How we check whether AI and Google recommend your store

What we mean by AI visibility

When someone wants to buy something now, a lot of them don't search and scroll anymore — they open ChatGPT, Gemini, or another AI assistant and just ask. "What's a good beginner hot sauce that isn't too mild" gets a straight answer back: two or three brand names, no list of links to click through.

Some brands get named in that answer. Most don't. There's no page of results to scroll past — you're either in the answer or you're invisible, and there's no way to know which one just by imagining what the AI might say. That's what we mean by AI visibility: whether an AI assistant, asked a normal question a shopper would actually type, says your name.

How we check the AI side

We put real category questions to an AI assistant — the kind an actual shopper would type, like "what's a good soy candle brand for someone who wants something clean-burning" — and record every brand it names back.

Your shop's name never goes in the question. If we asked an assistant "should I buy from [your shop]," it would answer politely no matter what — that proves nothing about whether it would ever have thought of you unprompted. Only a blind question, the kind a stranger would actually ask, tells us anything real.

We ask multiple questions this way, covering your category from different angles, then check the results against your own site to see which ones say your name and which ones don't.

How we check the search side

Google hasn't gone anywhere — most shoppers still search, and where you land still matters. We check where your store ranks for the phrases people in your category actually type, and who's beating you to the top.

We also check whether search engines can actually make sense of your site: whether your pages load quickly, whether your product pages say plainly what you sell, and whether anything on your site is quietly getting in the way of being found.

How the score is built

Your score is two things, weighted evenly and added together. One half looks at your own site — whether it's fast, whether search engines can read it, whether the basics are in place. The other half looks at whether you actually get found: your Google rankings, whether an AI assistant names you, and what's said about you elsewhere.

Neither half alone tells the whole story — a store with a clean, fast site that nobody finds is still losing shoppers, and so is a well-known store with fixable technical problems.

We don't hide the arithmetic. Your report shows both halves separately, so you can see exactly which side is dragging the number down.

What you do with it

The report ends with a list of fixes, ordered by how much each one is likely to move your score — not a hundred small suggestions you'll never get around to. Start at the top and work down.

Each fix says plainly what's wrong and what to actually do about it — not "improve your visibility," but the specific thing to change on your specific site.