Expect BestMost businesses have checked their Google ranking at some point. Far fewer have ever checked what ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overview actually say about them, and increasingly, that's the version a customer sees first. This is a straightforward, do-it-yourself way to check your AI search visibility: whether your business shows up at all when someone asks an AI tool the kind of question your customers actually ask, and what's worth doing if it doesn't.
This sits under what we call AI Search Optimisation on this site, alongside Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). You don't need to know the terminology to run this check. You just need about ten minutes and the AI tools most people already have open anyway.
Why It's Worth Checking Your AI Search Visibility
There's no simple incognito-window trick for this the way there is for a Google ranking. Most business owners have simply never looked, mostly because until recently there wasn't much to see. That's changing. AI Overviews increasingly appear above the normal Google results for exactly the kind of question your customers ask, and a growing number of people ask ChatGPT or Perplexity directly instead of searching at all.
If you've never checked, you genuinely don't know whether your business is being named, ignored, or described using information that's out of date. All three are common, and each one needs a different response.
How to Ask AI Tools About Your Own Business
Open ChatGPT, Perplexity or Copilot and ask the kind of question a customer would actually type, not your business name. Something like "best [what you do] in [where you are]" or "who does [what you do] near [where you are]". Ask it a few different ways, broader and narrower, with and without a location, so one specific phrasing doesn't skew what you see.
Separately, search Google for the same terms and check whether an AI Overview appears above the normal results. Not every search triggers one, so try a few variations before concluding either way.
Finally, ask an AI tool directly about your business by name: "What do you know about [your business name]?" or "Tell me about [your business name] in [your town]". This shows you what the AI tool already believes about your business, right or wrong.
What to Look For in the Answers
A few things matter more than others once you've run the check:
- Are you mentioned at all? Being left out entirely is the most common outcome right now, and it isn't automatically a sign anything is wrong. It usually just means the groundwork hasn't been done yet.
- Is what's said about you accurate? Check the specifics: address, services, area covered, anything concrete. AI tools sometimes state things confidently that are simply wrong, outdated, or based on an old version of your website.
- Would the answer actually help someone choose you? Being named is one thing. Being described in a way that makes a customer want to get in touch is another, and it's worth judging the two separately.
If You're Not Showing Up, or the Details Are Wrong
Neither is unusual, and neither is a dead end. Getting cited by AI tools comes down to broadly the same groundwork as Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO): structured data, consistent facts across your website and listings, and content that answers real questions clearly. If the issue is specifically about one clean answer being pulled out and used, that's closer to Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO).
Wrong information is a slightly different problem. It usually means an AI tool is working from an outdated or incomplete version of your business found somewhere online, and the fix is making the correct version easier to find and more consistent everywhere, not just louder in one place.
What This Check Doesn't Tell You
Running this yourself is genuinely useful, but it has limits. A one-off check shows you a snapshot, not a trend, and it won't tell you which specific technical or content changes would move the needle, or how much effort that's realistically worth for your business. It's a good starting point, not a full audit.
This isn't a five-minute fix, and we won't pretend it is. But knowing where you stand costs nothing and takes about ten minutes, and it's a far better starting point than guessing. If the check throws up more questions than it answers, that's exactly what our AI Search Optimisation service is for. We'll go through it properly, tell you honestly what's worth doing, and get on with the groundwork if it makes sense to. We're a Poole-based agency and have been doing this kind of work since 2010.