The fastest check is to ask the AI tools the questions your buyers ask and see whether your brand comes up. Do it across several engines, since they differ a lot. For a real, ongoing picture, you need tracking that runs the same questions over time, because a single check is just one snapshot. Here is how to do both.
The quick manual check
Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google (with AI Overviews on), and ask the questions a buyer would ask when choosing a product like yours. For example, "best [your category] for [your customer type]" or "alternatives to [a competitor]."
One common mistake: asking "What is [your brand]?" and feeling reassured by a correct answer. That tells you almost nothing, because new buyers do not ask about brands they have never heard of. The real test is unbranded category questions, since that is how AI introduces brands to people who do not know you yet.
Then look for three things in the answers:
- Does your brand get named at all?
- Is it recommended, or just listed?
- Which other brands show up instead of you?
Run each question on more than one engine. The same question can return completely different brands on ChatGPT versus Perplexity, so checking just one gives you a misleading picture.
Why one check is not enough
A manual check is a snapshot, and AI answers move. The same prompt can return a different brand list in a new session, and different sources next week, because answers vary by session and the platforms re-weight what they cite. A Semrush study of more than 100 million citations caught ChatGPT's use of Reddit falling from roughly 60% of responses to around 10% within weeks (Semrush, most-cited domains study).
So a single good or bad result does not tell you much. What matters is the trend across many questions, tracked over time.
How proper tracking works
Real tracking runs a fixed set of your buyer questions across all the major engines on a schedule, and records how often you appear. That gives you a baseline and a trend, instead of a one-off impression.
The numbers worth watching are your citation rate (how often you are cited across tracked questions), your share of voice (how you compare to competitors), and your query coverage (how many of your questions return a mention of you).
A fast way to get your baseline
If you want a starting number without setting all this up yourself, the free AI visibility check on gocited.ai scores one brand across all six AI engines in about a minute, with no signup. It shows how often AI mentions you today, which is the baseline everything else is measured against.
Where to go next
To understand what the numbers mean, read how to read your AI share of voice. If your brand is not showing up, see why your brand isn't showing up in ChatGPT.
