Most brands have no idea whether AI engines are citing them, ignoring them, or actively recommending competitors instead.
That's a problem, because you can't optimize what you can't see. Before you invest in any GEO work, you need a clear picture of where your brand actually stands across the major AI platforms today.
Here's a practical five-step audit you can run this week. No tools required — just time and honesty about what you find.
Step 1: Define your buyer's real prompts
The audit only works if you test the questions your buyers actually ask. Not marketing keywords. Real prompts.
Start by writing down 15–20 questions in three categories:
Category questions — "What is the best [your category] tool for [your target segment]?" These are top-of-funnel and usually surface 3–5 competitor brands.
Problem questions — "How do I [solve the problem your product solves]?" These test whether your brand is associated with the underlying problem, not just the category label.
Comparison questions — "How does [your brand] compare to [competitor]?" or "Alternatives to [competitor]." These test whether AI engines know your brand exists in the competitive set at all.
Write them the way a real buyer would type them into ChatGPT. Casual, specific, sometimes messy. Not the polished phrasing of a keyword research spreadsheet.
Step 2: Run your prompts across every major platform
Test each prompt in:
- ChatGPT (with Browse enabled)
- Perplexity
- Google Gemini
- Google Search (to see AI Overviews)
- Claude (if your buyers use it — increasingly common in B2B and enterprise)
For each prompt on each platform, record:
- Whether your brand appears in the response
- Which competitors appear instead
- How your brand is characterized (accurately, generically, incorrectly)
- What sources the AI cites when applicable (Perplexity and Google AI Overviews show sources directly)
Use a simple spreadsheet. Rows = prompts, columns = platforms, cells = present/absent plus a note.
Step 3: Score your baseline citation rate
Once you've run everything, calculate two numbers:
Overall citation rate — what percentage of prompts, across all platforms, mention your brand? This is your baseline.
Category-share rate — of the prompts where any brand in your category is mentioned, what percentage include yours? This tells you your competitive share of AI attention.
Also note the platform breakdown. It's common to be strong in Perplexity (which relies heavily on live web retrieval and cites its sources) but weak in ChatGPT (which weights training data and long-established brand presence more heavily). Understanding where you're strong and where you're weak shapes the strategy.
Step 4: Diagnose why the gaps exist
For every prompt where you're absent but competitors appear, ask why. The answer usually falls into one of four buckets:
Content gap — the AI can't find a page on your site that clearly answers this question. Fix: create or restructure content to answer it directly, with the question as an H2 and the answer immediately below.
Schema and entity gap — the AI doesn't understand what your business is or what services you offer. Fix: implement Organization, Service, and FAQ schema; add a clean llms.txt file; audit your About and Services pages for entity clarity.
Authority gap — the AI doesn't have enough third-party evidence that your brand is credible in this space. Fix: earn mentions in the publications and directories AI engines rely on for your category. Digital PR and strategic content placement.
Recognition gap — the AI doesn't know your brand exists yet, especially in newer categories or with newer companies. Fix: consistent presence across the sources AI models draw from, plus branded content that establishes your positioning clearly.
Most brands have some combination of all four. The audit tells you which is biggest.
Step 5: Build a 90-day action plan
Don't try to fix everything at once. Prioritize by leverage:
Weeks 1–2: Technical foundations. Deploy schema, publish llms.txt, fix any glaring site health issues.
Weeks 3–8: Content restructuring. Identify your top 10 highest-value prompts from the audit and either create or rewrite pages to answer them directly, with FAQ blocks, defined terms, and clear structure.
Weeks 9–12: Authority signals. Pitch guest content, secure directory listings, and pursue mentions in the specific publications that came up as sources in your audit.
At the end of 90 days, re-run the exact same audit. Compare citation rates. That comparison is the evidence that GEO is working — and it's the number you should track every quarter going forward.
The one mistake to avoid
Don't skip the audit and jump straight to tactics.
We've seen brands invest six months into content and PR without knowing their baseline. When they finally measure, they can't tell what worked. Was it the content? The PR? Would they have gained citations anyway from something else? Without a baseline, you're guessing.
The audit takes half a day. It's the highest-leverage half-day of work you'll do this quarter.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I run this audit?
Quarterly at minimum. Monthly is better once you start actively optimizing, because you want to see the effect of changes on citation rate.
What's a healthy citation rate?
It depends on your category and competition. In competitive B2B categories, appearing in 30–50% of relevant high-intent prompts across all major platforms is a strong position. Below 15%, there's significant work to do.
Are there tools that automate this?
A few emerging tools attempt to track AI citations at scale, but most are still early. For now, manual auditing produces the most reliable and interpretable results — especially because you want to see the actual response, not just a citation flag.
What if my competitors are cited but I'm not?
That's the most common finding. It usually means competitors have stronger schema, better answer-ready content, more third-party mentions, or all three. The audit tells you the gap; the strategy addresses it.
Can I do this myself or do I need an agency?
You can absolutely do the audit yourself — that's why we published this guide. The strategic work of closing the gaps (schema, content restructuring, authority building, ongoing monitoring) is where working with a specialist pays off.
Want us to run this audit for you? Book a free strategy session and we'll walk through your baseline citation rate together →