Most business owners have never asked an AI assistant about their own business. The ones who have usually asked once, saw something odd, and moved on. A single answer tells you little, because answers change from one run to the next. A small, repeatable test tells you a lot.
Here is the method we use at the start of every audit, simplified so you can run it yourself in about 15 minutes.
Step 1: Write ten real questions
Write the questions your customers actually ask before they buy, in their words, not yours. Include your service and your area where it would be natural.
- "Who is a good family lawyer in Parramatta?"
- "Dentist open on Saturdays for new patients near Geelong?"
- "Which accountant can set up GST for a sole trader in Perth?"
Avoid questions that already contain your business name. You want to know whether you come up when someone does not know you yet.
Step 2: Ask four tools, the same way
Ask each question in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google (where an AI Overview often appears). Use a fresh chat each time so earlier questions do not steer the answer.
Step 3: Record four things
For every answer, note:
| Field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Mentioned | Were you named at all? |
| Linked | Did the answer link or cite your website? |
| Accurate | Were your prices, services and location right? |
| Instead | Which businesses were named instead of you? |
Keep screenshots. They are your baseline, and they make the next month's comparison honest.
Step 4: Read the pattern, not the single answer
After 40 answers (ten questions across four tools), patterns appear quickly:
- You are never named. The tools are not finding you, or not trusting what they find. This usually starts with the basics: clear pages that answer these questions, and consistent facts across your site and profiles.
- You are named, but wrongly. An old price, a closed location or a service you no longer offer. Trace it to the source, often an old directory listing or an outdated page, and fix it there.
- The same competitors keep appearing. Look at what they have that you do not: pages that answer the question directly, reviews, or mentions on the sites the tools cite.
AI answers vary between runs. Tracking the same questions over time turns unpredictable single answers into a trend you can see.
Step 5: Repeat every month
The value is in the repetition. Ask the same ten questions on the same day each month and compare. When you ship a change, such as a rewritten service page or a corrected listing, you will see whether the answers move.
Why this matters now
When Google shows an AI summary, people click a regular result 8% of the time, against 15% without one (Pew Research Center, July 2025). More of the decision is happening inside the answer itself.
If you would rather we run this properly, the free AI visibility audit tests 20 real questions across four AI tools, names the three competitors mentioned instead of you, checks every fact, and gives you three priority fixes. A person checks every answer, and it arrives by email within five business days.