The AI Visibility Checklist: 21 Checks

Ask the assistants

Start with the outcome: what do AI platforms actually say about you right now?

Ask ChatGPT who to hire for what you do

Phrase it like a customer: "best [service] in [city]". Note whether you appear and how you're described.

Repeat on Gemini and Perplexity

Different models, different sources. Perplexity shows its citations — note which sites it trusted.

Ask each one "what is [your business name]?"

Checks answer accuracy: right services, right location, right positioning. Wrong answers are fixable — note them.

Check Google AI Overviews for your key queries

Search your top 3 commercial queries and see whether an AI Overview appears, and who it cites.

Entity consistency

AI averages everything public about you. Conflicts make it hedge — or skip you.

Same business name everywhere

Site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Facebook, directories — identical spelling, no old trading names.

Same category and core offer everywhere

One sentence describing what you do — used consistently across every profile.

Same phone, address and hours everywhere

Stale NAP data quietly disqualifies you from local answers.

Google Business Profile claimed and current

Categories, services, photos, posts. This feeds Maps AND the structured layer AI reads.

Structured data

Schema turns your pages from prose into facts a machine can quote.

Organization schema on the homepage

Validate at schema.org validator — name, logo, URL, contact, sameAs links to your profiles.

Service schema on each service page

One Service entity per page with a clear description and areaServed.

FAQPage schema where you answer questions

Real questions customers ask, answered in 2–3 sentences each.

No validation errors

Run key pages through Google's Rich Results Test — errors mean the markup is being ignored.

Content shape

Answer engines lift content that answers directly. Buried answers get skipped.

Each key page answers one real question

The question in the heading, the direct answer in the first paragraph, evidence below.

A "quick answer" block on cornerstone pages

A 2–3 sentence summary a machine can quote verbatim.

Your homepage says what you do in one sentence

Above the fold, no metaphors. If a stranger can't repeat it back, neither can a model.

Pages are crawlable

Check robots.txt isn't blocking AI crawlers (GPTBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot) — deliberately or accidentally.

XML sitemap exists and is current

Every important page listed, no dead URLs.

Reputation & citations

AI weighs what others say about you more than what you say about yourself.

20+ Google reviews, recent ones included

Volume matters, recency matters more. A review from this month beats ten from 2022.

You respond to reviews — including bad ones

Responses are trust signals models can read.

Mentioned on 3+ independent sites

Industry directories, associations, local press, podcasts. Search your brand name and count.

No conflicting or outdated listings

Old addresses, dead websites, defunct offerings — clean them up or get them removed.

Scored under 15? That's normal — most businesses do. The fixes are systematic, not mysterious: start with the AEO guide or let us run the full audit for you.

The AI visibility checklist: 21 checks you can run today