A Free Ten-Minute AI Search Answer Check

A free AI search answer check takes about ten minutes. Ask two buyer questions in fresh chats, save each answer and its sources, score it as mention, recommend, cite or absent, and log one factual fix. It tells you where your brand stands in AI answers today and gives you one concrete next step.

This is the short version of a full AI search visibility audit. Do it by hand once before you build anything bigger.

What do you need before you start?

You need your brand name, your category, your market and one comparison brand written down. Add a blank log with columns for date, service, question, full answer, sources shown, score and next action. Keeping the log dated is what makes a second check comparable to the first.

Which two questions should you ask first?

Ask the two questions a buyer would type, in fresh chats, without pasting in your own brand notes:

• What do people think about [BRAND]?
• What are the best [CATEGORY] options in [CITY OR MARKET]?

Plain buyer wording shows what the answer engines actually retrieve. Clever prompts mostly show what you hoped to see. Save the full reply and every source link the answer displays.

How do you score each answer?

Give each answer one score, written next to the question:

| Score | Meaning | |---|---| | Mention | Your brand name appears with no preference stated. | | Recommend | The answer suggests or shortlists you. | | Cite | The answer links to a source, your site or a page that names you. | | Absent | You are missing while others appear. |

If the answer hedges, score what a busy buyer would conclude. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond the technical requirements for Google Search (Google Search Central), so a cite score usually points back to an ordinary page you can inspect.

What should you do with the first finding?

Pick the single most factual problem and put it in the log with a source link and an owner. Good findings are specific: wrong hours or service area, a competitor cited on a category question you should own, or a claim your site never makes. Vague notes like "we need more content" are not findings yet. One fix, then stop.

If the finding is about local details, the local SEO audit baseline covers how to check listings and pages before you change them.

What does a ten-minute check not prove?

It does not predict next month's answers or promise a citation after one page edit. It shows whether your brand appears in two buyer questions today and whether you can record that without a paid tool. Answers change between sessions, so repeat the same questions on a schedule before you read a trend. For how AI search and classic SEO fit together, read AEO and SEO working together.

Where do you go after the first check?

Expand only on confirmed findings. Add more buyer questions once you have scored the first two, and check whether a crawler can reach the pages that should be cited.

The question worksheet and log template from this post are free in the Cosmic AI community on Eden.