How to Measure AI Visibility: Are You Getting Found by AI or Are Your Competitors? | Ep.285

Measuring AI visibility requires more than checking whether ChatGPT knows your company name, taking a screenshot when your business appears, or trusting a single visibility score.

The more important question is whether your business is consistently showing up around the problems you solve, the topics you want to be known for, and the questions potential customers are asking before they know who they want to hire or buy from.

And when your competitors are showing up instead, the goal should not simply be to create more content. You first need to understand where they are appearing, what types of questions they are being associated with, where AI is getting its information, and whether your business is even being considered as part of the answer.

In this episode of the bcjr Podcast, I explain how businesses and marketing teams can measure AI visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI platforms; compare their visibility against competitors; distinguish between being mentioned, cited, considered, and recommended; and determine whether their visibility is actually improving over time.

AI visibility is not one ranking or one lucky result.

It is a pattern.

Good measurement helps you understand that pattern, identify what may be missing, and decide what to do next.

Podcast-Powered AI Visibility uses a recurring video podcast as the starting point for turning real business expertise into structured, searchable content that AI platforms can find and understand.

In this episode, I explain how the podcast becomes the source for a larger 360 content engine across your website, YouTube, social media, and other online platforms — and how that connected content can improve the way your business is understood, surfaced, and recommended online.

Read next: What is Podcast-Powered AI Visibility and How Can It Help Grow Your Business?

Getting found by AI starts with giving AI platforms useful information they can actually discover, understand, and connect back to your business.

In this episode, I break down five ways to improve your AI visibility: answer real customer questions, build topical authority, repurpose your expertise across multiple platforms, make your content easy to understand, and build credibility over time.

Read next: 5 Ways to Get Your Business Found in AI Search Results

This episode is a real-world example of what can happen when useful expertise is turned into structured, searchable, connected content.

Less than 24 hours after publishing a podcast episode, it ranked #1 organically on Google for its topic and was also cited by AI.

I break down the strategy behind the result, including topic selection, content structure, titles, descriptions, repurposing, and the role searchable content played in helping the episode get discovered.

Read next: How My Podcast Ranked #1 on Google & Got Cited by AI in 24 Hours

Creating content is only useful if people (and increasingly AI platforms) can actually find and understand it.

In this episode, I break down five common mistakes that can limit business discoverability: ignoring search intent, failing to repurpose content, publishing without promoting it, trying to monetize before optimizing, and using AI to replace original content instead of supporting it.

This is a natural next step after the skilled-trades conversation because getting your expertise online is only part of the equation. How that content is structured, repurposed, optimized, and distributed can determine whether AI platforms, Google, YouTube, social platforms, and potential customers ever find it.

Read next: Top 5 Content Marketing Mistakes Keeping Your Business From Getting Found Online

How Do You Know If Your Business Is Actually Getting Found by AI?

I think we’re asking the wrong question about AI visibility. Everyone wants to know, “How do we get our company found by AI?” And that’s an important question.

But there’s another one that marketing teams need to start asking: “When people ask AI questions about the problems we solve, the topics we’re experts in, and the decisions we want to be part of, are we actually showing up?”

And when our competitors are showing up instead, how do we know why? More importantly, how do we know whether anything we’re doing is actually changing it? Not one-off results. Not one lucky ChatGPT response. And not one random win.

The real questions are this: Where did we start? What did we change? And did our visibility actually move?

Because the next phase of AI visibility isn’t just measuring whether you’re showing up. It’s knowing whether you’re measuring the right things in the first place, whether the change you’re seeing is real, and what to do next.

AI visibility is getting a lot of attention right now, and understandably so. Businesses are realizing that discovery is changing. People aren’t only opening Google, typing a few keywords, scanning the search results, and deciding where to go next.

They’re asking ChatGPT. They’re using Gemini. They’re seeing Google AI Overviews. They’re asking Perplexity to research something for them. And a lot of the time, they’re not even searching for a company yet. They’re searching for an answer.

They have a problem. They’re trying to understand something. They’re comparing different ways of doing something. They’re trying to figure out what their options are before they even know who they should hire or what product they should buy.

And that changes the visibility conversation.

The first phase of this whole AI search conversation was basically: Can we get mentioned? Can we get cited? Can we get our company to appear somewhere inside an AI answer?

But I think we’re moving pretty quickly into the next phase: Can we actually tell whether we’re winning?

And when I say winning, I don’t mean typing your company name into ChatGPT and getting excited because it knows who you are. I don’t mean asking one perfectly worded question where your company happens to appear.

And I definitely don’t mean staring at one number on a dashboard when nobody can really explain what that number even means.

What I mean is this: Across the questions that actually matter to your customers, like the ones they’re actually asking, the problems you solve, the topics you want to be known for, and the decisions you want to influence, are you becoming easier to find?

Are competitors showing up more consistently than you?

Is AI using your content or information about your company?

Is it describing your business correctly?

Are you becoming part of the research and consideration process?

And most importantly, is any of that getting better over time?

That’s what I want to unpack.

Is AI Knowing Your Company the Same as AI Helping People Discover It?

One of the easiest mistakes to make with AI visibility is confusing recognition with discovery.

Let’s say I type something like, “Tell me about ABC Manufacturing,” and ChatGPT gives me a big beautiful answer about ABC Manufacturing.

Great.

But I gave it the company name. That doesn’t tell me much about whether someone who has never heard of ABC Manufacturing could actually find them.

The more interesting questions are things like this:

“What should a manufacturer look for when choosing an automation partner?”

Or, “How can a manufacturer reduce downtime on a production line?”

Or, “What are the biggest mistakes companies make when upgrading industrial equipment?”

Those questions are happening around the company’s expertise, not around its name. And that’s where this starts getting much more interesting.

Because the bigger opportunity isn’t simply getting AI to recognize your company. It’s becoming part of the answer before the buyer even knows your company exists.

And I think we need to separate a few things that are getting lumped together right now.

AI knowing your company exists is one thing.

AI using something you published as a source is another.

AI connecting your company with a certain problem or area of expertise is another.

AI bringing you into the conversation when somebody is looking at possible solutions is another.

And AI actually recommending your company for a specific situation is another.

Those things are connected, but they are not the same thing.

So when somebody tells me, “Our AI visibility is great,” my next question is: Great where? For what? And in what context?

Because not all visibility is equal.

Which Customer Questions Should You Use to Compare AI Visibility Against Competitors?

Now let’s bring competitors into this, because comparing yourself against competitors can be incredibly useful. But only if you’re comparing the right things.

You could make a list of a hundred questions tomorrow, run them through a tool, create a score, compare yourself with three competitors, and have a beautiful chart by lunchtime.

That doesn’t automatically mean the chart tells you anything useful.

The questions underneath all of this matter more than the pretty report.

If I’m looking at a business, I want to understand what potential customers are asking before they know they need that company, while they’re figuring out their options, and when they’re getting closer to making a decision.

Take a financial advisory firm.

The important question isn’t only, “Who are the best financial advisors near me?”

Sure, that matters.

But people are also asking things like, “How should I prepare financially before selling my business?”

“What should I do with the money after I sell my company?”

“How much do I realistically need to retire early?”

Or, “What tax issues should I think about before I sell a business?”

Those can be incredibly valuable questions.

And if the same competitor keeps appearing throughout those types of questions while your company is nowhere to be found, that tells you something.

Maybe they have better information around those topics. Maybe more websites are talking about them. Maybe AI has a much clearer understanding of what they’re an expert in.

Or maybe there’s an entire area your customers care about where your company simply hasn’t built much of a presence yet.

That is useful information.

So I don’t think about AI visibility as one ranking. I think about it as a pattern across a meaningful group of questions.

And there’s another thing to understand here. The exact question somebody types isn’t always the whole story.

AI can go off and look at a bunch of different information behind the scenes before it gives you an answer. So even if we build a really thoughtful list of questions to test, we’re still only seeing part of a much bigger discovery process.

That’s another reason I care a lot more about patterns than I do about one perfect prompt.

What problems do your customers have? What are they trying to understand? What are they comparing? What questions come up before they buy? What are they asking when they know they need help but they still don’t know who they want to call?

That’s the world you actually want to understand.

Because you can win one question and still be mostly invisible. And you can lose one question while still having a really strong presence across a much larger group of questions that matter to your business.

What Should Marketing Teams Measure for AI Visibility?

This is usually where a lot of people just want a checklist. And there are definitely things worth paying attention to.

But I want to be careful here because I don’t think there’s one magic number that tells every company whether its AI visibility is good or bad.

So what do I actually look at?

First, are you even showing up at all? Pretty simple, right?

And when you’re not showing up, who keeps showing up instead? Is it the same two or three competitors over and over again? Or is it completely different depending on the question?

Then I’d want to know where AI seems to be getting its information. Is it finding useful information on your website? Is it using other websites that mention your company? Are third-party websites constantly backing up your competitors while there isn’t much out there supporting your company?

I’d also want to know whether AI actually gets your business right when you do show up.

Does it understand what you do? Does it understand who you serve? Does it understand what you’re actually good at?

Because being visible for the wrong thing isn’t much of a win.

Then there’s the type of question you’re showing up for, because not every AI question has the same value to your business.

Somebody might be asking AI because they’re trying to learn something. Somebody else might be comparing possible solutions or getting ready to make a buying decision. And somebody else might simply be asking AI to write something or do a task for them.

Those are very different situations.

Maybe you show up everywhere when people are just learning about a topic, but the second they start comparing real options or getting closer to making a decision, you disappear.

Or maybe the opposite is true.

That difference tells you something.

And then the biggest one for me: Is any of this actually getting better over time?

Where did we start? What did we do? What happened after that?

That sounds simple, but AI doesn’t behave exactly like an old-school Google ranking. You can ask the same question more than once and get different wording, different sources, or even different companies in the answer.

ChatGPT might tell you one thing. Gemini might give you something different. Google could surface something else. And all of these platforms keep changing.

So one result can be interesting. But one result isn’t a pattern.

One response is an observation. Repeated patterns become evidence.

That’s why I keep coming back to measuring this over time.

What Should You Do When a Competitor Has More AI Visibility Than You?

Let’s say you do all of this. You put together a meaningful group of questions, figure out where you currently stand, and then discover something you really don’t want to see.

A competitor keeps showing up where you don’t.

Now what?

This is where I think a lot of the AI visibility conversation gets way too shallow, because the answer can’t automatically be, “Create more content.”

Maybe you do need more content. But first you need to figure out what the actual problem is.

What are they beating you on?

Are they strongly connected with a topic that you’re barely connected with? Do they have a much deeper body of useful information? Are other websites talking about them more? Does their website make it much easier to understand what they actually do?

Are they publishing something useful and original? Are they getting better reviews? Is their positioning clearer? Do they have more proof behind what they’re saying? Are they simply doing a better job answering a specific problem that their customers have?

Or maybe they’re not beating you everywhere at all. Maybe they’re only much stronger around one small group of questions.

Those are completely different situations, so they shouldn’t automatically get the same solution.

And before you even ask why a competitor is beating you, there’s an even simpler question: Are you showing up and losing, or are you not even being considered in the first place?

Because those are two very different problems.

If your company is showing up but another company keeps getting recommended ahead of you, that’s one thing.

If your company never even makes it into the conversation, that’s something else.

So before you try to move up, you need to know and understand whether you’re even in the game.

And that’s why I think the future of AI visibility gets much more interesting than watching mentions or staring at a score.

The valuable question becomes: What is everything we’re seeing telling us to do next?

Maybe you need a new piece of content. Maybe something that already exists needs to be updated. Maybe your website isn’t the problem at all.

Maybe you need stronger outside proof. Maybe there’s an important customer question nobody in your company has ever even created a piece of content around.

Maybe the way you describe your business is too vague. Maybe there just isn’t enough consistent information across the web for AI to clearly understand what your company should be known for.

The point is, what you do next should come from what you actually found. Not from chasing a score. And after you make the change, you look again.

Not because you’re trying to manufacture a prettier report, but because you want to know whether the thing you did actually helped.

That’s when this becomes something you can actually manage and improve instead of another dashboard you check once a month.

Can You Trust AI Visibility Screenshots and Scores?

This is probably the part that I want marketing teams and business owners to hear the most: be careful with AI visibility screenshots.

Somebody asks ChatGPT a question, their company appears, they take a screenshot, throw it on LinkedIn, and say, “Oh hey look! ChatGPT recommends us!”

Okay. Maybe that’s encouraging.

But what does it actually prove?

What happened when they asked again? What happened in Gemini? What happened when the question was worded a little bit differently?

What happens when somebody asks a broader question about the actual problem instead of asking the question in a way that basically leads AI straight to your company?

What if your competitor appeared eight times and you appeared once?

We need a higher standard than that.

And this is why testing questions matters, but the list of questions can’t tell you the whole story by itself.

If all I know is that you appeared in 37 percent or 62 percent or whatever percentage of some list of questions, I still want to know which questions they were.

I want to know who else appeared. I want to know where the information came from. I want to know whether you were just mentioned or whether you were actually being considered as part of the answer. And the other thing I want to know is whether that pattern is changing.

The same thing goes for AI visibility scores.

Let’s say somebody tells you, “Your AI visibility score is 73.”

Okay.

Seventy-three based on what?

What questions did they test? Who picked those questions? Are those actually questions your customers care about and are genuinely searching online? Did every question count the same?

Which AI platforms did they test? How often did they test them? What counted as showing up? What counted as being cited? What counted as being recommended? Did they measure your competitors exactly the same way?

I’m not saying a score is useless. A score can be extremely helpful.

But I need to understand how you got the number before I’m going to make a business decision because of it.

Otherwise, we’re just creating another vanity metric.

Marketing has already spent years watching companies obsess over impressions, followers, traffic, rankings, clicks, and engagement without always stopping to ask whether any of those numbers actually meant something for the business.

We don’t need to make the same mistake with AI visibility.

How Do You Know If Your AI Visibility Is Actually Improving?

And here’s another place where I don’t want people fooling themselves.

Let’s say we figure out where we currently stand, publish some new content, clean a few things up, and thirty days later our visibility improves.

Awesome.

But did what we did actually cause it?

Maybe.

Maybe a competitor lost visibility. Maybe another website published something about us. Maybe Google changed something in their algorithm. Maybe an AI platform changed. Maybe an industry publication mentioned our company.

So yes, I absolutely want to see those numbers moving in the right direction.

But I’m not going to automatically take credit every single time the number goes up. And I’m not automatically going to assume we screwed something up every time that number goes down.

And before we even start trying to explain why a number moved, let’s make sure we can trust the number in the first place.

Sometimes a platform has a reporting problem. Your chart can suddenly drop even though your visibility actually didn’t.

So sometimes your visibility changed.

And sometimes the measurement changed.

Those are obviously not the same thing.

None of this means measurement is pointless. It means we need to be smarter and understand how we use it.

So what you need to do is figure out where you started. Keep track of what you changed. See what happens next. Look for patterns instead of isolated wins. Pay attention to what competitors are doing around you.

And over time, you start building better evidence around what seems to actually be improving your visibility.

That is a much higher standard than claiming victory because of one screenshot.

What Is the Goal of Measuring AI Visibility?

I believe this is where the AI visibility conversation is heading next.

The first phase was, “Look, our company showed up in ChatGPT.”

Now the next phase is figuring out whether we’re actually getting better at this.

Are we showing up around the questions our customers actually care about and are currently searching for online? Are competitors showing up where we aren’t?

What changed?

And did anything we do actually move the needle?

Because businesses don’t need another marketing metric nobody can understand or explain. They need to know whether the work they’re doing is actually making them easier to find, understand, and trust across Google and AI platforms.

If you want to see how your business currently stacks up, go to BillCorcoranJr.com/assessment/ and take the free Podcast-Powered AI Visibility™ Assessment.

If there’s anything that you take away from this episode, I want you to understand this:

AI visibility isn’t just a ranking. It’s a pattern. And the goal isn’t just to show up once.

It’s to understand the pattern, improve it, and know exactly what to do next.

AI visibility is changing how business owners and marketing teams think about getting found, understood, and recommended across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and search. Listen on Spotify to AI Visibility for Business Owners & Marketing Teams, the bcjr Podcast, hosted by Bill Corcoran Jr., for practical episodes on AI search, content strategy, online discoverability, measuring AI visibility, and turning real-world business expertise into useful, searchable content.