Some of your customers ask AI for a recommendation before they ever visit a website. If you want to know whether they hear your name, you have to ask the same questions they do. Here is how to do it properly, and what to look for.

Step 1: Write down the real questions

Start with the questions a customer would type or say, not the keywords you would use for SEO. Good examples:

  • "Who is the best family dentist in Sacramento?"
  • "Which personal injury lawyer in Atlanta offers free consultations?"
  • "Where can I get a same-day AC repair in Tucson?"
  • "What is a good CRM for a five-person sales team?"

Include your city or region whenever your customers would. Include the details that matter to them: price, speed, a specific service, a language, insurance. A short list of your most common questions is a fine start.

Avoid asking about yourself by name. "Tell me about [your business name]" checks what the engine knows about you. It does not check whether the engine recommends you, and that is what decides whether you get the customer.

Step 2: Ask more than one engine

Your customers do not all use the same AI. At a minimum, ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. If you can, add Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Grok. Each engine leans on its own sources, so you can be recommended on one and missing from another.

For a fair test, use a fresh chat or a logged-out session, so earlier conversations do not color the answer.

Step 3: Ask each question several times

AI answers change from one ask to the next. The same question can return a different shortlist an hour later. One answer is a single reading, not a verdict.

Ask each question a few times on each engine and write down every result. Patterns show up quickly: some competitors appear almost every time, others only now and then.

Step 4: Record how you are named, not just whether

Being in the answer is not all equal. Score each answer on the Citation Ladder, from the top rung down:

  1. Cited with a link. The answer links to your site.
  2. Named as a recommendation. You are one of the picks.
  3. Mentioned. You come up, but not as a recommendation.

If you are not in the answer at all, note that too. Moving up a rung is progress worth tracking.

Step 5: Note who is named instead of you

For every answer, list the businesses that were named. Over a few questions you will see who your real AI competitors are. They are not always the ones you would guess.

Where the engine shows sources or links, write those down as well. Those are the pages that put a competitor in the answer, and often the places you need to appear. You can see this laid out for your business on who AI replaced you with.

Step 6: Turn it into one number

Once you have a set of answers, count how often you are named compared with your competitors. That is your AI Share of Voice: how often AI names your business when customers ask, compared with its competitors.

One number makes it easy to see whether things are getting better, and to compare engines, questions and competitors side by side. There is more on how it is calculated on the AI Share of Voice page.

Why a one-off check is not enough

A manual check is a good start, but it has limits:

  • It takes time. A handful of questions, several engines and several asks each adds up quickly.
  • It is hard to repeat the same way. Small changes in wording or timing change the result.
  • It does not show trends. You need the same questions asked on a regular schedule to see whether a fix worked.

This is what the SearchDaddy platform does. It asks AI engines the questions your customers ask, from your market, every week. It saves each answer so you can see how you were named on the Citation Ladder, shows who AI names instead and which sources put them there, and lists what to fix. Every plan includes ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Larger plans add Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Grok, up to all six.

What to do with what you find

If you are missing from the answers, the next step is working out why. Usually it is a missing answer on your site, a gap on the sources the engine trusts, or inconsistent details across the web. Our article on why ChatGPT does not mention your business walks through each one.

The questions to check also vary by industry. Our guide on how law firms get recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini shows what a good set of questions looks like for one category.

Get the check done for you

If you would rather skip the spreadsheet, book the free AI Visibility Snapshot. It covers you plus three competitors, across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, and shows who AI names, who it skips, and why.