Most brands haven't measured it. Most don't know where they stand inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews. The audit described here changes that — five steps, two to four hours, a baseline measurement that drives everything that follows.
Step 1: Build Your Prompt Inventory
The prompt inventory is the foundation of an AI visibility audit. It's a structured set of queries that represent the questions buyers in your category actually ask AI engines — not branded queries, but category and problem queries. Use the 35-prompt starter set if you want a pre-built inventory; the categories below cover the same query types.
Start with 60 to 80 prompts across three buckets:
Category queries. "What are the leading [category] firms?" "Who are the best [discipline] agencies?" "What companies do [specific function]?" These surface which brands the engine sees as category leaders.
Problem/solution queries. "How do I [solve specific problem]?" "What's the best approach for [challenge]?" "Which brands are known for [capability]?" These surface which brands are associated with expertise in buyer pain points.
Comparative queries. "[Brand A] vs [Brand B]" "What's the difference between [approach X] and [approach Y]?" These reveal how engines characterize your brand relative to competitors.
Run your full prompt inventory — or a representative 25-prompt subset for a faster audit — across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini. Record results in a spreadsheet with columns for: platform, prompt, brands mentioned, your brand mentioned (Y/N), characterization of your brand, and sources cited.
The answers diverge significantly across platforms. A brand that dominates in Perplexity may be absent in ChatGPT. Google AI Overviews pulls from a different source mix than Claude. The composite view across all five is what matters for strategy.
Step 3: Calculate Your Baseline Citation Share
Citation Share = (number of prompts where your brand is mentioned) / (total prompts run) × 100.
Run this calculation by platform, by query category, and overall. The per-platform breakdown is often more useful than the aggregate — it tells you where you have strength and where the biggest gaps are.
For the full definitional framework and the weighted scoring formula, see Citation Share Is the New Discoverability KPI. For context on what competitive Citation Share looks like in your category, the AI Platform Citation Source Index 2026 maps which sources drive citation across 50 domains. The Who Controls AI Answers franchise tracks Citation Share by category. The Index for your category tells you which placements will move the audit number.
Step 4: Audit the Source Attribution
For every prompt where your brand appears, note which sources the engine cites. This is the most operationally useful layer of the audit — it tells you which of your earned media placements, research publications, or owned content is actually driving AI retrieval.
Sources that appear frequently across multiple prompts are your current retrieval anchors. Sources that should be driving retrieval but aren't indicate gaps in either coverage quality or source authority.
For every prompt where your brand doesn't appear at all, note which brands do appear and which sources drive their citations. This competitor source map is the starting brief for your next earned media program. If your category has a published Citation Share Index, the Index's Tier 1 publications are the highest-leverage targets for that program.
Step 5: Map the Characterization Accuracy
For every prompt where your brand appears, assess characterization accuracy on three dimensions:
Category positioning. Does the engine describe your brand as operating in the right category with the right positioning? Or is it characterizing you as something adjacent, outdated, or imprecise?
Capability representation. Does the engine accurately represent your core capabilities? Hallucinations — cases where the engine confidently states something factually incorrect — are a citation risk that needs to be addressed through entity development.
Sentiment. How does the engine's characterization read? As a leader, a niche player, a historical reference, or a primary recommendation? Sentiment shapes how buyers respond to seeing your brand in an AI answer.
What to Do with the Results
A completed AI visibility audit produces three actionable outputs:
A baseline Citation Share by platform and query category — the number all future measurement compares against. A source attribution map — which placements are driving citation, which aren't, and what the competitive source gap looks like. A characterization accuracy assessment — where the engine's model of your brand is accurate, where it's imprecise, and where entity development is needed.
These three outputs define the first 90 days of any AI Communications program. Run the audit quarterly. Citation Share shifts as the competitive landscape builds and decays, as new placements enter the retrieval pool, and as AI engine training cycles update their understanding of your category.
The brands that run this audit regularly — that treat Citation Share the way they treat traffic, leads, and revenue — are the ones building compounding AI visibility advantage. The ones that don't are guessing.
Where Your Audit Number Sits Against the Category
The audit gives you your own number. It doesn't tell you whether that number is good. That comparison comes from published research run on the same five engines.
The AI Visibility Index Franchise scores every named entity in a category against the same grid — full methodology here. Live indexes: Defense & Aerospace · Sports Betting & Gaming · Legal · Legal Tech · Credit Cards · Cannabis · Health & Wellness · Lottery · Amusement Parks · Pet Industry · Interior Design & Architecture · Restricted Categories · Bollywood · South Florida Luxury Real Estate.
Applied audits of full categories: Medical Aesthetics · Nonprofits.
Every study in one place: Everything-PR Research: The Master Index — eight research series, updated continuously.
Related: AI Visibility Audits (pillar) · Citation Share Is the New Discoverability KPI · Citation Share: The Metric That Replaced Share of Voice · The 35-Prompt Citation Share Audit · Measurement & Reporting: The 12-Month Playbook · How to Present Citation Share to Your CFO · What Is AI Communications? · What Is a Retrieval Anchor? · Why Most Brands Are Invisible Inside ChatGPT · AI Platform Citation Source Index 2026 · Everything-PR Research: The Master Index · AI Communications Dictionary
