How to check whether ChatGPT can find your brand

Visibility in ChatGPT is not one ranking position. AI answers vary by prompt, language, country, search mode, freshness and which pages the system can access. The goal is not to “get into ChatGPT forever.” The goal is to measure where your brand appears, where competitors replace it, and which sources influence the answer.

For ongoing tracking, start with our AEO tools collection. The checklist below is the manual audit to run before buying software.

1. Build a realistic prompt set

Do not begin with your brand name. That only tests awareness. Use prompts a buyer would ask before they know you exist.

• category prompts: “best tools for …”, “software for …”
• problem prompts: “how to …”, “how to automate …”
• comparison prompts: “your brand vs competitor”, “alternatives to competitor”
• buying prompts: “free plan”, “pricing”, “for small business”
• local prompts: repeat the same intent in each market and language you care about

A good first sample is 20 to 30 prompts split into informational, commercial, comparison, problem and brand groups.

2. Test the answers manually

Open ChatGPT with search, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews where available. For every prompt, record the date, language, country, prompt, answer, mentioned brands and cited sources. Do not only mark “mentioned or not.” Track which competitors appear instead.

• is the brand mentioned
• is your website linked
• which pages are cited: homepage, blog, collection, docs, third-party review
• is the brand description accurate, outdated, vague or wrong
• which competitors repeat most often

3. Check crawler access

OpenAI documents different crawlers for different jobs. OAI-SearchBot is used for search and surfacing websites in ChatGPT search features. ChatGPT-User can fetch pages for a user request. GPTBot is related to model training. If you block everything in robots.txt or at the CDN layer, you may remove your site from answer visibility while only trying to block training.

Review robots.txt, WAF rules, Cloudflare settings, redirects, bot protection, response speed and pages that require heavy JavaScript. Perplexity also documents separate agents: PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User. For Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, the core Search principle still applies: content should be accessible, indexable and useful.

4. Create pages that are easy to cite

AI systems are more likely to use pages that explain the product clearly: what it is, who it is for, how it differs, pricing, limitations and alternatives. Do not bury the answer in vague marketing copy.

• a short answer at the start of each section
• FAQ blocks based on real buyer questions
• alternatives, comparison, pricing and use-case pages
• updated dates and concrete facts
• structured data where appropriate: Article, FAQ, Product, SoftwareApplication, Organization

5. Identify the sources that shape answers

AI answers may cite a directory, blog, docs page, marketplace, GitHub repository, forum or review instead of your own site. If a competitor appears in five independent lists and your brand only appears on your homepage, AI systems often have more context for the competitor. Work on your site and on external mentions.

Collect the sources that repeat across answers. Then decide where to update outdated brand descriptions, where to add a case study, where to request a correction, and where to create a better page on your own site.

6. Track weekly metrics

• share of prompts where the brand is mentioned
• share of prompts with a link to your site
• top competitors by mentions
• main sources cited by AI systems
• brand description errors
• new prompts where demand exists but your site has no page

Once the spreadsheet gets too large, use Profound, Peec AI, LLM Scout, Gauge, Aiso or PromptScout from our collection. Tools save time, but they do not replace the content and technical work.

What not to do

• do not publish hundreds of empty pages made only “for ChatGPT”
• do not promise guaranteed placement in AI answers
• do not block every AI crawler if visibility in AI search matters
• do not hide important facts behind forms, heavy JavaScript or closed tabs
• do not buy fake reviews; AI systems increasingly compare sources and context

Short takeaway

Checking ChatGPT visibility starts with measurement, not a secret prompt: a prompt set, manual audit, crawler access, clear pages, external sources and recurring competitor comparison. It is closer to a new branch of SEO than a one-time setup.

Sources

This guide is based on OpenAI crawler documentation, Google Search Central on AI features, Perplexity crawler documentation and Google’s structured data guide.