Most businesses assume AI platforms know who they are. Most are wrong.
A visibility audit is the fastest way to understand your current position in AI search — which platforms cite you, which queries trigger mentions, and where competitors appear instead. Here’s how to run one yourself.
Step 1: Define your target prompts
Before you open a single AI platform, map the questions your buyers actually ask.
Think in terms of intent, not keywords. AI users don’t search “CRM software” — they ask “what’s the best CRM for a 10-person sales team?” or “which accounting software do most small businesses use?”
Build a list of 20–30 prompts across three categories:
Category prompts — broad questions about your industry
“What’s the best [product category] for [buyer type]?”
“Which [service type] companies should I consider?”
“What do most [industry] businesses use for [problem]?”
Problem prompts — specific pain points your product solves
“How do I [specific problem your product solves]?”
“What’s the best way to [outcome your product delivers]?”
“Which tools help with [specific challenge]?”
Comparison prompts — queries where buyers evaluate options
“What’s the difference between [you] and [competitor]?”
“Is [competitor] or [competitor] better for [use case]?”
“[Your category] — what should I look for?”
This prompt list becomes the foundation of your audit. Keep it focused — 20–30 prompts is enough to reveal meaningful patterns without taking days to work through.
Step 2: Test across platforms
Run each prompt across the five major AI platforms:
ChatGPT (GPT-4o)
Perplexity
Claude
Google AI Overviews
Gemini
For each prompt, record:
Whether your brand appears in the response
Where in the response you appear (first mention, list item, footnote)
Which competitors appear alongside or instead of you
Whether you’re cited as a source or just mentioned
Do this in a fresh browser session or incognito mode where possible — AI platforms can personalize responses based on previous queries.
Step 3: Track your results
Build a simple tracking spreadsheet with five columns: the prompt, a column for each platform (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, AI Overviews), and a final column for competitors cited in each response.
Mark each cell with a simple yes or no. After running all 20–30 prompts, three numbers will emerge naturally:
Citation rate — the percentage of prompts where you appear at least once across any platform. This is your headline visibility score.
Platform coverage — which platforms cite you most consistently and which ignore you entirely. Most businesses find they’re strong on one platform and invisible on others.
Prompt gaps — the query types where competitors appear and you don’t. These become your priority content targets.
Keep the spreadsheet running across monthly audits so you can track movement over time — not just where you are now, but whether the gap is closing.
Step 4: Audit your content against the gaps
For every prompt where a competitor appears and you don’t, ask three questions:
Do we have a page that answers this question? If not, that’s a content gap. You can’t be cited for an answer you haven’t written.
Is our existing content structured for AI extraction? AI platforms favor pages with direct answers in the opening paragraph, clear Q&A formatting, and schema markup. Long-form content buried in narrative prose is easy for humans to read and hard for AI to extract.
Are our entity signals clear? Does AI know who you are, what category you belong to, and what you specialize in? Weak entity signals mean AI platforms default to more established brands even when your content is stronger.
Step 5: Prioritize your fixes
Not all gaps are equal. Prioritize based on two factors:
Query volume — how often do buyers actually ask this question? Competitive density — how many competitors appear in AI answers for this prompt?
The highest-priority fixes are high-volume queries where only one or two competitors appear. These are the gaps you can close fastest with targeted content restructuring and schema implementation.
Low-priority fixes are queries dominated by 4–5 well-established competitors with deep content. These take longer and require more sustained authority-building work.
What a good result looks like
After running your audit, you’ll land in one of three positions:
Invisible — you appear in fewer than 20% of prompts across platforms. This is more common than most businesses expect and is fixable with focused content and technical work.
Partial visibility — you appear in 20–50% of prompts, usually on one or two platforms. You have a foundation to build on — the work is about expanding coverage and closing prompt gaps.
Strong visibility — you appear in 50%+ of prompts across multiple platforms. The focus shifts to maintaining position, tracking competitor movements, and expanding into new prompt categories.
The limits of a manual audit
A manual audit gives you a solid baseline. It has two limitations worth knowing about.
First, AI responses vary. Run the same prompt twice and you’ll sometimes get different answers. For accurate citation rate data, each prompt needs to be tested multiple times across multiple sessions.
Second, AI platforms update constantly. A citation you earn today can disappear next month if a competitor improves their content or a platform updates its retrieval behavior. Visibility audits aren’t a one-time exercise — they’re an ongoing measurement system.
The bottom line
A manual audit across 20–30 prompts and five platforms will tell you more about your AI visibility in two hours than months of watching organic traffic reports.
Start with your prompt list. Run the tests. Track the gaps. Then prioritize the fixes that will move you from invisible to cited in the shortest time.
If you’d rather skip straight to the strategy, [our AI visibility audit does this for you] — with real-time tracking, competitive benchmarking, and a prioritized roadmap included.
Related reading: Google rankings don’t predict AI visibility · how AI decides who to recommend · contact us.
Most businesses assume AI platforms know who they are. Most are wrong.
A visibility audit is the fastest way to understand your current position in AI search — which platforms cite you, which queries trigger mentions, and where competitors appear instead. Here’s how to run one yourself.
Step 1: Define your target prompts
Before you open a single AI platform, map the questions your buyers actually ask.
Think in terms of intent, not keywords. AI users don’t search “CRM software” — they ask “what’s the best CRM for a 10-person sales team?” or “which accounting software do most small businesses use?”
Build a list of 20–30 prompts across three categories:
Category prompts — broad questions about your industry
“What’s the best [product category] for [buyer type]?”
“Which [service type] companies should I consider?”
“What do most [industry] businesses use for [problem]?”
Problem prompts — specific pain points your product solves
“How do I [specific problem your product solves]?”
“What’s the best way to [outcome your product delivers]?”
“Which tools help with [specific challenge]?”
Comparison prompts — queries where buyers evaluate options
“What’s the difference between [you] and [competitor]?”
“Is [competitor] or [competitor] better for [use case]?”
“[Your category] — what should I look for?”
This prompt list becomes the foundation of your audit. Keep it focused — 20–30 prompts is enough to reveal meaningful patterns without taking days to work through.
Step 2: Test across platforms
Run each prompt across the five major AI platforms:
ChatGPT (GPT-4o)
Perplexity
Claude
Google AI Overviews
Gemini
For each prompt, record:
Whether your brand appears in the response
Where in the response you appear (first mention, list item, footnote)
Which competitors appear alongside or instead of you
Whether you’re cited as a source or just mentioned
Do this in a fresh browser session or incognito mode where possible — AI platforms can personalize responses based on previous queries.
Step 3: Track your results
Build a simple tracking spreadsheet with five columns: the prompt, a column for each platform (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, AI Overviews), and a final column for competitors cited in each response.
Mark each cell with a simple yes or no. After running all 20–30 prompts, three numbers will emerge naturally:
Citation rate — the percentage of prompts where you appear at least once across any platform. This is your headline visibility score.
Platform coverage — which platforms cite you most consistently and which ignore you entirely. Most businesses find they’re strong on one platform and invisible on others.
Prompt gaps — the query types where competitors appear and you don’t. These become your priority content targets.
Keep the spreadsheet running across monthly audits so you can track movement over time — not just where you are now, but whether the gap is closing.
Step 4: Audit your content against the gaps
For every prompt where a competitor appears and you don’t, ask three questions:
Do we have a page that answers this question? If not, that’s a content gap. You can’t be cited for an answer you haven’t written.
Is our existing content structured for AI extraction? AI platforms favor pages with direct answers in the opening paragraph, clear Q&A formatting, and schema markup. Long-form content buried in narrative prose is easy for humans to read and hard for AI to extract.
Are our entity signals clear? Does AI know who you are, what category you belong to, and what you specialize in? Weak entity signals mean AI platforms default to more established brands even when your content is stronger.
Step 5: Prioritize your fixes
Not all gaps are equal. Prioritize based on two factors:
Query volume — how often do buyers actually ask this question? Competitive density — how many competitors appear in AI answers for this prompt?
The highest-priority fixes are high-volume queries where only one or two competitors appear. These are the gaps you can close fastest with targeted content restructuring and schema implementation.
Low-priority fixes are queries dominated by 4–5 well-established competitors with deep content. These take longer and require more sustained authority-building work.
What a good result looks like
After running your audit, you’ll land in one of three positions:
Invisible — you appear in fewer than 20% of prompts across platforms. This is more common than most businesses expect and is fixable with focused content and technical work.
Partial visibility — you appear in 20–50% of prompts, usually on one or two platforms. You have a foundation to build on — the work is about expanding coverage and closing prompt gaps.
Strong visibility — you appear in 50%+ of prompts across multiple platforms. The focus shifts to maintaining position, tracking competitor movements, and expanding into new prompt categories.
The limits of a manual audit
A manual audit gives you a solid baseline. It has two limitations worth knowing about.
First, AI responses vary. Run the same prompt twice and you’ll sometimes get different answers. For accurate citation rate data, each prompt needs to be tested multiple times across multiple sessions.
Second, AI platforms update constantly. A citation you earn today can disappear next month if a competitor improves their content or a platform updates its retrieval behavior. Visibility audits aren’t a one-time exercise — they’re an ongoing measurement system.
The bottom line
A manual audit across 20–30 prompts and five platforms will tell you more about your AI visibility in two hours than months of watching organic traffic reports.
Start with your prompt list. Run the tests. Track the gaps. Then prioritize the fixes that will move you from invisible to cited in the shortest time.
If you’d rather skip straight to the strategy, [our AI visibility audit does this for you] — with real-time tracking, competitive benchmarking, and a prioritized roadmap included.
Related reading: Google rankings don’t predict AI visibility · how AI decides who to recommend · contact us.
