How to check if ChatGPT recommends your website
By Anshad P.V, Founder, Axpecto · · 3 min read
To check whether ChatGPT recommends your website, ask it the questions your buyers ask, without naming your business, with web search on, and record whether each answer names you, links your site, and who it names instead. Do the same in Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, ask each question more than once, and repeat with the same questions every month.
Step 1: Write the questions your buyers ask
Write 10 to 20 questions in your customers' own words. Mix the kinds of question people ask at different stages, and keep your brand name out of all of them:
- Category: "What are the best tools for X?"
- Problem: "I need to do X, what should I use?"
- Alternatives: "What are some alternatives to [a competitor]?"
- Comparison of two competitors: "Is [competitor A] better than [competitor B] for X?"
Questions that name you are worth asking separately, to see how assistants describe you, but never count them: "Is X any good?" names X because you did.
Step 2: Ask in a clean session, with search on
- Use a temporary or logged-out chat, so the assistant's memory of you and your past chats doesn't shape the answer.
- Make sure the answer used web search. Answers with sources are what your buyers get for questions about products and tools; an answer from memory can be a year out of date.
- Ask from the country your customers are in, or say it in the question, because answers differ by location.
Step 3: Record the same things every time
| Question | Engine | Named? | Position | Your site cited? | Brands named instead |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What tools check if AI understands my website? | ChatGPT | No | - | No | Brand A, Brand B |
| Alternatives to Brand A? | Gemini | Yes | 3rd | Yes | Brand A, Brand C |
Mention rate is the share of rows marked Named. Citation rate is the share where your site was linked. Share of voice is your mentions divided by all brand mentions.
Step 4: Ask again before you count a loss
The same question can get a different answer a minute later. If you weren't named, ask once more; only a question you miss every time is a real gap. With 10 questions, one answer changing moves your mention rate by 10 points, so read the figures as a direction, not a precise number.
Step 5: Repeat on every engine, every month
ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity search different indexes and answer differently, and which one a buyer uses decides which answer they get. Keep the question list fixed so this month's figures can be compared with last month's.
How do you automate it?
Done by hand, 12 questions on four engines, each asked twice, is close to 100 chats a month. Axpecto's AI Visibility check does exactly this: it writes the questions for your business, asks each engine with live search, re-asks misses, counts mentions from the answer text and citations from the links returned, and keeps the questions fixed between checks. It also flags answers that use your name for a different company. For what a good result looks like, see the Random Talker case study.