The weekly visibility check
Also called AI visibility check, Get found check, AI search tracking.
The weekly visibility check is Doug asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google the questions your customers ask, then checking where you land on Google Maps. He records whether you were named, who was named instead, and which websites the answers leaned on. The results turn into fixes and a short weekly report.
Doug's Field Guide · Updated
Which questions he asks
Doug builds the questions from your listing, so you never have to write search queries. Most of them are what a customer who has never heard of you would type: who should I call for a clogged drain in your town, who does same day AC repair near me, what does a roof inspection cost around here. A couple ask about your business by name, to catch wrong hours, old phone numbers, or a mixed up address.
You can edit the list. Add the job you most want more of, remove a service you've stopped offering, and put in the exact phrasing you hear on the phone. These are your tracked questions, and they stay the same from week to week so the numbers compare.
He also checks Google Maps for your main service and town, since that's where many local customers still start.
Why he asks more than once
AI answers change from one ask to the next. Ask ChatGPT the same question three times and you can get three different lists of businesses. One answer per question is a coin flip, so Doug asks each question several times per assistant and reports a rate: you were named in this many of the answers.
He reads each answer the way a customer would. Were you named? Who was named instead? Which sites did the assistant pull from, like a directory, a review roundup, a forum thread, or a competitor's own page? That last part matters most, because it tells you where to show up next.
Wherever he can, he captures the answer a customer actually sees in the app, and each result says where it came from. Then he compares this week with last week, so you see whether the work is moving anything.
Set up your tracked questions
- Run the free check at doug.so/check to see if ChatGPT names you today.
- Open your tracked questions in Doug and read the ones he built from your listing.
- Add the two jobs you most want more of, in the words customers use on the phone.
- Remove any question about a service or town you no longer cover.
- Read the first week's results and note which sites the answers cite.
Common mistakes
- Judging your visibility from one question typed into ChatGPT once, when answers change every time.
- Tracking only questions with your business name in them, which you'll almost always win.
- Changing the tracked questions every week, which makes the trend impossible to read.
How Doug does it
Doug runs the check every week without you asking. He builds the questions from your listing, asks each assistant several times, checks Google Maps, and turns what he finds into fixes. You get a short weekly report with how often you came up and what changed.
Terms on this page
- Mention rate
- How often the assistants named your business across the answers to your tracked questions, shown as a share of all answers that week.
- Tracked questions
- The customer questions Doug asks the AI assistants every week. He builds them from your listing, and you can edit them.
- Weekly report
- A short email summing up how often the assistants named you, what changed from last week, and what got fixed.
Keep exploring
- ChatGPT recommendationsHow ChatGPT picks which plumber, dentist or lawyer to name, and what you can fix.
- AI citationsThe links under an AI answer. They show you exactly which sites decide who gets named.
- Local packThe map and short business list at the top of a local Google search.
- The fix queueEach week's findings become drafted fixes you can publish, apply, or dismiss.
Sources
Written by Doug's team from these sources and our own work with local businesses. Search engines change their rules, so check the source before a big decision.
