A practical free way to check is a two-part routine. First, run a fixed set of realistic customer questions in ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity once a month and record whether your business is named and whether your website is linked as a source. Second, use the reporting you already have: Google Search Console now reports AI Overview and AI Mode impressions, Bing Webmaster Tools reports citations in Copilot, and your analytics can show some visits from AI tools.
No single check gives a complete picture. AI answers vary between people, sessions and days, so you're looking for patterns over time, not a one-off screenshot. Below is the routine, followed by what each official report can and can't tell you.
Mention, citation and click: know which one you're checking
Three different things can happen in an AI answer, and they're worth recording separately:
- Mention: your business name appears in the answer text.
- Citation: a page from your website is linked as a source. ChatGPT search can show inline citations and a Sources panel; Perplexity says every answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources (OpenAI Help: Searching the web with ChatGPT; Perplexity Help: How does Perplexity work?, both checked 2026-10-20).
- Click: someone follows that link to your site.
For the basics, see our AI citations guide.
You can be mentioned without being cited (the AI drew on another site that talks about you), and cited without being mentioned by name. Both are useful to know.
Step 1: Write 10–15 test questions your customers would actually ask
Use the language customers use with you, not your own marketing phrases. Mix three types:
- Category questions: "Who does corporate event photography in Singapore?"
- Problem questions: "How do I get my company's annual return filed on time?"
- Comparison questions: "What should I look for when choosing a [service] provider in Singapore?"
Add one or two brand questions too, such as "What does [Business name] do?" These show whether AI tools describe you accurately, which matters even if they rarely recommend you unprompted.
Keep the list fixed. Changing the questions each month makes the results harder to compare.
Step 2: Run the questions in a clean, comparable way
Results are personalised and vary, so control what you can:
- ChatGPT: make sure the answer used web search (look for citations or the Sources button). OpenAI says ChatGPT may use an approximate location from your IP address, and if memory is turned on, saved memories can influence how it rewrites your search (OpenAI Help, checked 2026-10-20). Use a new Temporary Chat and choose Unpersonalized before your first message. Temporary Chat can otherwise still use memories and custom instructions. This reduces account personalization, not location effects (OpenAI Temporary Chat guidance).
- Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: search in a private or signed-out window from Singapore. AI Overviews only appear for some searches, when Google's systems judge them useful (Google Search Central: AI features and your website, checked 2026-10-20), so "no AI Overview" is a common result and not a fault. Check the tool’s current availability and record whether you used AI Overviews or AI Mode.
- Perplexity: use the default search and note the numbered sources under each answer.
Run each question once per tool and don't keep regenerating until you get a "good" answer. If you want more confidence, run each question twice on different days.
Step 3: Record the results in a simple log
A spreadsheet with these columns is enough. In Notes, record the time, language, location, device, search mode and personalization setting, and save an answer screenshot or source list so you can compare like with like:
| Date | Tool | Question | Business named? | Our page cited? (URL) | Competitors named | Accurate? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The "Accurate?" column matters. If an AI answer describes your services, location or prices wrongly, that's often the most useful finding, because you can check the cited sources for unclear or outdated information. An inaccurate answer alone does not establish its cause.
After three months you'll see which questions you appear for, which tools cite you, and which pages they use.
What Google Search Console shows about AI Overviews and AI Mode
Google says pages that appear in AI features are included in the standard Performance report under the "Web" search type (Google Search Central: AI features and your website, checked 2026-10-20). For position, Google counts an AI Overview as a single position, and all links inside it share that position (Search Console Help: impressions, position and clicks, checked 2026-10-20).
Google introduced dedicated Search Generative AI performance reports on 3 June 2026 and confirmed worldwide rollout on 31 August. These show impressions and pages for AI features in Search and Discover, with country and date breakdowns and a device dimension for Search. They are visibility reports, not a complete record of individual AI answers (Google’s announcement).
What this means in practice:
- Search Console can tell you which of your pages are being shown in Google's AI features, and roughly how often.
- It can't show you the AI answer itself, whether your business was named in the text, or what competitors appeared.
- That's why the manual check in Steps 1–3 is still needed.
What Bing Webmaster Tools shows about Copilot
Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries aren't in the title of this guide, but they're worth checking because Bing provides its own citation report. Bing Webmaster Tools added an AI Performance report in public preview in February 2026. It shows total citations, average cited pages, sample "grounding queries" and citation counts per page across Copilot, Bing AI summaries and some partner integrations (Bing Webmaster Blog, February 2026, checked 2026-10-20).
Bing is clear that the figures reflect "how often pages are cited, not page importance, ranking, or placement", rather than a record of individual customer journeys. Check the current AI Performance documentation for available metrics; the report has expanded since its initial preview.
What your website analytics can (and can't) show
Visits from AI tools sometimes show up in analytics as referrals:
- ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and others: look for their domains and campaign-source labels in your referral or source reports.
These records are only part of the picture. Tracking settings and missing attribution can affect what analytics records, and visits are not the same as mentions or citations. A fall in referrals or rise in Direct traffic alone does not prove a change in AI visibility.
What to do with what you find
Your results will usually fall into one of these patterns:
- Not mentioned or cited anywhere. First check the basics: check whether the relevant search crawler can access your public pages; crawler access does not guarantee a citation. OpenAI says sites need to allow its OAI-SearchBot crawler to appear in ChatGPT search summaries; Perplexity's equivalent is PerplexityBot (OpenAI crawlers; Perplexity crawlers, both checked 2026-10-20). For Google, a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet. Also check the Search generative AI setting: Include is the default, but an Exclude setting can apply. No special AI file or schema is required (Google’s control documentation).
- Mentioned but described inaccurately. Update the relevant page so the facts (services, area served, prices or price ranges, hours) are clearly stated in plain text, and make sure the same facts appear consistently in other places you control, such as your Google Business Profile and social profiles.
- Cited for some questions but not others. Compare the questions you're missing with your pages. Often there's no page that answers that question directly and clearly.
- Competitors are named and you're not. Look at what the cited pages have that yours doesn't: a direct answer, specific details, or a page dedicated to that service.
What's outside your control: which questions trigger an AI answer, how each tool chooses and orders sources, personalisation, and day-to-day variation. Google itself says that even pages that meet every requirement aren't guaranteed to be shown. No one can promise that a business will be mentioned or cited.
How often to check
- Monthly: run your fixed question set and update the log (allow time for your chosen number of prompts).
- Monthly: glance at Search Console's AI reports and Bing's AI Performance report, if available for your site.
- After a significant site change: re-run the questions for the pages you changed, but allow a few weeks for tools to pick up changes.
Paid AI-visibility trackers exist and can automate this across many prompts. For most small businesses, a fixed manual test plus the free reports is enough to spot problems worth fixing.