Step by step · AEO, GEO and LLM audits · November 2026
An AI visibility audit asks AI engines the questions your buyers ask and marks every answer: recommended, mentioned, cited or not named. You can do it by hand with the seven steps below, or let supereo's free audit run the first pass in about 2 minutes.
Our pick, if you'd rather not do it by hand
Short on time? supereo's free audit ours does steps 1 to 4 for you: it writes 20 buyer questions from your site, asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews, and marks every answer mentioned, recommended or cited. No card. Start it here, then use steps 5 to 7 to read what comes back.
The names differ by who's selling: answer engine optimization (AEO), generative engine optimization (GEO), LLM visibility. The audit is the same job. It has two halves:
Ask what a buyer types before they've picked anyone. A question with your brand in it only shows what AI knows about you, and you'll show up in most of those anyway.
| Question type | Pattern | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Best-of | Best [category] for [type of buyer] | Whether you make the shortlist, and whether you're the pick |
| Constraint | [Category] that works with [tool] under [budget] | Whether AI knows your integrations and price |
| Alternatives | [Competitor] alternatives | Whether you're the swap when a rival disappoints |
| Versus | [Competitor A] vs [Competitor B] | Whether AI brings you into a two-horse race |
| Problem | How do I [solve the problem you solve]? | Whether you're named before the buyer knows the category |
Keep a few brand questions too ("What is [brand]?", "[brand] pricing", "Is [brand] good for [use]?"), but score them apart. supereo does the same: its tracked panel adds questions that name the brand and reports them beside the recommendation rate, never inside it.
The six that matter for most B2B and consumer buyers are ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews. They don't read the same sources, so a brand can be the pick on one and absent on another. AI Overviews show up only on some Google searches, so note when there's no overview at all; that's a result, not a miss.
Your own account is the worst place to check, because it knows you. OpenAI's help pages spell out how to strip that away in ChatGPT:
For the other engines, use a signed-out browser window. Ask every question in a new chat, so earlier answers don't steer later ones.
One row per question, one column per engine, one mark per answer. Add C to any answer that links your site.
The answer tells the buyer to pick you, or offers you as the thing to use for their case. Being listed first isn't enough on its own.
Named, with no push toward you.
A page on your site is linked as a source.
Write down who the answer recommended instead.
| Question | ChatGPT | Gemini | Perplexity | Claude | AI Mode | AI Overviews | Picked instead |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best [category] for [buyer] | · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
| [Category] that works with [tool] | · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
| [Competitor] alternatives | · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
| [Competitor A] vs [Competitor B] | · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
| How do I [solve the problem]? | · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
A blank sheet to copy. Mark each cell R, M or N, and add C where the answer cites your site. Keep the full answer and its sources somewhere you can find again.
Ask the same question twice and you can get a different shortlist. One pass gives you one draw per answer, and the range around any rate you work out from it is wide. Here's how wide, at best, for a rate of about 15 in 100, using a set of 15 questions:
| What you ran | Answers | 95% range around 15 in 100 |
|---|---|---|
| One pass, one engine | 15 | 5 to 40 in 100 |
| One pass, three engines | 45 | 7 to 28 in 100 |
| One pass, six engines | 90 | 9 to 24 in 100 |
| Three passes, six engines | 270 | 11 to 20 in 100 |
| Six passes, six engines | 540 | 12 to 18 in 100 |
Our arithmetic: 95% Wilson intervals, treating each answer as independent. Answers to the same question move together, so real ranges are wider than these.
The lesson in the table: spread your runs across days, and don't read a move of a few points between two single passes as real. A change on your site needs the same questions asked many times before and after it.
“At 20 runs, 14 appearances is 70 percent with a spread of roughly 20 points either way. Halving that spread costs four times the runs.”u/Slow-Commercial4316 on r/SEO_LLM · Sep 1, 2026 · Read the post
Our checkThe arithmetic holds: a 95% Wilson interval for 14 of 20 runs from 48 to 85 in 100.
Count the R marks, divide by the answers to questions that don't name you, and say it as answers out of every 100, with the range from the table above. Then count the mentions the same way. The gap between the two numbers is the audit's headline.
A worked example (made-up numbers): 15 questions on 4 engines, one pass, is 60 answers. If 27 mention you and 9 of those recommend you:
A visibility score would report the 45. The buyer acts on the 15.
That's the number supereo leads with: its recommendation rate is the share of answers to your buyers' questions that recommend you, over the last four weeks, with its 95% range, and it's labeled Early when the range is too wide to read.
Open the sources on every answer that recommended someone else and sort them:
| By hand | supereo free audit ours | |
|---|---|---|
| Questions | You write them | 20, written from your home, pricing and docs pages; you edit them after |
| Engines | As many as you open | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews |
| Clean sessions | Your job, every time | ChatGPT and Gemini as consumer apps, Google's surfaces as live results, Perplexity and Claude by API, labeled |
| Marking | You apply the key above | Every answer judged mentioned, recommended or cited |
| Repeat runs | As many as you'll sit through | One pass; tracking with ranges is the Copilot plan, $149 a month |
| Cost | Your time | Free, about 2 minutes, no card |
The two work well together: let the audit write and ask the first set, then rerun the questions that matter by hand on the days in between.
Public posts, copied word for word with links. Individual posts, not reviews.
“I never trusted the "you rank #3 in AI" dashboards, so I started checking by hand.”u/RankDevChill on r/aeo · Jul 10, 2026 · Read the post
“run the same question ten times and the shortlist changes almost every time, and ChatGPT and Perplexity barely pull from the same sources. One screenshot tells you nothing.”u/RankDevChill on r/aeo · Jul 10, 2026 · Read the post
What helpsThat's why step 5 exists. supereo's tracking asks each question many times and reports a range rather than one screenshot.
“Getting named as "an option" is not the same as being the recommended pick for a specific use case…”u/AppropriateTear3259 on r/aeo · Jul 24, 2026 · Read the post · The commenter says in the same comment that they built a tracking tool
“if you just want to start cheap, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the questions your customers would ask and see who gets named. takes an hour and it's free.”u/justlowkeycreative on r/aeo · Oct 29, 2026 · Read the post
“I'd spot-check it: run 3 buyer questions yourself in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude, twice each, and note who gets named and which pages get cited.”u/AccomplishedBit6086 on r/DigitalMarketing · Oct 28, 2026 · Read the post
What helpsThe free audit makes that spot-check quick: it shows every answer, each one marked.
A check of what AI engines say when your buyers ask about the problem you solve: which brands they name, which they recommend and which pages they cite. A full audit also checks that the engines' crawlers can read your site.
Mostly the name. AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) audits both look at how AI answers treat your brand; some vendors use "GEO audit" for the page-readiness half only.
In marketing, the same thing: asking large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude your buyers' questions and recording how they treat your brand. (In AI safety the term means something else: testing a model's behavior.)
10 to 20 buyer questions is enough to start, asked on every engine you care about and more than once. More runs narrow the range faster than more questions do.
By hand, it depends on how many questions and engines you run; every answer has to be asked, read and marked. supereo's free audit does one pass of 20 questions on six engines in about 2 minutes.
Yes, by hand with the steps above, or with a free check. supereo's free audit takes no card and shows every answer; HubSpot, Ahrefs and Semrush have free checkers too. All eight compared.
Rerun the same questions on a schedule rather than writing new ones each time, so the numbers compare. To judge a change you shipped, you need runs from before and after it, and the same check on questions it shouldn't affect.
The steps come from how the engines document themselves (OpenAI's help pages on search, Temporary chat and memory, read November 9, 2026) and from supereo's published method for judging answers. The ranges are our arithmetic. The example is made up to show the math and is labeled so. Quoted posts are copied word for word. Full method.
More: the free AEO grader and all eight checks · what an AI visibility score means · checking ChatGPT