Where you stand in the AI assistants' answers
We track how AI assistants answer high-intent customer questions, which businesses they name, and which outside sources they cite. Also known as GEO.
“I've noticed a drop in organic traffic over the past several months, even on pages that still rank reasonably well.”
A question owners ask.
What customers ask
We put twenty real buyer questions to the assistants and record what comes back.
The customer asksWhich orthodontist near Ann Arbor treats adults with clear aligners?
ChatGPT
- Three practices in the area take adult cases.
- Your practiceNamedNamed, and first
- Two competitors, both with a booking link.
Gemini
- Lists four practices by distance.
- Your practice is absentMissingNot returned at all
- Cites a directory page you do not control.
Claude
- Named in 1 of 3 checksSometimesSame question, same week
- Absent on the other two.
- One answer is not a position.
Your customers do not always click through a list of websites. They may ask an AI assistant for a recommendation, compare the businesses named in its answer, and make a decision without visiting every source. That creates a second visibility surface, and you need to measure both.
We agree on twenty high-intent questions tied to a buying decision: for a clinic, treatment types, location, availability or provider fit; for a restaurant, what is served and what is open late; for a home services company, the job, the service area or the urgency. Each dated run records whether your business is named, which competitors are, whether material details are accurate, and which websites are cited. The scan page shows a run across four assistants.
AI answers do not follow the local pack
A business can lead the local map and be absent from an AI answer, and another can have limited map visibility and still appear prominently in an assistant’s response. We observed this split in our own scans across several cities.
| For one customer question | Visible on Google | Weak on Google |
|---|---|---|
| Named by the assistants | Strong on both: keep the baseline and watch it | AI only: the sources cite you and the map does not. The profile and the local pages get the first look |
| Absent from the assistants | Google only: the entity facts and the outside sources get the first look | Absent from both: a wider relevance and authority review |
Where the answers come from
An assistant draws on sources, and on what it already holds. We find which sources it uses and whether they agree.
- Name
- Address and service area
- Services
- People and credentials
- Hours
- Your website
- Your Google Business Profile
- Directories and associations
- Publications and lists
- Reviews
- A live search
- What the model already holds
What has to holdThe same facts, consistent on every surface an assistant reads. A conflict on any of them can be the one an answer repeats.
Your website needs a clear entity home
One page settles who you are, what you do, and where.
Your about page usually serves as that home: it states the approved facts plainly, with structured data underneath. What we review, and how conflicts are found and fixed, is on the entity and citations page.
Citations happen away from your website
Some sources an assistant cites are not yours to edit.
We inspect the sources cited or repeatedly surfaced for your question set and look for legitimate ways to correct, earn or strengthen your presence on them. Publication stays the publisher’s decision, and citations and mentions are not guaranteed.
Priority pages need answerable sections
The first sentence answers the question, and the proof follows.
A customer may ask a narrow question instead of searching a short keyword, so priority pages carry concise, factual answer blocks. That is not hundreds of generic question pages, and the page still has to help a person decide, because copy written only so a machine can lift it fails that test.
What we check, and when
The scan is a dated baseline that we run again.
AI answers can vary between runs, so one favorable screenshot is not a stable measurement.
Your report uses a dated question set and a repeatable method. It separates:
- Inclusion from omission
- Accurate statements from factual errors
- Direct citations from likely source influence
- Your own website from third-party sources
- Google visibility from AI Visibility
- Visibility from attributed inquiries
AI Visibility inside your growth system
AI Visibility is part of Market Visibility because it concerns where your business is discovered. It depends on Offer Design when the page must answer a buying question, and Insights when the observation must be repeated and compared.
What to fix first
Come with the project you already have in mind. Before we meet, we review your website, listings and other public-facing material. During the 30-minute session, you show us how the relevant part works today. We check whether the project addresses the real constraint and what it needs to connect to. You can hire us for one part.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I get my company mentioned in ChatGPT?
- Start by measuring the questions for which your company is absent, then inspect the businesses and sources that appear instead. Improvements may involve clearer service pages, consistent entity facts, and legitimate third-party references, but no one can guarantee a mention.
- Is this what people call GEO, or answer engine optimization?
- They are overlapping names for the same aim. Generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), AI SEO and LLM SEO each describe, with a different emphasis, getting a business named accurately inside an AI-generated answer. We call it AI Visibility because that is what a business owner is asking about.
- Is AI SEO different from normal SEO?
- Yes, although the work overlaps. Traditional SEO measures positions and visits from search surfaces, while AI Visibility also measures inclusion, accuracy, competitors, and cited sources inside generated answers.
- Can you guarantee that an AI assistant will recommend my business?
- No. We guarantee the agreed scan and implementation work, not recommendations, citations, leads, or mentions controlled by another system.
- How often should AI Visibility be measured?
- Monthly measurement is useful when AI Visibility is an active service because it creates dated comparisons using the same commercial question set. A less frequent check can suit a business using it as a secondary part of Local SEO.
Primarily serves the Market Visibility pillar of the MOSAIC Six.