How do you check whether ChatGPT mentions your business?
Ask it. Twenty questions your customers would ask, put to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews, three times over a fortnight, with every name and every source written down. That is the whole method, and it costs an afternoon. Here it is step by step, then the tools that run it for you from US$29 a month, a free report that runs it once, and the four reasons a business is missing from the answers.
- By hand
- $0, an afternoon
- A tool
- US$29–549 a month
- Free report
- $0, within the hour
- The audit
- free, with a call
- Fixing it
- from $1,000 a month
- Price
- see our own price list
Every figure on this page excludes GST. Tool prices are in US dollars, read on 26 September 2026.
Australia · 2026Ask it twenty questions, three times, and count. An afternoon, or US$29 a month.
To check whether ChatGPT mentions your business, ask it what your customers ask and count the answers that name you. Write twenty questions in your customers' words, put each one to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews from a logged-out session in the country your customers are in, and record three things per answer: the businesses named, the businesses linked, and the sources the engine cited. Run the set three times over a fortnight, because the same engine gives a different answer on a different day; one run is a screenshot, three runs give a range, and the range is the measurement. Your citation share is the answers that name or link you divided by the answers you collected, per engine and beside each competitor's. Done by hand that is $0 and an afternoon a month. A tracking tool does it daily for US$29 to $549 a month, priced by prompts and engines. Our free report does it once, for Australian and New Zealand businesses, and emails the actual answers within the hour. If the count comes back at zero, the cause is one of four, and each has a known fix.
How to check by hand, in an afternoon.
- 01
Write twenty questions in your customers' words.
Not keywords. "Which physio in Parramatta does shockwave therapy", "what does a buyer's agent in Newcastle charge". Take them from enquiries, reviews and whatever the front desk answers twice a day.
- 02
Ask four engines, logged out, from where your customers are.
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews or AI Mode, in a private window with no account signed in, and through a VPN set to the country if your customers are overseas.
- 03
Record three things per answer.
The businesses named, the businesses linked, and the sources cited. One row per question per engine in a spreadsheet, with the date, and the full answer pasted beside it.
- 04
Run the set three times over a fortnight.
Engines sample their answers, so the same question names different businesses on different days. One run is a screenshot. Three runs give a range, and the range is the number to report.
- 05
Score yourself and two competitors on the same answers.
Named or linked, divided by answers collected, per engine and overall. If a competitor is at 40 percent and you are at 5, the sources column says why.
- 06
Read the sources column before you change anything.
If the engines cite directories, review sites and best-of lists, the work is off your site. If they cite your competitors' own pages, the work is on yours.
- 07
Repeat monthly, same questions, same engines.
Change the question set and you lose the comparison. Add new questions at the end and keep the original twenty, so the number still means what it meant.
Twenty questions, four engines and three runs is 240 answers, which is why the second month is when people buy a tool.
The tools that run it for you.
What each one tracks and what it leaves to you. Every price below was read from the vendor's own price page on 26 September 2026 and is in US dollars; the tools are the ones the engines themselves suggest when asked. Our own price list is at the bottom of the page.
| Per month | What it tracks | What it leaves to you |
|---|---|---|
| Per month $0 Your own spreadsheet | What it tracks The method above: twenty questions, four engines, three runs, the names and the sources in a sheet. Everything a tool gives you except the daily cadence and the charts, and an honest range if you run it three times. | What it leaves to you The afternoon, every month, and the discipline to keep the same questions. |
| Per month US$29–489 Otterly | What it tracks Runs 15 prompts on the US$29 Lite plan, 100 on the US$189 Standard and 400 on the US$489 Premium, daily across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, with Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode as paid add-ons. Extra prompts are US$99 per hundred, and a year paid upfront takes 15 percent off. | What it leaves to you Writing the prompts, choosing the competitors, and deciding what to do about the sources it lists. |
| Per month US$89–549 The rank trackers' AI add-ons | What it tracks SE Ranking sells AI tracking as a US$89 add-on to its US$129 Core plan, covering AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity and ChatGPT. Semrush builds it into its plans: 50 prompts a day on the US$199 Starter, 100 on the US$299 Pro+, 200 on the US$549 Advanced, across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Ahrefs sells Brand Radar from US$199 a month, with prompt packs from US$50. | What it leaves to you Claude is missing from most of them, and the Google rankings and the AI answers land in the same dashboard, which is where they get confused. |
| Per month US$95–795 Purpose-built trackers | What it tracks Peec AI tracks 50 prompts for US$95 a month, 150 for US$245 and 350 for US$495, three models included and more at a fee each; its own site shows no prices, so these are from its software-directory listing. Profound, the enterprise tool, covers nine engines including Claude and is priced on request after a free seven-day trial of 50 prompts. | What it leaves to you The budget. These are built for marketing teams reading a dashboard weekly, not for a business that wants one honest number a month. |
| Per month $0 Our free report Ours | What it tracks Puts five of your customers' questions to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, scores you and two competitors on the answers, and emails every answer and every source in full with a speed and structure check of your site, within the hour. Australian and New Zealand businesses only. | What it leaves to you The other fifteen questions and the repeat runs, which is what the free audit does, with a 20-minute call. |
US dollars, monthly billing, read from each vendor's price page on 26 September 2026; Peec AI's figures are from its Capterra listing the same day, because peec.ai publishes none. The free report and the audit are ours and cost nothing; the programme that fixes what they find starts at $1,000 a month, below.
Or let us run it. Free.
Give us your business name and website, the area your customers come from, what you do, and the two competitors you lose to. We put the questions to four engines and email you the answers, the names, the sources and how your site holds up, usually within fifteen minutes.
- ChatGPT
- Claude
- Gemini
- Google AI Overviews
AI answers never mention you? It is one of four causes.
| Compared on | How it shows up | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Entity | How it shows up The engines cannot say what you are, where you are and who you serve in one sentence, so they name a competitor who states it. Your name is on the site without a category, a place or a list of services. | The fix One plain sentence on the home page and in the Organization structured data: what, where, for whom, since when. The same name, address and description on every profile you hold. |
| Structure | How it shows up Your pages describe the business, and the customer's question is never asked or answered on any of them. Prices, timelines and who it is for live in a PDF or a phone call. | The fix One page per question, the answer in the first paragraph with the number in it, FAQ markup, headings that repeat the question. Guides like this one exist for exactly that reason. |
| Corroboration | How it shows up The sources column of your spreadsheet is directories, review sites and industry lists, and you are on none of them. The engines trust a name they meet in three places. | The fix A complete Google Business Profile, the two or three directories your category's answers cite, reviews on the site the engines quote, and a partner listing wherever one exists. |
| Technical | How it shows up The crawlers cannot read the site. Pages that only exist in JavaScript, a robots file that blocks GPTBot or ClaudeBot, no sitemap, ten-second loads. The site is invisible before the copy is judged. | The fix Server-rendered HTML, a robots file that admits the AI crawlers, a sitemap, structured data that validates, and pages that load in under a second. |
Diagnose from the sources column and a crawl before touching a word of copy. Technical takes weeks, entity and structure about a month, corroboration two to four, because the directories have to list you before the engines meet you there.
Who does this in Australia, and what to ask them.
- 01
Their own number.
Ask what share of AI answers names their agency for its own services. Anyone selling AI visibility without measuring their own has not run the method.
- 02
The raw answers, not a chart.
A report should carry every answer in full with its sources. A percentage with no answers behind it cannot be checked, and a chart is not evidence.
- 03
How many runs sit behind the number.
One run a month is a screenshot. Ask how many times each question was asked, and whether the report shows a range or a single figure.
- 04
Which of the four causes they found.
Entity, structure, corroboration or technical, with the evidence. A plan that starts with more content before diagnosing is a content retainer in a lab coat.
- 05
What they will do off your site.
Directories, profiles, reviews and listings are half the work and the slow half. If the plan is pages only, the sources column will not change.
- 06
We do.
Croissant & Baguette is a small Sydney studio with a network of Australian specialists. Built in Sydney, never offshored. The engine behind our free report and our audit returns every answer with its sources; one client site it measured, Cheeky Kiwi Travel's, is named in 43 percent of the answers to its customers' questions, and another, Quitine's, came out at 10 percent a few weeks after launch. It explains the second as plainly as the first.
The audit is free with a 20-minute call, one per business, and every report we send carries our own domain's score, good or bad.
What we charge.
- Free AI visibility and website report emailed within the hour · shareable link
- free
- AI Visibility Audit with a 20-minute call · one per business
- free
- GEO & SEO programme 3-month min · typically $1–2.5k a month
- from $1,000/mo
- Technical SEO fixes only one-off · existing sites · typically $2–6k
- from $2,000
What takes the programme above $1,000:
- how many of the twenty questions you are missing from, and on how many engines
- which cause. Technical is weeks; corroboration is months of listings and profiles
- how many pages have to be written to answer the questions you are absent from
- how many competitors are already cited, and how plainly they state their answers
- whether the site can be crawled today, or has to be rebuilt first
Why the checking is free and the fixing is not
Because the checking is software: an engine we built puts the questions to the engines and files the answers, and a run costs it a few dollars. The fixing is people: a page written for each missing question, structured data, listings claimed by hand, and a report each month that says whether the number moved. That is what $1,000 a month buys for one market and one core service.
When the number does not move, the report says so and says what changes next.
Ask away.
Eight things people ask before they check. What tracking and reporting cost across the market is in our AI visibility reporting cost guide. Still one missing? Ask us.
Who offers a tool to check if ChatGPT mentions my business?
Otterly, from US$29 a month for 15 prompts; SE Ranking, as a US$89 add-on to its US$129 plan; Semrush, from its US$199 plan with 50 prompts a day; Ahrefs Brand Radar, from US$199; Peec AI, from US$95; Profound, on request after a free trial. All of them track ChatGPT and Google's AI answers, and Claude is an add-on or missing on most. Our free report checks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews once, for nothing, for Australian and New Zealand businesses.
What's the best way to monitor how often AI tools cite my business over competitors?
The same twenty questions, put to the same four engines on a schedule, scored for you and two or three named competitors on the same answers, with the sources cited beside every answer. By hand that is an afternoon a month; a tool such as Otterly or Peec AI does it daily from US$29 to $495. Whichever you use, report a range from repeated runs rather than one run, and read the sources column, because it says where the work is.
AI answers never mention my business, how do I fix that?
Find the cause first; there are four. Entity: the engines cannot state what, where and for whom you are in one sentence. Structure: no page answers the questions being asked, with the number in the first paragraph. Corroboration: the directories, review sites and lists the answers cite do not carry you. Technical: the crawlers cannot read the site. The table above gives the fix for each; technical takes weeks, corroboration two to four months.
Are there other options for tracking AI visibility besides basic SEO tools?
Yes. Beyond the rank trackers there are the purpose-built trackers, Otterly, Peec AI and Profound, an agency audit that diagnoses the cause rather than charting the number, and free reports like ours that run the check once. Every option is priced side by side in our <a href="/guides/how-much-does-ai-visibility-reporting-cost-in-australia/">AI visibility reporting cost guide</a>.
How many questions do I need to ask?
Twenty covers a single-location service business: five each on who does it, what it costs, which option is better, and what to do about a problem. Our free report uses five and the audit 30 to 50, because the audit also scores named competitors from the countries your customers are in. Fewer than ten and one answer swings the number by ten points; more than fifty and nobody keeps running it by hand, which is when a tool earns its US$29.
Does ChatGPT give everyone the same answer?
No, and that is why one run proves little. The engines sample, so a question that names you on Monday can name a competitor on Thursday, and being signed in, the country you ask from and the exact wording change it again. Ask logged out, from your customers' country, three times over a fortnight, and report the range. Cheeky Kiwi Travel's 43 percent is 65 of 153 answers, not one answer.
Which engines should I check?
ChatGPT, because it is the one your customers name; Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, because they sit on top of the searches you already rank for; Gemini and Claude, because each one cites differently. In our September 2026 audit of Cheeky Kiwi Travel the same forty questions produced 15 percent of ChatGPT's answers naming it, 53 percent of Claude's, 65 percent of Gemini's and 36 percent of Google AI Overviews'. One engine is a quarter of the answer.
What does the free report check, and what does the audit add?
The free report puts five of your customers' questions to four engines, scores you and two competitors, and emails every answer with its sources and a speed and structure check of your site, within the hour. The audit, free with a 20-minute call, runs 30 to 50 questions against named competitors from the countries your customers are in, says which of the four causes is responsible, and sets a 90-day plan in order.
- SEO & AI Visibility. The free audit, the programme, and the number we report every month.
- AI visibility reporting costs. Tools, retainers and programmes by price, with one real report card.
- The free report. Five questions, four engines, two competitors, every answer in full.
- SEO or AI visibility? What is the same work, what only GEO needs, and which to lead with now.