Key takeaways
- AI visibility is how often, and how accurately, AI tools mention your business when people ask about your category.
- AI tools build answers from what they can find and trust: your site, your listings, reviews and other sites that mention you.
- The fundamentals are the same as good SEO, done consistently and written to answer real questions.
A definition
AI visibility is how often, and how accurately, AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI features mention your business when people ask questions in your category: “Who’s a good estate planning attorney in Honolulu?” or “Which med spa near me is reputable?” People also call this work answer engine optimization (AEO) or generative engine optimization (GEO).
How AI tools decide who to mention
Each tool works differently, and none publishes a full recipe. But they share a pattern: they draw on sources they can access and trust. For a local or service business that usually means:
- Your website, if their crawlers can read it. Some AI crawlers don’t run JavaScript, so a site that only shows text after scripts load can look empty to them.
- Your Google Business Profile and directories, especially when the details match your website.
- Reviews and outside mentions: local news, associations, partner sites and articles.
- Structured data that tells machines plainly who you are, where you are and what you offer.
Google states that its AI features rely on the same fundamentals as regular Search, with no special markup required (Google Search Central). OpenAI documents the crawlers it uses, including OAI-SearchBot for search features (OpenAI).
How to check your own AI visibility
- Write down five questions a customer might ask before choosing a business like yours.
- Ask them in two or three AI tools. Note who gets named, what is said about you, and which sources are cited.
- Run the Free AI Visibility Assessment to see whether AI crawlers can read your site.
- If the results worry you, the AI Visibility Assessment does this carefully and gives you a prioritized fix list.
What nobody can promise
AI answers change day to day and differ from person to person. Anyone who guarantees a position in an AI answer is overpromising. What you can control is whether AI tools can find accurate, consistent, useful information about you.