How to check if AI mentions your brand

You cannot manage what you never measure, and most founders have never once checked what AI engines say about them. The audit takes ten minutes by hand, or thirty seconds automated. Here is the method.

The manual audit

Open ChatGPT (with web search enabled) and Perplexity, and ask the questions your buyers actually ask. Not "tell me about MyBrand", that only tests whether the engine can read your site. The revealing questions are the generic buyer ones where you should be one of the names:

• “Best [your category] for [your audience]”
• “What should I use to [job your product does]?”
• “[Competitor] alternatives”
• “Is [YourBrand] legit? What does it do?” (this one tests readability directly)

Score each answer three ways: are you named, are you described accurately, and who else is named instead. Wrong descriptions matter as much as absence, an engine confidently misdescribing your pricing or audience is actively costing you buyers.

Reading the results

If you are absent everywhere: check readability first. AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript, and an unreadable site is the most common cause, especially for AI-built sites. If you are named but misdescribed: your positioning is unclear or your machine-facing facts (llms.txt, structured data) are missing or stale. If competitors dominate: they are better corroborated across the web (directories, reviews, communities), which is a distribution to-do list, not a mystery.

Tracking it over time

One check is a snapshot; the value is the trend. Engines update as they recrawl and as your reputation accrues, so re-run the same question set monthly. Drazen automates this: its AI visibility check infers the real buyer questions for your niche, asks the engines, and shows you the answers verbatim, who got named, whether you were described correctly, and how it changes after fixes ship. It runs free with the site scan.