ChatGPT and AI assistant visibility

More of your customers are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot who to buy from, where to go and what to choose. Those assistants answer with names. This service finds out whether yours is one of them, what’s influencing that, and how to measure it as it changes.

Being named in an answer can win the sale without ever earning a click. That is uncomfortable to measure and it is still worth having.

What this service covers

ChatGPT visibility is how often an AI assistant mentions, recommends or links to your business when someone asks a question you’d want to be the answer to. It covers checking what the main assistants say today, making sure their search crawlers can reach your site, improving the signals that help them describe you accurately, and tracking both mentions and the visits they send.

It sits alongside Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, which covers Google’s own AI answers. The two overlap a lot, but each assistant uses its own crawlers and sources, so they’re checked separately.

Who it’s for

This is worth doing if:

• customers have mentioned finding you, or a competitor, through ChatGPT
• your business is the kind people ask an assistant to recommend: a supplier, clinic, local service or product brand
• you’ve asked an assistant about your own market and weren’t mentioned
• an assistant describes your business, prices or services inaccurately

How AI assistants find businesses

The major assistants that answer from the web use their own crawlers to find and link websites, and their documentation explains how site owners can control them.

OpenAI’s documentation on its crawlers says OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in ChatGPT’s search features, and that sites which opt out of OAI-SearchBot won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers, although they can still appear as navigational links. It’s a separate setting from GPTBot, which relates to training OpenAI’s models, so a business can allow one and block the other.

Perplexity’s crawler guide says PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in Perplexity’s search results, and isn’t used to crawl content for training AI foundation models.

So the first check is simple and often overlooked: is your site letting these crawlers in? A robots.txt rule or a security setting added for another reason can quietly shut you out.

Beyond access, no assistant publishes a formula for who it recommends. My view, from checking many of these answers, is that assistants tend to name businesses that are clearly described on their own site, consistently described across the web, and relevant to the exact question being asked.

What’s included

1. An assistant visibility check. A set of realistic prompts your customers would use, such as “best garage door seal for an uneven floor” or “SEO help for a small business in Manchester”, run across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. Each prompt is run more than once, and I record whether you’re mentioned, whether you’re linked, how you’re described, and who’s named instead.

2. Access checks. Whether OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and other relevant crawlers can reach your key pages, including robots.txt, firewall and security settings.

3. Description and entity review. How clearly your site explains who you are, what you offer, where you operate and who’s behind the business, and whether that matches what appears elsewhere, from your Google Business Profile to directories and reviews.

4. Improvements. Recommendations or rewrites for the pages that should answer these prompts, plus fixes to access and to inconsistent business details.

5. Tracking. The same prompts rechecked on a schedule, with referral visits from assistants tracked in Google Analytics 4.

What you get

• A baseline report: what each assistant says about your market, with dated examples
• An access check: confirming the crawlers that matter can reach your site
• Prioritised recommendations for pages, business descriptions and consistency across the web
• A GA4 set-up that groups AI assistant referrals so visits are visible, if it isn’t already in place
• Ongoing tracking, if you choose it

Sample output

PROMPT: “Who can help a small UK business show up in AI search?” (ChatGPT, run three times, [date]) RESULT: Business not mentioned in any run. Two national agencies and one directory named each time. LIKELY REASON: The service page describes “digital marketing” generally and never states the specific service or location. ACTION: Rewrite the service page intro to state exactly what’s offered, for whom and where, and align the business description on external profiles.

The example above is illustrative. For a real result, on condoms.uk the number of AI Overview answers citing the site rose from 54 to 633 after this kind of work.

Limitations

AI assistant answers change with the wording of the prompt, the model, the user’s location and the day. No one can guarantee a mention, and a single screenshot proves very little, which is why prompts are run repeatedly and results are dated. Not every mention sends a click either. Some of the value is simply being the name someone remembers.

What this won’t solve

If your business isn’t well regarded or widely known in its field, better page copy won’t change that on its own. Reputation, reviews and being referenced by others matter. And if your site has technical problems, those come first through a technical SEO audit.

Talk to the person doing the work

There is no account manager here and no team to be handed to. If you get in touch, it is me who reads it, me who looks at your site, and me who does the work if we go ahead.

Get in touch, or start with a free assessment.

Engagement and price

There are no list prices here, and that is deliberate. What a piece of work costs depends on the state of the site, how much of it there is and what you actually need, none of which I know before looking at it.

So it starts with a free analysis. I look at your site, your Search Console and who you are really competing with, then come back with what I would do first and what it would cost to do. No obligation attached, and if the honest answer is that you do not need me yet, I will say so.

How the work gets done

Checks run through the AI search toolkit, and every result is reviewed by me before it’s reported. This service is part of AI search visibility and pairs naturally with AI citation readiness. For more on the subject, how ChatGPT decides which businesses to recommend and how to track traffic from ChatGPT in GA4 go deeper.

FAQ

Find out what AI assistants say about you

Get in touch with the questions your customers ask, or start with a free assessment.