Somewhere this week, a potential customer asked ChatGPT or Google about a business like yours. They may have asked about yours by name. You did not see the answer, and the answer may have been wrong: old hours, a service you dropped two years ago, or a competitor named in the spot you wanted.
This guide walks through a 20-minute AI search audit you can run this week: the questions to ask, the tools to ask them in, how to score what comes back, and how to correct the answers you do not like. Nothing is required beyond a spreadsheet.
Hear what AI says about your business before your customers do
Book a call and we will run the full 20-minute audit with you: the prompts, the scorecard, and the first fix.
Let the Buzz BeginQuick answer: An AI search audit is a structured check of what AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews say when someone asks about your business or the service you sell. You ask each tool the questions a customer would ask, record the answers, and compare them against the facts: services, service area, hours, pricing posture, and reputation. The first pass takes about 20 minutes.
What is an AI search audit?
The reason to check is that the answers can be wrong. In an April 2026 Squarespace survey of 1,041 small business owners, 40 percent of those who checked found incorrect information about their business in AI search results. McKinsey estimated that, as of late 2025, about half of Google searches carried AI summaries, so a wrong answer is not a fringe case; it may be the first thing a customer hears about you.
If the acronyms around this topic are new, our plain-English guide to what AEO and GEO mean covers the vocabulary. This article stays practical: run the check, score it, fix it.
How do you run an AI search audit?
Five steps, in order:
- Write down the questions customers ask before they buy. Five to ten, in their words: “best pool service in Cape Coral,” “how much does quarterly pest control cost,” and at least one by name, like “is [your business] good.”
- Ask every question in each tool. ChatGPT, Gemini, and a normal Google search where you watch for the AI Overview. Use a logged-out or fresh session so your own history does not color the answers.
- Record what comes back in a spreadsheet. One row per question per tool: were you mentioned, what facts were stated about you, and who else got named.
- Score every answer as correct, wrong, or missing. The scoring table below defines each.
- Trace wrong or missing answers to their sources and fix them there, starting with your own website. The sources are covered in the next section.
Date the spreadsheet and keep it. The audit earns its keep on the second run, when you can see which fixes took hold.
How do you score the answers?
| Score | What it looks like | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Correct | You are mentioned and the facts match reality | Nothing now; re-check monthly for drift |
| Wrong | Outdated hours, dropped services, a closed location, a bad phone number, a misstated specialty | Correct the source pages the tools read, then re-check next month |
| Missing | The question fits your business and a competitor got the mention instead, or nobody did | Build quotable answers and proof; this is visibility work, not correction work |
Wrong and missing call for different fixes. A wrong answer means the web says something false about you. A missing answer may mean the web does not say enough about you to be worth citing, and the fix for that is the mention-building work in our guide to getting mentioned in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.
How do you fix wrong or missing answers?
AI tools do not keep a file on your business that you can edit. They draw on what is published online and what their models learned in training, so corrections happen at the source.
Start with your website. Your services page, service area, hours, and FAQ should state the facts in plain sentences a machine can quote, because your own site is the one source you fully control. From there, bring your Google Business Profile and directory listings into agreement with the site, so every source a tool might read tells the same story. Round it out with recent reviews and third-party mentions, which give anyone checking you outside confirmation.
Expect lag. AI tools refresh their picture of the web on their own schedules, which is why the audit repeats monthly instead of running once. The full playbook for how these pieces fit together lives in our complete guide to AI search optimization.
Our SEO & AI Visibility service tracks how your business appears across Google and AI search.
Frequently asked questions about your AI search audit
How often should I run the audit?
Monthly. Reuse the same spreadsheet and the same questions so changes stand out. Twenty minutes a month is enough to catch drift before customers do.
What if the AI tools never mention my business at all?
That is a visibility problem rather than an accuracy problem. Score those rows as missing and work the mention-building steps in the ChatGPT visibility guide.
Can I edit what ChatGPT says about my business?
Not directly. You correct the pages and profiles the tools read, then wait for the refresh to pick them up.
Is this different from checking my Google rankings?
Yes. A rank tracker tells you where your pages sit in a list of links. This audit tells you what the machines say when they speak on your behalf. The two can diverge, which is exactly why both checks are worth running.
Final thoughts on your AI search audit
Twenty minutes a month tells you what AI tools say about your business before your customers hear it, with enough time to correct the record. Run the first pass this week, fix the worst answer you find, and re-check it next month. Book a call with one of our hive specialists today and we will run your first audit with you, start to finish.