Describe the business
Why the questions matter most
Animated illustration: someone asks a generic AI assistant "Who's a good accountant in Bristol for a small charity?" The answer names a fictional firm, Quillwhistle Accountants, and cites its Services page as the source.
An AI visibility check is only as good as its questions. The questions should be in your customers' words, not your own.
- A phrase nobody types: if you test "best accountancy services", you learn how assistants answer a phrase nobody types.
- A real customer's question: if you test "who is a good accountant in Bristol for a small charity", you learn whether you are named when a real customer asks.
They should also cover more than one kind of question. A business can be named for recommendation questions and missing from every price question, which points to a different fix.
The builder mixes five kinds: recommendation, comparison, price, problem and trust, two of each.
How to use the list
- Edit each question into the words your customers use. Enquiry emails and call notes are the best source.
- Ask each question several times in a fresh, signed-out session, on more than one day.
- Record whether the business is named, whether its site is linked and who is named instead.
- Keep the list fixed and ask it again each month, so the numbers can be compared.
The full method is in how to check if ChatGPT recommends your business, and the example AI visibility audit shows a finished question set and record sheet for a fictional firm.
For agencies
- Agree the question set with each client before the first check.
- Turn a vague request into a measure. It turns "are we in ChatGPT?" into something you can measure and report: named in so many of so many asks, for these questions, this month.
Our guide to reporting AI visibility to clients has a report template built around exactly that.
Honest limits
- A first draft. The builder uses fixed templates, so it will not know your market as well as you do. Treat the list as a first draft.
- Estimates only. When you test the questions with GEO Agency's answer simulation, it runs on Google Gemini, so the results are estimates of how an assistant might answer, not a record of what ChatGPT or any other assistant told a customer.
- No promises. Nobody can promise a place in an AI answer, and we do not.
Common questions
Is anything I type sent to you?
No. The questions are built in your browser from fixed templates, and what you type is not sent to us or to analytics. If you have accepted analytics cookies, we only count that the builder was used.
Why ten questions?
Enough to cover the main kinds of question customers ask (recommendation, comparison, price, problem and trust) while staying small enough to ask several times each, every month.
Should I use the questions exactly as written?
Use them as a draft. The best question set uses your customers' own words, so check enquiry emails, call notes and search queries and rewrite the questions to match.
Which assistants should I ask?
The ones your customers use. Ask each question several times in a clean session and on different days, and record whether you are named, whether your site is linked and who is named instead.