More and more customers are asking AI before they ask Google. ChatGPT is now used by hundreds of millions of people every week, and Google’s Gemini app has passed 750 million users a month. So a fair question for any business owner is simple: when someone asks AI about what I do, does it mention me, and how would I even know?
The reassuring news is that “I have no idea” is no longer the only answer. In 2026 you can actually measure your presence in AI search, from a free five-minute check to proper ongoing monitoring. This guide explains the practical ways to track your AI visibility, what each one tells you, and where a small business should sensibly start.
Why you cannot rely on your old analytics
Your existing tools were built for the old web. Google Analytics tells you who landed on your site and where they came from, but when an AI assistant reads your information aloud or summarises it in an answer, the customer often never clicks through. You were mentioned, you may even have won the job, and none of it shows up as a visit.
That is the core challenge. AI visibility is about how often and how prominently you are named or cited inside an AI answer, whether or not anyone clicks. Measuring it needs a different approach: watching the answers themselves, not just your website traffic.
Start with the manual check (free, five minutes)
Before any tool, do the obvious thing: ask the AI yourself. Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity and type the questions a real customer would ask before hiring someone in your trade.
- “Who are the best [what you do] in [your town]?”
- “Recommend a [your service] near [your area].”
- “I need [the problem you solve]. Who should I call?”
Note whether you are named, who is named instead, and how you are described. Repeat it every few weeks. It is not a precise dashboard, but it is honest, it costs nothing, and it tells you the one thing that matters most: are you in the conversation or not? Our guide to checking if your business appears in AI search walks through this in more detail.
One caveat: AI answers vary from person to person and change over time, so treat any single result as a snapshot, not a verdict. That is exactly why tracking tools exist.
Use Google’s own AI reports (free)
Here is a genuinely useful 2026 development. On 3 June 2026, Google added generative AI performance reports to Search Console, and the rollout started with site owners in the United Kingdom. For the first time, Search Console shows your impressions inside Google’s AI features, its AI Overviews and AI Mode, separated out from ordinary search.
If you have Search Console set up for your website (and you should), it is worth checking whether these reports have reached your account. A few honest caveats:
- Right now the reports show impressions only, broken down by page, country and device. There are no clicks, click-through rates or query data yet. Google has said more metrics will follow.
- The rollout is gradual, so not every site has it.
Even with those limits, it is a real, free signal about whether your pages are surfacing in Google’s AI answers, straight from Google. For a UK small business it is the natural place to begin.
Dedicated AI visibility tools (free and paid)
A new category of tools now exists purely to track how AI talks about brands. They work by running a set of realistic prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and others on a schedule, then reporting how often you are mentioned, whether you are linked, how you are described, and who your competitors are in those answers. Crucially, good ones track unlinked mentions, not just clicks, which is the whole point.
A few worth knowing about:
- Semrush AI Search Visibility Checker offers a free check of your brand’s presence across AI platforms, tracking both direct links and unlinked mentions. A sensible free starting point.
- Otterly.ai, SE Ranking’s AI visibility tracker and Peec AI are approachable, lower-cost monitoring tools aimed at smaller teams.
- Profound is the heavyweight, enterprise-grade monitor, more than most small businesses need but worth knowing exists.
You do not need the most expensive option. For most small businesses, the free Semrush check plus a light monthly tool is plenty to spot the trend: are you being mentioned more or less over time, and for which questions?
What to actually measure, and what to ignore
Tools can drown you in numbers. For a small business, only a few things matter.
- Presence. For your core customer questions, are you named at all? This is the pass or fail.
- Share of voice. Of the businesses named for those questions, how often are you one of them versus your competitors?
- Accuracy. When you are mentioned, is what the AI says about you correct and current? A confident but wrong description (old phone number, service you dropped) is its own problem to fix.
- Sources. Which pages or listings is the AI drawing on to talk about you? That tells you what is working and what to strengthen.
Ignore vanity metrics and daily wobble. Track the direction of travel over weeks, not the reading on any single day.
Turn tracking into action
Measuring is only worth it if it changes what you do. When the tracking shows a gap, the fixes are the same handful of fundamentals every time: complete and consistent listings on Google and Bing, a steady flow of genuine reviews, and clear pages that answer real questions plainly. That is the same groundwork that decides why AI recommends some local businesses and ignores others, and it is set out step by step in our guide to getting your website into AI search results. If the AI is describing you inaccurately, the fastest fixes are usually your Google Business Profile and the answers on your own site.
So the loop is: measure, find the gap, fix the fundamentals, measure again. Do that a few times and you move from guessing to knowing.
The bottom line
You no longer have to wonder whether AI mentions your business. Start free: ask the assistants yourself, and check Google’s new AI reports in Search Console. Add a light tracking tool if you want to watch the trend properly. Then use what you learn to fix the fundamentals that make AI trust and name you. What gets measured gets managed, and AI visibility is finally something you can measure.
If you would like a hand setting this up, or an honest read on where your business currently stands in AI search, we can help. We work with small and medium businesses across Swindon and the South West on exactly this. Take a look at our AI services, or book a free AI visibility chat and we will show you what AI says about you today, and what to do about it.