In our own Search Console, searches turn up that are written like questions to an assistant: “how do i ensure ai tools describe my company correctly?” and, in Swedish, “hur mäter man sitt företags synlighet i ai-svar?” (how do you measure your company’s visibility in AI answers?). It is a fair question. In Sweden, just over 7 in 10 internet users aged 8 and over say they usually use Google’s AI Overviews, and 52 per cent have used ChatGPT in the past year, according to Svenskarna och internet 2026 (Swedes and the Internet), the Swedish Internet Foundation’s annual survey.

This guide covers what can be measured, where the figures are and what they do not tell you, with figures from our own site. As of 20 October 2026.

How do you measure your business’s visibility in AI answers?

Use four sources, plus a paid tool if you want to automate the checks. Search Console shows Google’s AI answers and Bing Webmaster Tools shows Copilot and Bing, both free and with the platforms’ own figures. For ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini we have not found an official dashboard for businesses, so you run your own checks. Your analytics show the visits that AI answers send on.

SourceWhat it coversWhat you seeWhat is missing
Search Console, the generative AI reportAI Overviews and AI Mode in Google SearchImpressions by page, country, device and dateClicks and queries
Bing Webmaster Tools, AI PerformanceCopilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrationsCitations, cited pages and a sample of the queries behind themClicks
Your own checksChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and GoogleWhether the business is named, which sources are cited and what is saidHow many people ask the question
AnalyticsVisits from AI servicesNumber of visits and what visitors doVisits with no information on where they came from
Paid toolsSeveral AI services, automaticallyThe same as your checks, more oftenAccess to Google’s internal systems, according to Google

Measure on the same day every month and compare with the previous month. A single answer says little, because AI answers vary between occasions and between users.

Five-step diagram for measuring visibility in AI answers every month: impressions by page in Search Console, citations in Bing Webmaster Tools, the same 20–30 customer questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google, a log of whether the business is named, which competitors and sources appear and what is said, and correcting errors at the source.
Search Console shows impressions but not clicks or queries, and Bing shows citations in Copilot. For ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini you measure it yourself. As of 20 October 2026.

Search Console: where to find Google’s figures for AI answers

Search Console has a report of its own for how your site appears in Google’s generative AI features. Google introduced it on 3 June 2026 for a subset of sites, and by 31 August 2026 it had been rolled out to all websites, according to Google’s blog and Help Centre.

In our Search Console, the report sits in the menu under Performance and is called Generative AI features, labelled beta when we checked on 19 October 2026. Google’s Help Centre calls it the Generative AI performance report (Search). There is also a separate generative AI report for Discover.

This is what the report shows:

  • Impressions: how many times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Several links to the same site in the same AI answer count as one impression.
  • Breakdowns by page, country, device and date, and by the search types text-based and multimodal, meaning searches with an image, for example through Google Lens.
  • No clicks and no queries. You see which pages appear, but not for which questions.

The clicks exist, but you cannot separate them out. Google says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the standard Performance report, under the Web search type, and the impressions in the AI report are included there too. So do not add the figures from the two reports together.

Two rules from Google’s Help Centre on how the figures are counted: all links in an AI Overview are given the same position, and a follow-up question in AI Mode counts as a new query.

If the report is missing, Google says this is usually because the site has too few impressions in AI features, or because the site has been excluded from them. Exclusion is controlled by a setting under Settings > Search generative AI. By default your site is included. If you choose to exclude it, that applies to AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. Google says the setting is not used as a ranking signal in the rest of Search and does not affect the training of AI models, which is controlled by Google-Extended instead. For a local business, excluding the site is rarely the right call in our assessment: you lose the impressions without stopping the training.

How to use the report: compare the pages that get impressions with the pages you want to be seen. If an old article gets impressions but your service page does not, you know where to start. How to improve your chances of being cited in Google’s AI answers is covered in Google AI Overviews.

Example: what our own report showed

Search Console for synlighetsverket.se, 18 July–17 October 2026, read on 19 October 2026.

The site had 3,610 impressions in Google’s generative AI features during the period. The curve went from almost zero in July to about 130 impressions a day in mid-October.

Most of it came from a single guide. The guide to TikTok Shop in Sweden had 1,456 impressions in AI answers in Swedish and 1,291 in English, 2,747 together or about 76 per cent. The rest was spread over several pages, including the guides on AI Overviews and GEO. The guide to Google AI Overviews had 126.

What we take from it: our guides about AI answers were not the ones that appeared most in AI answers. A short, dated guide on a question many people were asking at the time was. That is a correlation on one site over three months, not a rule, and the report says nothing about how many people clicked through.

Bing Webmaster Tools: citations in Copilot and the queries behind them

Microsoft has a similar report, and on one point it shows more than Google’s: the queries. The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools has been available as a public preview since 10 February 2026. It covers Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations, according to Microsoft’s webmaster blog.

  • Citations: how many times your site’s content was shown as a source in AI answers.
  • Cited pages: which pages are cited, and how many a day on average.
  • The queries behind them (grounding queries): the phrases the AI used when it retrieved your content. Microsoft says this is a sample.
  • Clicks are not among the metrics Microsoft describes.

On 13 October 2026 Microsoft added the Topics Portfolio tab, in beta. It groups the queries into topics, shows how many other sites are cited and lists queries where other sites are cited but yours is not. The tab only appears if your site has enough data, so a smaller site may see few topics or none.

Bing is worth including: in Sweden, 18 per cent of internet users aged 8 and over have used Copilot in the past year, according to Svenskarna och internet 2026. OpenAI also says that ChatGPT’s web search sometimes works with other search providers, and refers to Microsoft’s privacy statement among others. That does not mean Bing’s report shows ChatGPT, but in our assessment it is one more reason to make sure your site is indexed in Bing.

How can you see whether your business is named when customers ask ChatGPT?

By asking yourself, with the same questions every month. We have not found an official dashboard where a business can see how often it is named in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini (as of 20 October 2026). The same method works for all three, and for Google.

Choose 20–30 real customer questions

Take the questions from what customers ask on the phone and by email, from the question-like searches in Search Console and from the “People also ask” box in Google. Mix four kinds:

  • About the business: “what is [business name]?” and “what does [service] cost at [business name]?”
  • About the category: “which [trade] in [town] would you recommend?” This is where it is decided whether the business comes up at all.
  • Comparisons: “[your business] or [competitor]?”
  • The problem: the question customers have before they know the business exists, for example “how do I get rid of damp in the basement?”.

Log the answers in a spreadsheet

ColumnWhat you write
DateThe day you asked the question
Service and modeFor example ChatGPT, signed out, with web search
QuestionWord for word, the same every month
Is the business named?Yes or no, and its place in the list
CompetitorsThe ones that are named
SourcesThe sites the answer refers to
What is saidIs it correct? Copy any errors word for word
ActionWhat needs correcting, and where

A few things keep the log comparable over time:

  • Start a new chat for each question.
  • Use the same mode every time. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT may use an approximate location based on your IP address, and saved memories when it phrases its search. Web search also works for people who are not signed in.
  • Ask the question the way a customer would, in their language and with the town.
  • Include Google. Search Console does not show the queries, so search for the most important ones yourself and note whether an AI Overview appears and whether your business is in it.
  • Ask the five most important questions twice and note whether the answers differ.

With 25 questions in three services, that is 75 answers to read every month. Start with fewer questions rather than skipping months. More on how ChatGPT gets its information is in How your business shows up in ChatGPT, and on Perplexity’s sources in Optimise for Perplexity.

Find the AI visits in your analytics

Google Analytics 4 has a default channel called AI Assistant. According to Google’s Help Centre, it groups visits from services such as ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot and Grok. Visits from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, on the other hand, count as Organic Search. If you use another analytics tool, look for sources such as chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai.

Expect the figure to be on the low side. A visit where the browser does not pass on where the visitor came from ends up as direct traffic, even if the click came from an AI service. So also ask new customers how they found the business, with “an AI service such as ChatGPT” as one of the options.

There are AI visibility tools that put your questions to several AI services automatically, often every day, and show how often you and your competitors are named and which sources are cited. Three examples, with the lowest monthly-billing price on each pricing page, read on 20 October 2026:

Tool and planPrice a monthQuestions includedAI services according to the pricing page
OtterlyAI, Lite€2915ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot. Gemini and AI Mode as add-ons.
Peec AI, Starter€8550Three AI models of your choice
Semrush, SEO + AI Search Starter$19950Not stated on the pricing page

The prices are as the pages showed them to us from Sweden. They may appear in another currency depending on where you are, and we have not checked whether VAT is added. We have not compared the tools and do not rank them.

Three things to know before you pay:

  • The tools simulate questions. They do not see what your customers actually ask, and Google says no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.
  • Language and country matter. Check that the tool can ask the questions in your customers’ language and from their country. At Peec AI, multiple countries are only included from the Advanced plan.
  • The questions are still your job. A tool with the wrong questions measures the wrong thing.

Which questions do competitors appear for, but not you?

Add a column per competitor to your log. After two or three months you will see which questions name your competitors but not you, and which sources those answers refer to. That list is what you work from.

For Copilot and Bing, the Topics Portfolio tab in Bing Webmaster Tools does the same, with queries where other sites are cited but yours is not. Paid tools often have a similar comparison. Peec AI, for example, lists among its features a gap analysis of sources that name competitors but not you.

Look closely at the sources. If a competitor is named because it is listed in a trade directory, a local article or a comparison page where your business is missing, that is where the action is. How to review a competitor more broadly is covered in Audit a competitor in 15 minutes.

How do you get AI tools to describe your business correctly?

Correct the source, not the answer. AI services build their answers on what they find, so when an answer is wrong, in our assessment it is usually one of the sources that is wrong, out of date or unclear. Start with the sites in the Sources column.

  • The same details everywhere. Name, address, phone number, opening hours, services and prices should be identical on your website, in your Google profile, in directories and in your social channels.
  • A page of your own that answers the question. If the answers get your price or your town wrong, make sure there is a page on your site that answers exactly that, with a date.
  • Your Google profile. Google says Business Profiles can help make products and services visible in AI responses. Google reviews changes to a profile before they go live, so expect a delay. More in Google Business for local businesses.
  • Reviews. Google says its AI features can show what is being said about products and services across the web. For a local business, reviews are a large part of that, in our assessment. More in Reviews and trust.
  • The sites that AI answers cite. If a directory or another site has the wrong details, change them there or ask the site to correct them. Perplexity shows numbered sources for each answer, and ChatGPT answers based on a web search may include citations, so you can often see where the error comes from.
  • Let the search crawlers in. According to OpenAI, OAI-SearchBot must be allowed to crawl your site for it to appear in ChatGPT’s search results, and OpenAI also says placement is not guaranteed. How to check this is covered in AI SEO in practice.
  • Tell the service. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode have a thumbs-down button for answers that are wrong, and Google itself says AI Overviews can and will make mistakes. That is a complement. What changes the answers over time is the sources.

Changes do not show up straight away. OpenAI says a change to robots.txt can take about a day to take effect in ChatGPT’s search, and what a language model has already learnt only changes with new model versions. So measure the effect over several months.

Why answers vary, and what that means for measuring

Two people asking the same question can get different answers, and the same person can get different answers at different times. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT may use an approximate location and saved memories when it searches. According to Google, AI Mode divides the question into subtopics and searches for each one at the same time across several data sources, and Google says AI Mode does not always get it right.

That means four things for measuring:

  • Measure trends, not single answers. The business missing from one answer means little. Missing from 20 of 25 questions three months in a row means something.
  • Keep the method fixed. The same questions, the same services, the same mode and roughly the same day. If you change the questions, start a new series.
  • Separate visibility from business. Impressions and mentions are not enquiries. What counts is what customers do next.
  • Do not trust guarantees. Nobody can promise a place in AI answers, and neither do we.

What the work of appearing in AI answers involves, and what the terms mean, is covered in the pillar guide What is GEO? and in AI SEO in practice. How we work with it is described under AI visibility on our services page.

Checklist: the monthly measurement routine

Frequently asked questions

How do you measure your business’s visibility in AI answers?

Use four sources: the generative AI report in Search Console for Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools for Copilot and Bing, your own monthly checks with the same customer questions for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, and your analytics for the visits. Compare month by month rather than judging by single answers.

How can we see whether our business is named when customers ask ChatGPT?

Ask the questions your customers ask yourself, in a new chat and the same way every month, and log whether the business is named, which competitors are named and which sources the answer refers to. We have not found an official dashboard from OpenAI where businesses can see how often they are named (as of 20 October 2026).

Are there tools that show whether competitors are more visible than us in ChatGPT?

Yes, there are paid AI visibility tools that put your questions to several AI services automatically and compare your business with competitors. The ones we checked on 20 October 2026 started at €29 a month for 15 questions. Check that the tool can ask the questions in your customers’ language and from their country, and remember that it simulates questions and does not see what customers actually ask.

How do we find the questions where competitors appear but we don’t?

Log every question with a column per competitor, and after a few months you will see where competitors are named but your business is not, and which sources those answers rely on. For Copilot and Bing, the Topics Portfolio tab in Bing Webmaster Tools lists queries where other sites are cited but yours is not, if your site has enough data.

How do I ensure AI tools describe my company correctly?

Correct the sources the answers are built on: the same details on your website, in your Google profile and in directories, a page of your own that answers the question directly, reviews and the sites that AI answers cite. Changes take time to come through, so measure the effect over several months.

Does Search Console show clicks from AI Overviews?

Not separately. The generative AI report shows impressions only, and according to Google, clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the standard Performance report under the Web search type, together with other clicks from Search.

Sources

All web pages read on 20 October 2026. The details about reports, settings and prices reflect the situation in October 2026 and may change.