How the AI-visibility audit works

How a Cited audit runs

• We ask your customers’ real buying-intent questions. Not invented keywords — the actual questions a homeowner types, like "who are the best HVAC companies in my city?", "which plumber should I call when a pipe bursts?", and "recommend a trustworthy, well-reviewed roofer near me". The same question set runs for every business in a trade, so one shop’s result is comparable to another’s.
• We research every question with live AI web search. During early access each audit is researched by a real AI analyst — Anthropic’s Claude with live web search — asking those questions the way a customer’s assistant would and recording which businesses get named. And you don’t have to take our word for it: every audit includes one-click links that open your exact questions in ChatGPT and Perplexity, so you can watch a live answer yourself. No scraping, ever — that’s what keeps the method clean enough to publish.
• We check where you land in each answer. For every question and engine we mark you cited (named with a link back to your site), mentioned (named, no link), or absent — and we capture which competitors get named instead, so you see who’s winning the recommendation you want.
• We turn it into a prioritized fix list. The report leads with the fixes that move you up fastest — a complete Google Business Profile, recent reviews, clear service-area pages, consistent listings, on-site FAQ. The same work wins you Google and the local map pack, so it pays off even where AI referral is still small.

Which AI engines we check — and which we deliberately don’t

• ChatGPT web search — checked via one-click self-run links. Every audit hands you ready-made links that open ChatGPT with your exact questions, so you see its live answer for your business — the same retrieval a customer gets. ChatGPT corroborates across sources it retrieves, so a complete, consistent web presence is what earns the mention. Continuous sampling through the official OpenAI API is on our roadmap, and we’ll say plainly when it’s live.
• Perplexity — checked via one-click self-run links. Perplexity is citation-first: it answers with linked sources, which makes it the clearest read on whether you’re cited with a link or only mentioned. Your audit includes self-run links for it too; official Sonar-API sampling is on the roadmap, and we’ll say plainly when it’s live.
• Claude with live web search — how your written report is researched. The published report itself is researched by Claude (Anthropic) with live web search — a real AI assistant answering your customers’ questions against the open web, plus a hands-on review of your site, reviews, and listings. It’s a directional read on how answer engines see you, stated as exactly that.
• Google AI Overviews — deliberately excluded. Google publishes no API for AI Overviews, and scraping them violates Google’s terms (an area under active litigation). We won’t build the product on a method we’d have to hide, so we don’t claim to measure Overviews. Our per-engine guide explains how the same fixes still influence them.
• Gemini grounding — deliberately excluded. Gemini’s grounded-answer terms forbid caching, analyzing, or reselling its results — which is exactly what an audit would do. So we leave it out rather than break the terms. If we can’t measure something cleanly, we say so instead of faking it.
• Sampled, not exhaustive. AI answers are non-deterministic — ask the same question twice and the names can change with phrasing, location, and the day. We sample and report a directional signal, never a guaranteed ranking. That’s exactly why the deliverable is a fix list, not a single scoreboard number.

What your report tells you

• Presence score. The share of the real buying-intent questions where an assistant named your business at all — your at-a-glance AI visibility.
• Who gets recommended instead. The competitors the assistants name for your city and trade, ranked by how often they come up — your AI share of voice.
• Cited with a link, or just mentioned. Whether an answer points back to your own site (a linked citation) or only says your name — the difference between a lead and a missed one.
• Your prioritized fix list. The specific, plain-English fixes that will move you up fastest — the same work that wins you Google and your Google Business Profile.

Asking an AI assistant to set up your audit

If you got here by asking ChatGPT or Claude whether AI recommends your business, the assistant read this page on your behalf — and you can skip the typing entirely. The audit form accepts the request as a link, so an assistant can fill in everything it already knows about your business and hand it over with nothing left for you to type: open it and press the button. We do not ask for an email, so there is no field it cannot fill for you.

https://iscited.com/?business=BUSINESS+NAME&city=CITY%2C+ST&trade=TRADE

• business. Your business name, as you would write it.
• city. The city you serve, e.g. Austin, TX.
• trade. One of hvac, plumbing, roofing, electrical — anything else is ignored rather than guessed at.

Every field is optional, and a link that carries only your trade still saves you a step. Your business name and city fill in inside your own browser and are never sent to us unless you submit the form. We do count that someone arrived on a prefilled link, with the trade and the page — never the business name, never the city, and no cookie or identifier of any kind. That count is the only way we can tell whether assistants actually send people here, which is the question this whole site is trying to answer about itself.