Set aside two hours this afternoon and you can complete something most businesses in your market have never attempted: a full, honest audit of how visible you are to the AI systems your customers now consult. No tools to buy, no consultant required — just this checklist, a spreadsheet, and the stomach for honest findings. Here’s the complete procedure.
Hour One: The Outside View
Step 1 (20 minutes): The Question Panel
Write fifteen questions real customers would ask, across three types: category questions (“best [your service] in [your city]”), situation questions (“who can handle [specific problem] in [area]”), and comparison questions (“how do I choose a good [your category]”). Run all fifteen through ChatGPT, then your top five through Perplexity and Google (noting its AI summary). Log per answer: mentioned yes/no, competitors named, and the exact phrase describing whoever won.
Step 2 (15 minutes): The Direct Interrogation
Ask each platform: “What do you know about [your business] in [city]?” Score the response on four counts: accuracy, currency, completeness, and whether it captures your actual specialty. Then ask the follow-up most owners skip: “What are the drawbacks or criticisms of [your business]?” — because customers ask it, and you should know the answer being given.
Step 3 (25 minutes): The Competitor Mirror
Take the two competitors most often named in Step 1 and run Step 2 on them. You’re hunting for the difference: what does the machine know about them that it doesn’t know about you? Richer specialty detail? More review evidence? Clearer geography? Write down the three biggest gaps — this list becomes your work plan.
Hour Two: The Inside View
Step 4 (20 minutes): The Footprint Inventory
Search your business name in quotes, then your phone number, then your address. Spreadsheet every appearance: platform, what it says, correct or not. Flag every contradiction — old addresses, wrong categories, abandoned profiles. Most businesses find at least a handful; each one is machine-confidence erosion you can reverse.
Step 5 (20 minutes): The Extractability Check
Paste your homepage and main service page, one at a time, into an AI assistant with the prompt: “List every specific, verifiable fact about this business in this text.” Count the facts. Fewer than eight per page means your site is performing for humans while starving the machines. Note which obvious facts — services, areas, credentials, years — failed to appear.
Step 6 (20 minutes): The Findings Memo
Write yourself one page: current mention rate (from Step 1), description quality (Step 2), top three competitor gaps (Step 3), contradiction count (Step 4), and extractability score (Step 5). Date it. This memo is your baseline — the “before” photo that makes every future improvement measurable.
What the Afternoon Buys You
By dinner you’ll know precisely where you stand, why the winners are winning, and what to fix first — knowledge most of your market lacks entirely. The audit is free; the follow-through is the investment. If your memo’s findings warrant professional depth — structured data, systematic evidence-building, monthly measurement — that’s LeadSupport.net’s territory, and your memo gives us a running start. Run the audit today. Then send us the memo, and let’s turn your baseline into your before picture.