How to check if buyers find you in ChatGPT: the 8-query AI visibility audit

To find out whether buyers researching in AI tools find you, run your category's eight most common buying questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and Gemini, and count how many answers name you. That's the whole method. It takes about 30 minutes, it's free, and it's reproducible: run the same queries tomorrow and check the result yourself. This is the exact audit we use as one of the five signals in the Invisible Demand Diagnostic, published in full because it works better shown than described.

Why this matters now

Half of B2B software buyers now start research in an AI chatbot, not Google (G2, 2026), and 94% used AI during their most recent purchase (Forrester, 2026). If those answers name your competitor and not you, you're losing deals in a channel where you can't see the loss. Your analytics will never log it. The only way to know is to ask the tools what they say about your category.

The 8 queries

Build eight questions a real buyer in your category would ask. Use this frame:

1. "What are the best [category] solutions for [your ICP]?"
2. "How should a [buyer title] choose a [category] vendor?"
3. "[Category] tools compared: strengths and weaknesses"
4. "What should I look for in a [category] platform?"
5. "Alternatives to [category leader]"
6. "Is [common approach] worth it for [ICP descriptor] companies?"
7. "How do companies like [ICP descriptor] solve [problem your category solves]?"
8. "Who are the emerging vendors in [category]?"

Write them the way a person types, not the way a marketer writes. Then run all eight in each engine: ChatGPT (search enabled), Perplexity, Copilot, and Gemini.

How to score it

For each engine, count the queries where you're named. Screenshot every answer, especially the ones naming competitors; those screenshots are the most persuasive slide you'll put in front of your leadership this year. Scoring guide: named in 6+ of 8 queries per engine, you're visible. 3 to 5, you're inconsistent, and which queries you miss tells you what content is missing. 0 to 2, buyers using AI research effectively can't find you, and this signal alone justifies reallocation.

Also note who gets named instead and what sources the engines cite. The citations are a map of where you need to be mentioned: the review sites, communities, and publications the LLMs treat as authorities in your category.

How often to re-run it

Monthly. AI answers shift fast, engines update their retrieval constantly, and a monthly re-run is 30 minutes. Track it in a simple sheet: date, engine, query, named yes/no, competitor named, sources cited. Quarter over quarter, the trend is the point.

What to do if you're invisible

The engines name entities they see described consistently across sources they trust. Getting named means: publish pages that answer category questions directly, get mentioned on the third-party sites the engines already cite (check your audit screenshots for which), and keep your company described the same way everywhere it appears. That work is influence spend, and most teams underfund it. How much? That's what the Invisible Demand Diagnostic measures: this audit is one of five signals that produce your Demand Visibility Score and a dollar figure for the gap. The first assessment is free.