Answers / Getting named by AI

AI visibility audit for small business: what does it cover?

Matt Turley, Continuum. Updated October 2, 2026.

What a good audit checks, which questions it should ask, why one run is not enough, what it should cost, and what the report looks like.

The short answer

AI visibility audit for small business: what does it cover?

An AI visibility audit checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini name your business when your customers ask them who to hire, who they name instead, and which websites they read before answering. A good one asks 10 to 15 questions in your customers' words, asks each one three times on each tool, and hands you the three fixes worth the most. Ours is the AI Answer Check: $99, delivered within 3 business days or it is free.

What does an AI visibility audit check?

Three things, and the first one is the headline.

  • Named or not. For each question and each AI tool: is your business name written in the answer text? A link to your site in the sources is not the same thing, and the two are counted apart. We count a question as won only when you are named in at least 2 of 3 runs.
  • Who is named instead. The businesses the tools name for your questions, with how often. That is your real competition in AI answers, and it is often not the list you would have written.
  • Which sites the answers read. Every page the tools cited, grouped into company websites, directories and review sites, best-of lists and forums. These are the pages you need to be on.

A fourth line item is worth having: any answer that states a wrong fact about you, like a price you do not charge or a service you do not offer. Cited is not the same as named, and named is not the same as described correctly. More on the difference between the first two is in how to rank in ChatGPT for your business.

Which questions should it ask?

Your customers' words, not keywords. Nobody types “plumbing services Dallas” into ChatGPT. They type a sentence with a problem in it. Five to ten questions is enough for a first read, 12 to 15 is what our report uses, and none of them should contain your business name, or the tool will simply look you up.

The questions are frozen before the first run and never edited afterwards, so the re-measure a month later is like for like. For a Dallas plumber, three from the set we published look like this:

  • “emergency plumber in Dallas for a burst pipe, who should I call”
  • “best company for water heater replacement in Dallas”
  • “recommend an honest plumber in Dallas that won't overcharge me”

The whole list of 10, and what the AI tools answered, is on the plumbers in Dallas research page.

Why three runs on three AI tools?

Because answers move between runs, and the tools read different sites. Ask the same question twice and you can get two different lists. One screenshot proves nothing either way.

The tools disagree more than people expect. In our October 2026 Dallas research, across 12 trades and 720 answers, 691 businesses were named on at least one question check by Perplexity or Gemini. Only 170 of those 691 were named by both tools. In a September realtor check, ChatGPT cited one rankings site, therealtorrankings.com, in 11 of 12 answers, while Gemini leaned on a different site entirely, and only 1 of ChatGPT's 70 citations was an agent's own website. Measure one tool and you know about one tool.

Three runs give you a majority rule: named in 2 of 3 counts, named in 1 of 3 does not. Three tools give you the whole picture a customer might see.

What should an AI visibility audit cost?

One vendor's published benchmark, The Answer Engine (June 21, 2026, linked in the sources), puts a one-time AEO audit at $800 to $2,500, a starter retainer at $2,500 a month, and calls $500 to $1,000 a month a “below-market danger zone”. That is their view and they are entitled to it. Here is ours, with the report in view so you can judge for yourself.

What the audit costs, and what the monthly version costs, from our pricing page
What the audit costs, and what the monthly version costs, from our pricing page
WhatPriceWhat you get
AI Answer Check (the audit)$99Your buyers' questions on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, 3 runs each: named or not, who is named instead, which sites they read, wrong facts stated about you, and the three fixes worth the most. Read by Matt before it goes out. In your inbox within 3 business days of your completed order or it is free; full refund within 7 days if it was not useful.
Get Users, Proving rate$500/mo, month to monthEach week, done for you once you approve: page rewrites titled to the exact questions, the directories and best-of lists to get onto, pitched and followed up, Reddit replies drafted for you to post, and a weekly scoreboard of what the three tools say about you. Prefer to keep the keys? Same price, you make the changes.
Get Users, Founding Client rate$999/mo, locked for lifeThe same work once your written goal is hit on two weekly reads in a row. Standard rate for new clients is $1,999/mo.

Why ours is cheaper than that benchmark: the probing is automated. The same system that runs your $99 report runs every week for Get Users clients, so the cost of collecting every answer and logging every citation is small. The part that is not automated, reading the answers and choosing the three fixes, is done by one person, me, and I read every report before it is sent. The exact terms are on the guarantees page, and every price on this site comes from one pricing page.

What does the report look like?

One table per AI tool, one row per question. For each of your questions it shows whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini named you in most of their three runs, whether they linked your site as a source, and which businesses they named instead. Then the sites the answers cited most, any wrong facts the tools state about you, and the three fixes worth the most.

Named and linked are kept apart on purpose. A tool can use your site as a source and still recommend someone else, and that gap is usually where the first fix is. What is in the report, question by question, is on the product page.

What do you do with the result?

Three fixes, ranked by how much of the citation share they touch. The sites the answers read are the lever, and which kind of site matters depends on what you sell. In the same Dallas research, directories and review sites were 30.7% of citations for the 12 local trades, while best-of lists were only 10.8%. For AI chatbot tools it flipped: best-of lists and comparisons were 54.3% of citations and directories 2.6%.

  • A trade: be listed, with current reviews and an identical name and phone number, on the three or four directories the answers cited most. Then one page per real question on your own site.
  • Software or a service: find who publishes the best-of lists the answers cite and whether you belong on them, then make your own site say plainly who you are for and what you cost, so the tool can quote you.
  • Everyone: re-run the same frozen questions a month later. A fix you cannot measure is a guess.

Can I do it myself?

Yes. Write down ten questions in your customers' words, without your name in them. Tonight, ask each one three times in ChatGPT with web search on, then in Perplexity, then in Gemini. For each answer write down whether you were named, who was, and every site it cited. Only count a question as won when you are named in 2 of 3 runs.

The caveat is the volume: 10 questions times 3 tools times 3 runs is 90 answers to read and log by hand, and the sites cited need sorting into types before the pattern shows. Our free AI visibility check runs a few of your questions live and scores how often you show up, which is a fair first look. The $99 report is the full version with the competitors, the sites and the fixes.

Want to know where you stand?

The AI Answer Check is the audit described on this page: your buyers' questions, three AI tools, three runs each, who is named instead of you, which sites they read, and the three fixes worth the most. It is $99, ordered online in about two minutes, and it does not promise what any AI tool will say.

Get Users is the monthly version: the Proving rate is $500/mo while we prove the method works for you, then the Founding Client rate, $999/mo locked for life once the written goal is hit (standard $1,999/mo), month to month, with a weekly scoreboard.

Book a call →See all services and prices →
FAQ

Straight answers

How long does an AI visibility audit take?
The automated part, 10 to 15 questions times three tools times three runs, runs in an afternoon. Reading the answers, logging who was named instead and picking the fixes is the real work. Our AI Answer Check is in your inbox within 3 business days of your completed order, or it is free.
Which AI tools does it cover?
ChatGPT (with web search on), Perplexity and Gemini, through their APIs with nobody signed in, so the answers are not shaped by anyone's history. The report names the model versions it used.
Does it include Google AI Overviews?
No. Gemini is measured through Google's API with search grounding, which is not the same thing as the AI Overview box on a Google results page. We do not claim a Google AI Overviews number because we do not measure one.
Is it a one-off or ongoing?
The audit is a one-off report for $99. If you want the work done and measured every week, Get Users is the monthly version, from $500/mo, and what you paid for the check comes off the first month if you join within 14 days of getting the report. Nobody has to buy the second thing to get value from the first.
What if the AI tools already name my business?
Then the audit tells you on which questions, on which tools, and how steadily, plus any answer that states a wrong fact about you, like a price or a service you do not offer. Being named on one run of one question is a coin flip; the report shows you where it holds up across three runs.
Keep reading
Does ChatGPT recommend my business?The AI Answer Check, $99: the audit this page describes, with our own report as the sample.Who AI recommends in 2026Four Dallas trades and one software category: who gets named, which sites get read, every answer as JSON.Does ChatGPT recommend HVAC companies?A worked example: ten Dallas questions, every company ChatGPT named and every site it read.How do plumbers show up in ChatGPT answers?The same check for plumbers: who was named and which sites the answers read.How do I get my business mentioned in ChatGPT answers?What ChatGPT reads before it names a business, and what your own page needs.Get UsersThe monthly service that does the listing and page work and reports it on a weekly scoreboard.
Sources
  1. 1. Best AEO agency for small businesses: what to look for and what to pay, The Answer Engine, June 21, 2026: One vendor's published price benchmark: a one-time AEO audit at $800 to $2,500, a starter retainer from $2,500 a month, and a callout naming $500 to $1,000 a month a "below-market danger zone". Quoted on this page as that vendor's view, with our own prices beside it.
  2. 2. Who AI recommends in 2026: the businesses named and the sources cited, by industry, Continuum, October 2026: The research the agreement and source-type figures on this page are computed from: 12 Dallas trades, 720 Perplexity and Gemini answers, every answer published as JSON.
  3. 3. Does ChatGPT recommend my business? The AI Answer Check, Continuum, September 2026: The product page: what the report covers, the scoring rules, and the guarantee terms.
  4. 4. How do I get my business mentioned in ChatGPT answers?, Continuum, September 2026: The realtor check behind the 11 of 12 figure: ChatGPT and Gemini asked for the best real estate agent in Phoenix and Dallas, 12 answers per tool, September 28, 2026.