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Service
AI visibility audit
An AI visibility audit measures how often AI answer engines name your brand when your buyers ask the questions that lead to a purchase — and who gets named instead of you.
I run ten of your buyers' real questions across ChatGPT and Perplexity, three times each, in one fixed mode. That is sixty recorded answers. You get the share of answers that name you, the competitors that appear in your place, the exact domains the engines cite in your category, and the list of questions that cannot be won at all — with the reason.
It is delivered in writing. No call is required at any point.
Who does AI visibility audits this way: an independent consultant, not an agency and not an automated score. The whole method is published on this site, including the measurement where my own site scored zero.
Why repeated runs
One run of a question is a coin flip. Here is the measurement.
On 21 September 2026 I asked two ChatGPT accounts the same question in the same minute, in the same mode, on the same free tier: AI search optimization agency.
Account one
Returned a shortlist of five agencies, with links.
Account two
Returned no shortlist at all. It explained what the service is and how to choose a supplier, and named nobody.
Ten days earlier, the same question asked twice fifty minutes apart returned five vendor names each time, of which two matched.
This is not an argument against measurement. It is the reason a single pass cannot be one. Any audit priced on one screenshot per question is selling a coin flip, and the buyer has no way to see it. Three runs per question, in a mode that never changes between the baseline and the re-test, is the smallest protocol that produces a number you can act on.
Protocol
What is actually done
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Your questions, not mine
Ten questions are agreed with you first, in your buyers' wording. If you do not have them, they come out of your support inbox and your search console — not out of a keyword tool.
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Sixty recorded answers
Ten questions × three runs × two engines, in one fixed mode: same browser, same account tier, temporary chat, runs separated in time. Each answer is saved in full, with its sources, and screenshotted.
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A control question every session
A question whose answer is known to return a vendor list. If the control fails, the session degraded and its results are discarded rather than reported.
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Source analysis
Every cited domain is recorded and classified: the vendors' own sites, directories and rankings, review platforms, media, communities. This is what tells you where the engines in your category actually get names — and it differs sharply by category.
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Server-log check
Which AI crawlers reached your site, and which URLs they took. Scanners that spoof AI user-agents are filtered out first — on one domain they accounted for most of the apparent AI traffic. Analytics cannot show any of this; only the raw logs can.
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The verdict, including the negative half
Which of your ten questions can be won, which cannot, and why. In ChatGPT, six of ten realistic buyer questions return no vendor list at all — there is no position to enter, and no amount of work creates one.
Deliverable
What you receive
- Presence rate — the share of the sixty answers that name you, per question and per engine.
- The incumbent set — who is named in your place, and how consistently across runs.
- The citation layer of your category — the exact domains the engines quote, ranked by how often they appear.
- The fact gaps — the checkable claims your competitors publish and you do not.
- Crawler reality — which AI crawlers fetched your site and which pages they took.
- The unwinnable list — questions with no vendor list to enter, stated before you spend anything on them.
- The raw record — all sixty answers verbatim with sources, so you can repeat the measurement yourself.
Written report. Turnaround five working days. Delivered in English or Ukrainian.
Price
Start with the free check
| What | Scope | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Category check | Four of your buyers' questions, two engines, eight runs. Answers whether your category returns vendor lists at all, and who is in them. Two working days. | Free |
| Visibility audit | Ten questions, three runs each, two engines. Sixty recorded answers, source analysis, crawler log check, full written report. | $400 |
| Audit & first sprint | The audit, then two weeks of implementation on the findings, then a re-measurement in the identical mode. | $1,800 |
| Full deployment | Six to eight weeks. Baseline, implementation, re-measurement, report — including what did not move. | $6,500 |
The free category check exists because roughly half the categories I test cannot be won on the questions the client cares about. Thirty minutes of measurement answers that before either of us commits, and it is the reason I will sometimes tell you not to buy anything.
Limits
What I do not promise
No rankings, and no "top 3 in ChatGPT"
Positions do not exist in these systems. An answer names three to eight brands and the order between them is not stable — the measurement above shows the same question returning a shortlist to one account and no shortlist at all to another, in the same minute. Anyone selling you a position in an AI answer is selling something that has no definition.
What can be measured, and therefore what I sell, is the share of answers that name you, on a fixed question set, measured the same way before and after.
No single opaque "AI visibility score"
A score computed once, from one pass, with an undisclosed method, cannot be reproduced by you and cannot be compared to anything later. Every number in my reports comes with the question that produced it, the date, the mode, and the full answer text.
No guarantee that your category is winnable
Some are not, and I will say so in the free check rather than after the invoice. Where a category has no vendor list in the answers, there is nothing to optimise into.
Questions
Frequently asked
What is an AI visibility audit?
A measurement of how often AI answer engines name your brand when buyers ask the questions that precede a purchase, and of who is named in your place. A useful one records the exact questions, the exact answers, the sources cited, and repeats each question enough times to separate a real result from noise.
Who does AI visibility audits?
Specialist GEO and AEO agencies, a small number of independent consultants, and a growing set of automated tools. The difference that matters is not the label but the method: how many questions, how many runs per question, whether the mode is held fixed between measurements, and whether you are shown the raw answers or only a score.
How much does an AI visibility audit cost?
Automated tools start in single dollars per scan. Agency audits run from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, with large agency engagements above that. Mine is $400 for sixty recorded answers, and the category check that precedes it is free.
Which engines are covered?
ChatGPT and Perplexity, because those are the two where the buyer sees a shortlist of vendors. They behave very differently: Perplexity names service providers on almost any phrasing, while ChatGPT returns a vendor list only on particular constructions and answers everything else with advice. Adding more engines to a report inflates its page count more than its usefulness.
How long does it take?
Two working days for the free category check. Five working days for the full audit.
Do I need a call?
No. Everything is delivered in writing. Calls are available in Ukrainian and Russian if you want one.
What happens after the audit?
You can implement the findings yourself — the report is written to be handed to a developer — or buy a sprint. There is no retainer requirement and no lock-in.
Why should I believe the numbers?
Because the method is published, the raw answers come with the report, and you can repeat any measurement yourself. The measurement of this site's own visibility is on it too, and at baseline it scored zero out of ten.
Start with the free category check
Send your site and three or four questions your buyers actually ask. You get back the eight runs, the names that appeared instead of yours, and the domains the engines cited — in two working days, in writing, with no call attached.
alex@citedlayer.com