.
A systematic diagnosis covers hundreds of test queries, a comparison with three to five direct competitors, analysis across several models at once, and an assessment of the site content itself for citability. A manual test tells you whether you have a problem. A full diagnosis tells you why, and what specifically to change.