How to check what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini say about your business

Before optimizing anything, find out where you actually stand. The audit is simple: ask the assistants the same questions your buyers ask, and record what comes back. Done carefully, twenty minutes of manual checking tells you more about your AI visibility than any dashboard screenshot.

Ask buyer questions, not vanity questions

"What do you know about Acme Dental?" tests name recognition — nearly useless, because your buyers don't ask it. Ask what they ask: "best dentist in Austin for implants", "affordable emergency dentist near me", "which dental clinic should I choose for my kids". You care about being the answer to discovery questions, not about the assistant reciting your About page.

Test with browsing on and off

With web access, the assistant reads your live site and current sources — this tests your site's AI-readable layer. Without it, you're testing what made it into the model's training data. Both matter: the first you can fix this week, the second moves on the model's schedule.

Vary the phrasing, then vary it again

AI answers are unstable across wording. "Best X near me", "who do you recommend for X", and "I need an X, options?" can produce three different shortlists. One prompt proves nothing; five phrasings show the pattern. Note which competitors recur — those are the sites doing something right.

Record everything, and date it

Keep a simple sheet: date, engine, exact prompt, whether you were mentioned, who else was. AI answers drift with model updates, so an undated result is worthless in a month. The before/after from this sheet is also how you'll know whether your fixes worked.

The honest limits of manual checking

Doing this across four engines, five phrasings and every month by hand is real work — roughly an hour each time, done consistently. That consistency is exactly what tools are for. AnswerRank runs your buyers' questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity and more, scores the results, and keeps the history — the free check takes 30 seconds and needs no signup.