When clients ask AI who to hire,
will your name come up?

Run nine practical checks to see whether AI names you or skips you, then get your score and a prioritised fix list. The setup is right below.

Free. About five minutes. Clear guidance, no jargon.

This guided assessment has nine checks and takes about five minutes. Start by writing down your business name, your public website, and what your ideal clients would search for to find you, in the plural, such as “operations consultants”. The three supporting checks do not affect your manual total. Only add the six scored ladder numbers for a score out of 24.

Business setup

Write down the details used by the practical checks

Business name, a plural category such as “operations consultants”, and your public website. Use those exact details in the prompts and links below.

01 / 09 · Supporting check, does not affect your score

Run a live AI reality check

Ask: “Which [category] should I consider for a founder-led service business?” Then ask: “Have you heard of [business name]?” Use a logged-out or private window to reduce the influence of account history. This is closer to a new buyer's view, not a fully objective result.

Open Perplexity, then paste both questions

  • We appeared clearly and the description was accurate.
  • We appeared, but inconsistently or inaccurately.
  • We did not appear.
  • I have not checked yet.

02 / 09 · Identity

Does AI actually know who you are?

AI recommends businesses it can identify as a distinct, real thing. If it cannot pin down who you are, it will not recommend you.

  1. When I search for myself, I'm barely there, and what's online is old or half-finished.
  2. I'm online, but my name, what I do, and my details change from place to place.
  3. I use one consistent name everywhere, but what I do and who it's for gets described differently in different spots.
  4. I've got one name and one plain line for what I do and who I help, used almost everywhere, with my name and business clearly linked.
  5. All of that, and I show up as a recognised business in a trusted source like a Google profile or a reputable directory, matching everywhere.

03 / 09 · Structure

Is your expertise structured so AI can answer with it?

AI does not recommend your services page. It lifts answers. If your knowledge is not shaped as answers to real questions, it stays invisible.

  1. My site mostly describes what I offer, and nothing is shaped as an answer to a question.
  2. A page or two touches on common questions, but it's mostly marketing phrasing.
  3. I have genuine question-and-answer content using the actual words my clients use.
  4. My headings read like the questions people ask, so AI can match them to a query.
  5. All of that, and I back my claims with specifics like numbers, examples, or a named method that AI can quote and credit to me.

04 / 09 · Proof

Do you have outside signals AI can trust?

AI weighs what others say about you more heavily than what you say about yourself. No outside signal, no confidence to recommend.

  1. The only place that talks about how good I am is my own website.
  2. I have testimonials, but almost all of them live on my own site.
  3. I'm mentioned or reviewed in one or two places I don't own.
  4. I'm referenced by name on a few sites I don't own, like podcasts, guest articles, partner pages, or third-party reviews.
  5. All of that, and I've been quoted, interviewed, or cited as an expert somewhere public.

05 / 09 · Supporting check, does not affect your score

Check Moz Domain Authority

Open Moz Domain Analysis and record an integer from 1 to 100, or “Not checked yet”. Domain Authority is Moz's comparative prediction of Google ranking likelihood based on a machine-learning model of link metrics. It is not a Google ranking factor, an AI ranking factor, or a universal threshold. Compare it with genuine category competitors before deciding what it means.

Open Moz Domain Analysis

06 / 09 · Readability

Can AI actually read your website?

A site that looks fine to you can be a locked door to the bots AI uses to read websites. If AI cannot read your site, none of the rest counts.

  1. I'm not sure AI can even read my site, or my content needs code to load, or key words live inside images or PDFs.
  2. My main content is plain text AI can read, but I have no schema markup.
  3. I have schema markup on my key pages, at least for my organisation and me as a person.
  4. My schema also covers my FAQs, so AI knows how to lift my answers.
  5. All of that, and I've checked that nothing like robots.txt is quietly telling AI bots to stay away.

07 / 09 · Supporting check, does not affect your score

Open your website's /llms.txt address

Open [website origin]/llms.txt. The llms.txt format is a proposed AI-friendly content map. It is not a crawler permissions file, does not replace robots.txt or schema, and does not guarantee citations. Record whether a useful file is present, a file is present but uncertain, no file is present, or you have not checked yet.

08 / 09 · Question-fit

Are you answering the questions clients actually ask AI?

People do not type your service name into AI. They describe a situation. Your content has to match the way they actually ask.

  1. My content is about my services and features, not the situations my clients describe.
  2. I've written about a few of the problems my clients have, but in fairly general terms.
  3. My content names real use cases and situations, not just service titles.
  4. I have comparison or 'how to choose' content that helps someone actually decide.
  5. All of that, and I have content matching 'best [thing] for [situation]' questions the way people really ask AI.

09 / 09 · Voice

Do you sound like yourself?

Getting cited is half of it. Getting cited as yourself is the other half. AI can only attribute a clear point of view. Generic content gets absorbed and credited to no one.

  1. My content is neutral information anyone could have written, or it sounds like generic AI fill.
  2. There's a bit of me in it, but it's inconsistent from one piece to the next.
  3. My content carries a clear point of view, not just neutral facts.
  4. I take positions clear enough that AI could attribute them to me specifically.
  5. All of that, and someone could read three of my pieces and recognise the same voice across all of them.

Add your six numbers: your total is ___ / 24

What your score means

0 to 6

Invisible

Right now, AI doesn't know you exist. When someone asks for a recommendation in your space, your name isn't in the running, because there's nothing solid for the machine to find, read, or trust. That's not a verdict on your work. Plenty of excellent operators are invisible to AI simply because nothing on the outside has been built for it yet. That's fixable, and the fix is foundational, not fiddly.

Your next move: Don't chase tactics yet. Start with identity. Make your name, your one-line description, and your founder-to-business link identical and clear everywhere they appear. Until AI can confidently say who you are, nothing else lands.

7 to 12

Findable, not recommended

AI can find traces of you, but it won't put you forward. You exist as a name without enough structure or proof behind it. You turn up if someone searches you directly, but you don't get suggested to someone who's still deciding. This is the most common place for good service businesses to sit. You've done the human-facing work. The machine-facing work hasn't caught up.

Your next move: Pick your two weakest checks and fix those first. For most people here, that's Structure (03) and Proof (04). Turn one core page into clear answers to real client questions, and get two third-party mentions live. That combination moves you from found to suggested faster than anything else.

13 to 18

In the mix

You show up. When the topic is right, AI sometimes includes you, sometimes doesn't. You're in the consideration set but not a default. The gap now is consistency and distinctiveness, not foundations. You've got the basics holding. What's missing is the edge that makes AI reach for you specifically rather than whoever else fits the slot.

Your next move: Look at Question-fit (08) and Voice (09). Map the real questions your clients ask AI before they buy, and build content that answers them in a voice that's unmistakably yours. Being in the mix is fine. Being the named recommendation is the goal, and that comes from sounding like a specific person with a clear position.

19 to 24

Cited and recommended

AI knows who you are, can read you, trusts the signals around you, and can recommend you as yourself. You're doing the work most of your competitors haven't started. That's rare. The risk at this level isn't absence, it's drift. AI visibility isn't set-and-forget. Signals decay, competitors catch up, and engines change how they weight things.

Your next move: Protect and extend the lead. Run this check quarterly, watch your weakest dimension, and keep publishing in your own voice on the questions your clients are actually asking. You've built the foundation. Now compound it.

The self-check estimates.
The Snapshot shows you the actual answer.

These checks tell you where you probably stand. The Citeability Snapshot shows you exactly what AI says about your brand right now, on the queries your clients actually ask, who it names instead of you, and at least eight fixes in priority order. The same method, run for Andre Obradovic, put him in four AI answers within six weeks.

Get your Snapshot →

$197. Report and video walkthrough. No call, no catch.

The Five-Folder System, free, in your inbox.

The folder template, a checklist of what drops into each one, and the copy-paste prompt that points any AI tool at it. About thirty minutes to set up.