.avif)
.png)
Get a free marketing audit. Choose the area you want us to look at — website, SEO, AI visibility, brand, social, content or media — and we’ll show you the gaps and where your next move makes the most sense.
You can spend months improving your website and building a recognizable brand, yet still have no clear idea whether your company appears when someone asks an AI tool for help. Your business may be included, left out completely, or described in a way that no longer reflects what you do.
The only way to know is to test it, but a useful test involves more than typing your company name into ChatGPT and feeling relieved when it appears. Branded questions are usually the easiest ones for an AI search tool to answer. The harder and more valuable question is whether your brand appears when a person knows what they need but does not know your name yet.
That is where an AI visibility audit becomes useful. It shows where your brand appears, which sources support the answer, how accurately you are represented, and where competitors have stronger coverage. The result is not a permanent “AI ranking.” It is a documented view of how your brand is being found today and what deserves attention.
Most companies begin with, “What is [insert any company name]?” That belongs in the audit, but people who already know your company are not the only audience you need to reach.
Build questions around real points in the customer’s decision. Pull language from sales conversations, website searches, intake forms, and questions your team answers every week. The wording should sound like something a person would actually ask, not a keyword list dressed up as a sentence.
Your test should cover several kinds of intent:
You do not need fifty prompts on the first pass. Choose questions that represent the decisions that matter and save the exact list for the next audit. Constantly changing the wording makes the results harder to compare.
“How to rank in ChatGPT” has become a common search phrase, but it can create the wrong expectation. ChatGPT does not present one stable list of ten blue links, and OpenAI does not offer a way to guarantee top placement. Its search experience may rewrite a person’s question into more targeted searches, use general location information, and consider relevant memory when that feature is enabled. The response can also change as current information, available resources, and the wording of the conversation change.
Google’s generative search features work differently, but they also move beyond a single literal query. Google says its system may use “query fan-out,” which means generating related searches to gather information needed for a fuller response. A business may be relevant to the original question but still lack useful content for the related questions the system explores.
This is why one screenshot cannot tell you whether your AI search visibility is strong. You are looking for patterns across platforms and buying questions. A brand that appears repeatedly, is described accurately, and is supported by relevant sources has a stronger position than one that surfaces only for an exact-name search.
There is no universal AI result, so do not limit the exercise to one platform. Test the experiences your customers are most likely to use, which may include ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews or AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity. Consumer brands may also need to examine product, map, image, and video results.
Use the same core questions on each platform. Note whether you were signed in, which location was used, and whether the tool searched the live web. ChatGPT can use general location based on an IP address, so two people may receive different local answers.
For every question, record:
A spreadsheet turns screenshots into information you can compare. Keep examples containing errors or useful citations, but do not let screenshots become the whole audit.
A brand mention can feel like a win, but its quality matters. An AI response may include your company while misidentifying a service, using an old location, or overlooking an important specialty.
Review each result through six lenses:
Did the brand appear for a question that did not include its name? That visibility can introduce the company to someone who had not considered it.
Does the answer describe what the business does today? Check services, locations, leadership, and details that could influence a decision.
Was the brand included for the right reason, or did the mention feel incidental? Appearing in a broad list is different from being relevant to the problem being researched.
Did the response cite your website, a media article, a review platform, or another source? The citation shows which part of your digital presence supported the answer.
Which companies appeared beside yours, and what helped them stand out? Compare specificity, proof, local coverage, and the completeness of their service information.
Would the cited page help a potential customer take the next step? Visibility loses value when the page is outdated or disconnected from the original question.
You can score each area from zero to two, using zero for absent or poor, one for partial, and two for strong. This is a working scorecard rather than an industry standard, so use it to compare your own visibility over time instead of treating the total as a universal grade.
Content cannot be considered when a search system cannot access it. Technical access is one of the first places to look when a brand is missing despite having relevant content.
For Google’s AI features, the familiar SEO foundation still matters. Pages need to be indexed, eligible to appear in Search, and accessible for crawling. Search Console can help uncover indexing problems and show whether important pages are being discovered.
ChatGPT has its own search crawler. OpenAI states that websites need to allow OAI-SearchBot and traffic from its published IP ranges to be eligible for inclusion in ChatGPT search results. OAI-SearchBot is separate from GPTBot, so a company can make different choices about search visibility and model-training access.
Ask your web or SEO team to review:
Passing these checks does not guarantee that a page will appear. It removes barriers that could prevent a good page from being considered in the first place.
Once access is confirmed, look at the substance of the site. Many polished websites still say very little about who the company helps, how its services work, or why its experience is relevant.
Google’s guidance emphasizes useful, original, and non-commodity content. Generic articles assembled from widely repeated information create little distinction. First-hand knowledge, specific examples, original research, and an informed point of view offer more value.
Review the pages connected to the questions in your audit:
Do not create a thin page for every version of a question. Google warns against scaled content created mainly to manipulate visibility and says there is no ideal page length. Write for the person who arrives, not for a machine.
Your website is only part of the picture. AI search responses may also draw from news coverage, industry publications, business profiles, videos, review platforms, directories, and public discussions. When those sources describe your company consistently, they create a clearer public record of the brand.
Search your company name alongside important services, leaders, products, and locations. Look for outdated bios, old addresses, duplicate profiles, and incomplete listings. Correct what you control and contact publishers about material errors.
Look for real opportunities to strengthen authority beyond the website. Contributed expertise, earned media, credible partnerships, customer reviews, and useful video content can add context around the business. Avoid manufactured mentions created only to influence AI results; Google says inauthentic mentions are not a shortcut around quality.
The question is not, “How can we put our name everywhere?” A better question is, “Where would a customer reasonably expect to find proof that we do this work well?” That shift keeps the effort tied to reputation rather than turning it into another volume exercise.
An audit is useful only when it leads to action. Do not answer every missing mention with another blog post, because content cannot repair every visibility problem.
Use the evidence to identify the likely cause:
Start with issues that affect traditional search and AI visibility. A blocked page, unclear service description, or incorrect business profile can create problems in several places. Fixing the foundation usually delivers more value than chasing a platform-specific tactic.
AI search results change, so the audit needs to be repeated. Monthly testing may make sense for a competitive or fast-moving category, while a quarterly review may be enough for a smaller company with a stable service offering. Major website changes, a rebrand, a new location, or the launch of an important service also deserve a fresh baseline.
Use the same core questions and compare the results with the previous audit. Track improvements in accurate mentions, relevant citations, non-branded discovery, referral traffic, and the performance of pages receiving those visits. OpenAI notes that sites allowing OAI-SearchBot can track referral traffic from ChatGPT, while Google provides a Generative AI performance report in Search Console for its own AI search features.
Do not judge the work only by whether the brand appeared in one answer. Look for a stronger pattern: better coverage of priority topics, fewer factual gaps, more useful cited pages, and qualified visitors who take meaningful action. Those changes tell you more than a single flattering response ever could.
No agency or software provider can promise that your business will rank first in ChatGPT or appear in every AI-generated answer. OpenAI says there is no guaranteed top placement, and Google does not guarantee that eligible content will be indexed or served. Anyone selling certainty here is selling more confidence than the evidence supports.
What you can do is make the brand easier to access, understand, and verify. Publish information grounded in real expertise, correct inconsistencies across the web, and measure visibility with a repeatable process. That work also improves the experience for people arriving through traditional search, referrals, and direct research.
An AI visibility audit should leave you with more than a list of prompts and screenshots. It should show where your brand is present, where it is being misunderstood, and which improvements are most likely to matter. That is how you move from wondering whether AI can find you to making informed decisions about what to strengthen next.
Dragon Horse Agency helps businesses evaluate visibility across traditional and AI-powered search, identify the gaps affecting discovery, and build a practical plan around the findings. Ready to understand where your brand shows up, what AI answers are saying, and where your next move makes the most sense? Start with a free marketing audit.
Author: Marissa Garner, Project Manager & Copywriter, Dragon Horse Agency