Not Showing Up in ChatGPT or Perplexity? Time for an AI Visibility Audit

Ever wondered what ChatGPT says about your brand? Or whether Google’s AI Overviews even know you exist? That’s where an AI visibility audit steps in; it’s your shortcut to understanding how visible (or invisible) your brand is across today’s most influential AI search platforms.

By tracking where you’re mentioned, how often, and what sources are shaping your presence, an AI visibility audit gives you the power to fix blind spots before they become missed opportunities.

What Exactly Are You Auditing? Define Your AI Visibility Audit Scope

Before diving into the data, step one of any solid AI visibility audit is to set clear boundaries. Why? Without a defined scope, your results will be inconsistent and unusable for comparison going forward.

Here’s what you need to lock in first:

Pick the AI Search Platforms to Monitor

Each AI engine has its quirks. Some cite sources. Some don’t. Some pull live web data. Others rely on old training sets. Knowing where your brand needs to shine is the first decision you need to make.

Consider including:

• Google AI Overviews
  
• ChatGPT (plus its browsing tool)
  
• Perplexity
  
• Claude
  
• Microsoft Copilot
  
• Gemini (Google’s AI assistant)
  

📌 If you’re in a niche space, don’t forget to audit vertical-specific AI tools too.

Decide Which Brand Entities to Include

An AI visibility audit should go beyond just your homepage URL. Map out every part of your brand that deserves attention, from your CEO to your best-selling product line.

Let’s use a real-world example: Amazon. It’s not just “Amazon.com” we’re talking about. Their ecosystem includes countless touchpoints, each of which may be treated separately by AI systems. Here’s how that might break down:

Now imagine running an AI visibility audit and only checking for “Amazon”, you’d miss how AWS is performing in AI search. Or whether AmazonBasics even gets credit for its own product pages. Every one of these brand extensions deserves its own spotlight.

🎯 Your move: List all brand extensions, products, people, and services tied to your brand. If AI platforms are mixing them up or skipping them entirely, that’s a visibility issue worth fixing.

Define Geographic and Language Parameters

Planning to grow globally? Or already operating in multilingual markets? Your AI visibility audit should reflect that.

• Are you tracking only English queries, or are you including other languages such as Spanish, French, or German?
  
• Are you monitoring visibility in the US only, or across Europe and APAC?

📌 This level of granularity matters. You may dominate in one region, but disappear entirely in another.

What Are AI Platforms Saying About You? Time to Analyze the Buzz

Once you’ve scoped your entities and collected a batch of responses, the real work of your AI visibility audit begins: dissecting how AI actually talks about your brand. It’s not just about whether you show up, but how you’re framed when you do.

Fire up your favorite AI platform, whether it’s Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity, or ChatGPT, and start browsing and pulling every mention of your brand. Then, go detective mode. Look at patterns, tone, and whether you’re even getting credit where it’s due.

Here’s what to check as you move through the responses:

Key Signals to Track in Branded AI Mentions

• Accuracy
  Are the facts right? Wrong product names, outdated pricing, or misquoted founders are all red flags in an AI visibility audit.
  
• Sentiment
  Is the tone glowing, meh, or slightly shady? You’ll want to track how positively (or not) you’re being positioned.
  
• Attribution
  Is your brand cited directly, or is the AI borrowing from competitors’ pages to describe your own products?
  
• Differentiation
  Are your unique selling points showing up? If everything sounds generic, the AI may not understand what sets you apart.
  
• Authority placement
  Are you mentioned first? Framed as the go-to source? Or lost in a sea of “other options”?
  
• Call-to-action presence
  Does the AI actually guide users to check out your brand? Or does it stop short and leave you hanging?
  

What if the Info’s Off?

If the platforms are pulling outdated or inaccurate details, don’t just grimace and move on. Note down:

• The exact query that triggered the response
  
• The platform it appeared on
  
• A copy of the AI-generated response
  
• Any sources cited (or lack thereof)
  

Documenting this as part of your AI visibility audit gives you a fix-it list and a strategic reason to update or create content that AI platforms will actually trust.

🎯 Pro tip: Different platforms have different quirks. What sounds sharp in Perplexity might feel dull in ChatGPT. Rinse and repeat this analysis across every AI channel you care about.

Which Pages Are Doing the Heavy Lifting? Find Out What AI Is Quoting

One of the most revealing parts of an AI visibility audit is figuring out which of your pages are showing up as cited sources in AI-generated answers. That’s where the algorithm is tipping its hand, telling you which content it trusts most.

When AI platforms name-drop your site, they’re sending a signal: “Hey, this page helped me answer the user’s question.” That’s your cue to double down on what’s working.

How to Track Down Your Most Referenced Pages

There are a couple of smart ways to do this:

• Use AI-specific visibility tools
  Tools like Brand Radar or Similarweb’s AI data dashboards (depending on your stack) can surface the exact queries and responses where your brand content is cited.
  
• Dig into traffic patterns
  Head to your analytics, whether it’s Ahrefs’ Web Analytics, GA4, or a hybrid of both, and segment your traffic by referrer or platform. If ChatGPT or Perplexity is sending users to specific blog posts or product pages, that’s a signal worth paying attention to.

🎯 Want more visibility? Reverse-engineer your top performers. Figure out why those pages are trusted: structure, schema, content depth, or freshness, and bake those same signals into your other high-priority pages.

Who’s Talking About You — and How’s It Helping Your AI Visibility?

Here’s a secret weapon in any solid AI visibility audit: tracking external mentions of your brand. Not just where your name shows up, but how it’s being framed on third-party sites that AI tools love to quote.

Why does this matter? Because AI platforms build their understanding of your brand based on what others say about you, just as much as what you say about yourself.

Quick Way to Find Your Most Impactful Brand Mentions

Pressed for time? Here’s a shortcut that still delivers serious insight:

• Use a tool like Brand Radar (or similar) and run a blank search with your brand as a filter.
  
• Narrow it down to only results where your brand is mentioned in AI-generated responses.
  
• Then scan the Cited Pages; this gives you a curated list of all the third-party sites AI is pulling from when it talks about you.

💡 Open a few of those AI responses. What’s being said? Is your brand cast as the hero, the alternative, or just background noise?

What This Tells You (That You Can Actually Use)

Here’s what you can extract from this layer of your AI visibility audit:

• ✨ Your strongest third-party mentions, the ones AI platforms actually trust
  
• ❌ Misinformation that needs correcting (and the source behind it)
  
• 📄 High-performing content types (e.g., listicles, comparison posts, deep-dives)
  
• 🤝 Potential sites to partner with, if they already rank high in AI’s eyes and speak positively about you
  
• 🥊 Clues to how you’re stacked up against competitors in AI responses

The goal here isn’t just to find flattering quotes; it’s to spot repeatable patterns that influence how AI platforms represent your brand. When you find a winning mention, ask: Can we replicate this elsewhere? Can we update this source? Can we pitch that site again?

All of that feeds directly into more consistent, accurate visibility across AI platforms and gives you more control over the narrative.

The Bottom Line: Make Your Brand Impossible to Miss in AI Search

If your brand isn’t showing up in AI-generated answers, or worse, showing up all wrong, you’re missing a huge slice of visibility in today’s search landscape. An AI visibility audit gives you the blueprint to fix that.

Here’s the process, wrapped up tight:

• 🎯 Define your scope: platforms, brand assets, markets
  
• 🧠 Analyze how AI talks about you: tone, accuracy, authority
  
• 🔗 Track which of your pages are doing the heavy lifting in citations
  
• 🗣️ Dig into external mentions and how they shape your AI footprint
  

This isn’t a one-time thing. The landscape’s evolving fast, and so should your audit strategy. Run these checks regularly, optimize your content with AI-favored signals, and make sure your brand’s story is the one AI platforms are telling.