AEO & Visibility·July 20, 2026·5 min read

Your Brand Is Probably Wrong in ChatGPT. Here Is the 90-Minute Audit.

Stop guessing whether AI search knows you. Run this query set, fill the gap matrix, and leave with a one-page fix list.

Maren HollowayJuly 20, 2026

Hero illustration and animation generated with Grok.

This post is about auditing how answer engines currently represent your brand. It is not about rewriting your entire site in one weekend. By the end you will have a one-page gap matrix and a fix order you can hand to a founder without a 40-slide deck.

I keep meeting teams who shipped schema, refreshed the homepage, and still have no idea what ChatGPT says when a buyer asks "what does [company] do" or "best [category] tools for [job]."

You cannot fix what you have not queried.

What you need before you start

90 uninterrupted minutes
A spreadsheet with five columns: Query, Engine, What it said, Gap type, Fix owner
Four engines if you can: ChatGPT (with search/browsing if available), Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overview or the AI Mode you actually see in your market
A human who knows the product well enough to spot a wrong pricing tier

Incognito or a clean workspace helps. Your logged-in personalization is not your buyer's world.

The query set (run all of them)

Numbered on purpose. Do these in order.

"What is [Brand]?"
"What does [Brand] do?"
"Who is [Brand] for?"
"How much does [Brand] cost?"
"Best [category] tools for [primary job]"
"[Brand] vs [Competitor A]"
"[Brand] vs [Competitor B]"
"Alternatives to [Brand]"
"Is [Brand] legit / trustworthy?"
"Recent news about [Brand]"
"[Primary product] tutorial" or "how to get started with [Brand]"
A category question that should include you but never says your name out loud, phrased the way a buyer would

If you sell in multiple segments, duplicate 5 and 12 per segment. Do not improvise mid-audit. Improvisation is how you cherry-pick good answers.

The gap matrix

For each answer, tag one primary gap:

Tag	Meaning	Typical fix
Missing	You should appear; you do not	Category proof, third-party mentions, clearer owned definition
Wrong	Invented feature, bad category, dead product name	Correct owned canon + earned corrections
Outdated	True last year, false now	Dated changelog, pressable update, refresh partners
Competitor-owned	Competitor is the default example in your category	Comparison pages are not enough; need independent cites
OK	Accurate enough to ship	Monitor quarterly

Caption for your screenshot folder: query, engine, date, gap tag. The caption is the section summary when you report up.

What the results usually look like

Patterns from client audits, not a claim about your brand specifically:

Query 1–3 are often "OK-ish" if you have any web presence. Soft wrong more than missing.
Query 4 (pricing) is a graveyard of invented tiers and "freemium" guesses.
Query 5 and 12 are where you discover you are not in the category set at all.
Query 6–8 are where competitors with better earned media win even if your product is stronger.
Query 9–10 surface old scandals, wrong founders, or total silence.

When the model is wrong, resist the urge to only update your homepage H1. Remember the citation mix: a large share of what models lean on is earned media, not your domain. Pair owned canon with something a third party can cite. See 84% of AI Citations Are Earned Media.

Fix order (after the 90 minutes)

Write the canonical 120-word answer to "What is [Brand]?" on a stable URL. Plain language. No banned marketing sludge. Date it.
Kill the most dangerous wrong (usually pricing or security claims) with a clear owned page and, if needed, a support note to partners repeating the old line.
Pick one category query you lost and build proof: customer artifact, benchmark with method, or independent review pitch. Not five thin blog posts.
Schedule a re-run of the same twelve queries in 30 days. Same order. Same engines.

Never start with a full rebrand because Claude misordered your feature list. Never start with a full rebrand because Claude misordered your feature list. Fix the fact, then the distribution of the fact.

Tiny experiment

Tomorrow, run only queries 1, 4, and 5 on two engines. Put the answers in a doc without commentary. Send them to your founder. Ask: "Would you fund a fix?" If the answer is no, either the gaps are small or the company is not serious about AI discovery yet. Both are useful information.

The scaffold for this audit is stable even when models change. The dial you turn is which gaps you fund first. The fail-state is screenshotting one flattering answer and calling the brand "AI optimized."

Sources

84% of AI Citations Are Earned Media (Promptway)
Muck Rack Generative Pulse
Getting Your Writing Seen Beyond Your Own Site (Promptway)

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