AI visibility checker: how to check your AI visibility yourself
Run ten category questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot, three times each, recording whether you were named, whether you were linked, and which sources were cited. An hour, and better than most instant checkers.
Why instant checkers mislead
Most free AI visibility checkers run a small number of prompts once and return a score. Because model outputs are non-deterministic, that score would come out differently if the same tool ran again five minutes later, and nothing about your site would have changed.
The second problem is what they count. A tool reporting that you appear in 40% of answers is usually counting any mention of your brand name, linked or not. The stricter measure, whether a page on your domain was actually cited, is typically about half that. Neither number is wrong; presenting the first as citation rate is misleading.
The third problem is that a score with no source data attached tells you nothing about what to do. The actionable finding is almost always which domains are being cited instead of you, and that is the field most checkers do not show.
The manual check, in about an hour
- 1Write ten questions a buyer in your category would actually ask. No brand names in at least seven of them.
- 2Open ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot. Use a logged-out or fresh session so personalisation does not flatter you.
- 3Ask each question on each platform, three times, starting a new conversation each time.
- 4For every answer, record three things: were you named, was your domain linked, and which sources were cited in order.
- 5Add one follow-up turn on at least three of them, narrowing the question the way a buyer would. Note whether you survive to the second answer.
- 6Total the columns. You now have a rough citation rate, a rough mention rate, and, most usefully, a ranked list of the domains that own citations in your category.
How to read what comes back
| What you see | What it means | Where the work is |
|---|---|---|
| Not named anywhere | You are not in the retrieved set, and possibly not a resolvable entity to the model | Crawler directives first, then off-site citation sources |
| Named, never linked | The model knows you but is sourcing the claim from someone else | The third-party pages describing you, and your own extractability |
| Named and linked on branded queries only | You are findable but not in the consideration set for category questions | Off-site presence on comparison and review sources |
| Named, and described wrongly | Usually one stale third-party listing propagating everywhere | Fix the listing. This is days of work, not quarters |
When a tool is worth buying
The manual check does not scale. Thirty prompts, five runs and five platforms is 750 queries a month, and doing that by hand is a job rather than a task. That is the point at which tooling earns its cost.
What you are buying is coverage and cadence, not judgement. Check what any tool counts before trusting its headline: whether citation rate includes unlinked mentions, whether platforms are averaged into a single score, and whether it will show you the underlying source data.
We use Profound, Ahrefs Brand Radar and WriteWorks, and we run them against our own published definitions rather than accepting theirs. WriteWorks is built by Surge45, which we say wherever we mention it.
Our position
Do the manual check first, even if you intend to buy a tool. An hour spent reading the actual answers about your category is worth more than a quarter of dashboards, and it makes you a far better judge of which tool is telling you the truth.
Related questions
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Related answers
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AI visibility is how often, and how accurately, a brand appears in AI-generated answers.
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Across the market in 2026: AI visibility tooling runs roughly £200 to £2,000 a month, freelance GEO £2,000 to £6,000, agency retainers £4,000 to £15,000, senior advisory £8,000 to £35,000.
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