AI visibility audit · Free self-check · Then a human read if you want one
AI visibility audit: does the assistant name you, or your competitor?
Ten minutes, six prompts, a score out of 24. You will know where you stand in AI search before anyone tries to sell you a fix.
Forty-five percent of consumers asked an AI tool for a local recommendation in the past year (BrightLocal, 2026), and more than a quarter of businesses in Google’s local pack are missing from AI Mode for the same search (Local SEO Data, June 2026). This audit shows you which side of that line you are on. Run it yourself below, or have us run the full version and walk you through it.
Direct answer: An AI visibility audit checks whether AI search systems name, cite and correctly describe your business when a customer asks. The six-prompt self-check on this page scores it out of 24 in about ten minutes. The full audit we run for clients records the same prompts across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, traces every citation to its source, and ranks the fixes by effort. It is free inside any campaign; as a standalone it is quoted to scope.
The map pack and the AI answer are no longer the same list.
For years, ranking in Google Maps meant you were the recommendation. Three 2026 studies say that link has loosened.
28.5% missing
Local SEO Data checked 1,120 local queries across 13 cities in June 2026 and found that 28.5% of the businesses in Google’s local pack did not appear in AI Mode for the same query. For professional services, AI Mode often showed educational content instead of any business at all.
A third as many businesses
Sterling Sky’s June 2026 review of 322 markets found Google’s AI local packs surface roughly 32% as many businesses as the classic three-pack, usually one or two, with no call button. Fewer seats, higher stakes.
Google’s own cards
Profound measured google.com’s share of AI Mode citations rising more than eightfold between April and June 2026, driven by Business Profile cards. Your profile is now a source document, not just a listing.
None of this means Maps stopped mattering. The WebFX study from July 2026 found a local pack on 97.6% of home-services searches. It means there is a second surface to win, and most businesses have never looked at it.
What the number means, and what to fix first.
Invisible
Assistants either do not know you exist or confuse you with someone else. Start with the boring fixes: identical name, address, phone, hours and categories on your site, Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect and Bing Places. Then get reviews moving. Nothing else works until the entity is clean.
Known, not chosen
Engines can find you but name a competitor when asked for a recommendation. Usually the gap is proof and specificity: no recent reviews, no price ranges, service pages that describe you without answering the customer’s question. Rewrite the top three service pages to open with a direct answer and a real range.
Cited
You are being named. Now protect it: keep review velocity up, answer every review, keep structured data valid, and add the pages that answer the next questions (cost, timeline, what to expect). Track AI Overview and AI Mode impressions in Search Console, which has reported them separately since August 2026.
Scores are directional. A plumber in Aurora and a law firm downtown will see different engines matter more; the full audit weights by your category.
What we check when we run it for you.
The self-check is six prompts. The full audit is the same idea done properly, with a transcript you keep.
Across six engines
Twenty to forty real customer questions, run in Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude on the same day, logged with the answer, the businesses named and every cited source. Repeated monthly inside a campaign so you can see movement.
Source tracing
When a competitor is cited, we record where the assistant got it: a review site, a list article, a directory, their own page. That tells you exactly which listing or page to earn. Whitespark’s 2026 survey ranks presence on curated best-of lists as the strongest AI visibility signal; the trace shows which lists.
Entity audit
Every public fact about your business, compared across the sources assistants read. We found a Denver client listed in two different suburbs and under an old phone number on three sites; the assistant had simply averaged the confusion into silence.
Fix list, ranked
Ten to twenty fixes ordered by effort and expected effect, with the first five written so your own team could do them. If you hire us, they are the first month’s work. If you do not, you still have the list.
Cost. Free inside any Eye To Ad Media campaign ($500 to $3,000 a month, month to month). As a standalone it is quoted to the size of the business; published industry rates for a standalone AI visibility audit run $500 to $2,000 (LLM Pulse, May 2026). The broader free SEO audit includes a lighter AI section if you want everything looked at once.
What an audit found for a business we own.
We run this on ourselves first, which is how we know it works and where it breaks. When we audited our founder’s home-services company, ChatGPT named it on national product questions but Perplexity returned a different company with a similar name in another state. The cause was two stale directory listings using an old phone number. Fixing the listings and adding a plain facts block to the About page cleared it within the next crawl cycle; the company now appears in both. The case study shows the terms you can test.
The point is not the fix. It is that the problem was invisible from inside Google Maps, where the business ranked first the whole time.
About the AI visibility audit.
A structured check of whether AI search systems (Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude) name, cite and correctly describe your business when a customer asks a relevant question, plus a trace of where the assistants get their information and a ranked list of fixes.
Yes. It runs in your browser, sends nothing to us, and does not ask for your email. The score and the three bands are the same framework we use in the full audit.
Entity and listing fixes tend to show within a few weeks as the assistants re-crawl their sources. Being chosen over an established competitor takes longer, because it depends on reviews, lists and pages that take months to earn. Google says changes to a site may take months to be fully reassessed; AI systems that read Google inherit that pace.
Yes. Google’s AI optimization guide says a complete Business Profile helps products and services appear in AI responses, and Profound measured Business Profile cards driving a large rise in google.com citations inside AI Mode during 2026. Keep it complete, current and reviewed.
Often, yes. The first band of fixes is consistency work any owner can do in an afternoon: match your facts everywhere, fill every profile field, answer every review, and rewrite your top service page to answer the customer’s question in the first paragraph. The guide to getting cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity walks through it.
Related: AI SEO agency · Free SEO audit · How to get cited by ChatGPT · AI visibility self-audit (long version) · Google Maps ranking vs AI Mode
Scored under 17? Send us the number.
Call with your score and your category and the founder will tell you, on the phone, which two fixes would move it most and whether you need us at all.