An AI visibility audit has three parts: prompt testing to see where you appear in AI answers, schema and technical checks on your own site, and a content gap analysis comparing your coverage to what AI engines are citing instead. You do not need specialized tools for a first audit. You need a browser, access to ChatGPT and Perplexity, and a document to record what you find. The whole thing takes 25 to 35 minutes if you are focused.
Part 1: Prompt testing (15 minutes)
Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini in separate tabs. You will run the same set of queries across all three and document the results. Use a fresh session in each so you are not seeing personalized results based on previous conversations.
Test the queries your buyers run when building a vendor list
Run 3-5 queries in the format: "What are the leading [your category] companies for [your target customer type]?" and "Which [your category] platforms should a [your buyer role] at a [your company size] company evaluate?" Write down every company that appears. Note whether your company appears and in what position. If you do not appear in any response, that is your baseline: zero AI citation coverage.
Test how AI describes your category
Run queries like: "How does [your category] work?" "What is [key concept in your space]?" "What should companies look for when evaluating [your category]?" Check whether your company is cited as a reference or example. If it is not, your content is not being used as a source for category education. That is a significant gap, given that category framing happens early in the buyer journey.
Test how AI describes you vs. competitors
Run: "What is the difference between [your company] and [top competitor]?" If AI returns an answer, read it carefully. Is the description accurate? Does it reflect your actual positioning and strengths? If AI returns an inaccurate or outdated description of your company, that is an authority and content gap to address. If AI says it does not have enough information about your company, that is a significant visibility deficit.
For each response, record: which companies appeared, what was said about them, and whether your company appeared at all. Score yourself: appearing in more than half of relevant shortlist queries is a reasonable baseline for adequate visibility. Appearing in fewer than a quarter is a significant gap.
Part 2: Technical and schema check (10 minutes)
Open your homepage in a browser and go to View Source (or use a browser extension like Schema Markup Validator). Look for a script tag with type="application/ld+json". This is your structured data. Check whether it includes an Organization schema with your company name, URL, description, and service types clearly defined. If you have no JSON-LD at all, that is the highest-priority technical gap on your site.
Next, check a few of your key pages: your homepage, your main product or service page, and any FAQ or resource pages you have. For each, check:
- Is the title tag specific and descriptive (not just "Home" or "Services")?
- Is there an H1 tag that clearly states what the page is about?
- Are H2 and H3 headings used to structure the content?
- Is there a canonical URL tag pointing to the correct URL?
- Is there a meta description?
Pages that fail more than two of these checks are structurally invisible to AI engines even if they contain good information. The information is there but AI engines cannot reliably extract it without proper structure.
Part 3: Content gap analysis (5 minutes)
Go back to the AI responses from Part 1. Look at the companies that did appear in AI shortlists. Visit their websites and look for one specific thing: do they have dedicated answer pages that directly address buyer research questions? These pages typically look like long-form guides, FAQ pages, or explainer articles with titles that are questions ("What is X?" "How does Y work?" "How do B2B companies evaluate Z?").
If the companies appearing in AI answers have these pages and you do not, that is your content gap. The fix is building the same type of answer content on your own domain. Ten to twenty well-structured answer pages covering the key questions in your category is the content investment that most directly moves AI citation rates for B2B companies.
Want a professional audit instead?
Our free AI Visibility Report gives you a structured audit across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude, with a prioritized action list based on your specific category and competitors.
Get my free AI Visibility ReportAfter running this audit, the next step is understanding what the gaps mean and how to close them. See how to get your B2B company recommended by AI for the prioritized action plan, and why competitors show up in AI answers for a deeper analysis of what makes certain companies consistently cited.