What Is AI Visibility and How Do You Find Someone to Fix It?

AI visibility is whether your business shows up — or does not — when someone uses an AI assistant to ask a question you should be answering.

That covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, and Claude. When someone types "best accountant in Melbourne" or "who does the best laser treatment in Sydney" into one of these tools, the AI generates a response. It pulls from websites, structured data, directories, review platforms, and — depending on the tool — its own training data.

If your business is not in that response, you have an AI visibility problem.

I use Perplexity myself, regularly, to find weekend activities for my four-year-old. It surfaces local suggestions I would not have found on page three of Google. It names businesses by name, with no ad layer to scroll through first. This is not a technology story any more. It is mainstream consumer behaviour — and it is accelerating.

Here is why you are confused about the terminology: they are all describing versions of the same problem, and the industry never agreed on a name.

What makes this genuinely hard is the fragmentation. I can see it in my own Google Search Console data: these terms break into dozens of small-volume query variants. No single keyword captures all the people searching for the same problem — which means you basically need content for every version of the term. The searches are splitting across all of them.

The name does not tell you enough. What matters is whether the person you hire has actually opened ChatGPT and tested how your category appears.

The fastest self-test: open ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude separately. Type the same question your ideal client would ask when looking for someone like you. Note every business named in the response.

If you are not there, you have a visibility gap. If your competitors are there and you are not, you have an urgent one.

I have one client who appears in Perplexity, Gemini, and ChatGPT for their primary service — but did not appear in Claude for a specific query. The reason: Claude pulled from Google My Business, and the profile had stale data. Old address, old phone number. The profile was what caused the gap — not the website, not the content.

One check most businesses skip: do you have a Bing Webmaster Tools account as well as a Google Search Console account? ChatGPT draws from Bing's index, not Google's. If your website is not verified in Bing and performing well in Bing search, you are invisible to one of the most-used AI assistants on the planet. You need both.

Because the terminology is still fragmenting, you will miss good consultants if you search only one term. Try these in combination:

• AI visibility consultant [your city]
• GEO SEO consultant
• generative engine optimization specialist
• AI SEO consultant
• LLM SEO consultant
• AI search optimization expert
• how to appear in ChatGPT SEO

Then notice whether that consultant's own website appears in AI tools when you search their specialty. If they claim to offer AI visibility services but do not appear in AI results themselves, that is useful information.

There is a useful meta-test here: if you ask ChatGPT or Perplexity to recommend an AI visibility consultant, the people it names have already solved this problem for themselves. That is a reasonable proxy for competence.

Try these prompts:

• "Who are the best AI visibility consultants in [your city or country]?"
• "What should I look for when hiring someone to improve my business visibility in AI answers?"
• "What questions should I ask an SEO consultant about AI search optimisation before hiring them?"
• "Find me a consultant who specialises in GEO or generative engine optimisation."

Responses will vary by tool and by day — AI answers are not static. But the pattern of who appears consistently, across multiple tools and multiple query variations, tells you who has genuinely solved the problem.

In practice, a visibility audit involves opening every major AI platform and running a structured set of queries across your service categories, location signals, and competitor terms. Each platform behaves differently.

This is why I include a visibility audit in every retainer now. Not because the problem is always severe, but because the gaps show up in unexpected places — and the fix is often simpler than clients fear.

• Verify you have both a Google Search Console account and a Bing Webmaster Tools account — and that your site is indexed and performing in both
• Run your top five service queries in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude — record exactly who appears and in which platforms
• Check your Google Business Profile for accuracy: name, address, phone number, current description, and correct service categories
• Ask any consultant you consider: "Can you show me how my business currently appears in ChatGPT and Claude specifically?"
• Search the consultant's own name or specialty in ChatGPT and Perplexity — do they appear as a recommended expert?
• Ask what their process is for each platform where you have a gap — not just their general methodology
• Ask for a visibility audit before committing to a retainer — the audit should name specific gaps, not just propose a general strategy
• Clarify which AI tools they monitor on an ongoing basis and how often they report on changes