Frequently asked questions

Your score combines two things: brand recognition — how well AI platforms know your business when asked directly — and blind discovery — whether you appear when customers search without naming you. Blind discovery counts more, because that's where new customers actually come from.

For blind discovery, we run multiple types of searches — category, local, service, and intent-based — with the intent query tailored specifically to your business type. An electrical contractor gets asked something like "who do you recommend after a power outage?" not a generic search anyone could run.

A business that scores well on direct recognition but never appears in unprompted searches isn't truly visible to AI — it's just known. The goal is to be recommended to customers who don't already know you exist.

The full breakdown of your score is in your report under "How your score is calculated."

Four platforms are queried directly through their real, official APIs: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. We send live questions to each one and score the audit based on their actual responses.

Google AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot are marked Estimated in every report. Neither offers a public API for asking "what does this AI say about Company X" the way the other four do, so we can't directly measure them the same way. See the next question for exactly why, and how the estimate is calculated.

Google AI Overviews: Google does not expose AI Overview data through Search Console, Google Ads, or any public API. There's no official way for any third-party tool, including ours, to ask "did AI Overviews mention this company" and get a direct answer. This is a well-documented, industry-wide gap. The standard workaround used across the AEO/SEO industry is manual sampling or browser-based scraping of search results, not an API, because no API exists.

Microsoft Copilot: Microsoft does publish APIs for Copilot, but they're built for grounding answers in a signed-in user's own Microsoft 365 data (SharePoint, Outlook, Teams), not for asking the consumer-facing version of Copilot what it thinks about an external company. There's no equivalent "ask Copilot about a brand" API the way there is for ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity.

We'd rather tell you this plainly than quietly treat a guess as a measurement.

The estimate is grounded in your company's general web presence signals: things like how findable you are through standard Bing and Google search, how clear and complete your website's information is, and your domain's general authority. Since both Copilot and AI Overviews are built on top of traditional web search and search indexes, these signals are a reasonable proxy, but they are not the same as a direct measurement.

Every report includes a specific finding on these two platform cards stating plainly that the score is an estimate and why. You'll never see an estimated score presented as if it were a real query result.

To compare you fairly against competitors, we run one extra question on each of the four real platforms, something like "what are the best options for [your category]?" with zero mention of your company name or any competitor's name. This mirrors what a real customer sees when they ask an AI for a recommendation, with no hint about who's asking or who they "should" mention.

We then check the raw response text for your company's name and each competitor's name, using the exact same matching logic for everyone. No special treatment for any name. This is what produces the gap analysis percentages and competitor scores in your report. It's a much more honest signal than asking an AI directly about you, since asking "tell me about Company X" can prime the model to be more favorable than it would be in an unprompted, organic answer.

Each percentage is the share of platforms (out of the four real ones tested) where your company's name showed up in the blind market comparison described above. If your business was mentioned on 1 of 4 platforms, that's 25%. If mentioned on all 4, that's 100%.

If any of the four real platforms is temporarily down or rate-limited when we run your audit, we stop and show this message instead of finishing with a partial result. A score built from only 3 of 4 platforms wouldn't be fair or comparable to other audits, so we'd rather ask you to try again than quietly give you a skewed number.

This is almost always temporary. AI providers occasionally have high-demand periods. Waiting a minute and retrying usually resolves it.

Most audits finish in 60–90 seconds. We first research your business to understand your location and category, then run up to 20 real-time queries across live AI platforms with web search enabled — covering 5 different query types to measure your visibility from every angle. It's slower than a simple search, but every number is grounded in something real rather than instant and made up.

Yes, a free account is required to view your audit results. This also lets you save your audit history and come back to past reports later from your dashboard.

Every recommendation gets both an impact level (high, medium, or low) and a priority rank from 1 to 5 relative to the other recommendations in your report, so even two "high impact" items will be ordered by which one to tackle first. Priority generally favors fixes that are foundational (like making sure AI tools know exactly which company you are) before more advanced content strategy work that builds on having a clear identity established.

Free: 1 audit included when you sign up. All 6 platforms, competitor benchmark, and gap analysis. No credit card required.

Credit packs (no subscription): buy audits when you need them, they never expire. 1 audit for $15, 5 for $60, or 10 for $100. Recommendations can be unlocked on any audit for $50 each.

Agency plans (from $499/month): Pro (50 audits), Scale (100 audits, scheduling), and Enterprise (250 audits, embeddable dashboards). All include recommendations on every audit, white-label branding, and client progress dashboards. Links go through howismy.site but your branding appears throughout.

After your audit runs, you can unlock 5 prioritised recommendations specific to that company's results: what to fix, in what order, with before/after examples and step-by-step instructions for each.

These are based on your actual audit data — your platform scores, what each AI said about your company, and how you performed in the blind competitive comparison. They are specific to your results, not generic advice.

If your company has limited web presence, some recommendations may be foundational (e.g. get listed in industry directories, build out your website). That is an accurate reflection of what needs to happen first, not a failure of the tool.

No. Credits you purchase never expire. Use them whenever you need them. There's no monthly reset or time limit.

Yes, you can cancel at any time. Your Agency plan stays active until the end of the current billing period. Credit packs have no subscription to cancel.

Audit credits and recommendation unlocks are digital products. All sales are final once delivered. We do not offer refunds because you disagree with the findings, because your scores are lower than expected, or because the recommendations feel obvious for your situation.

If there was a technical failure, for example the audit errored out and no results were delivered, contact us and we'll make it right.

If you're unsure whether the tool is right for you, start with the free audit before purchasing anything.

The Agency plan is for marketing agencies, consultants, and service providers who want to offer AI visibility auditing as part of their own service, under their own brand.

With Agency, you can set your logo, brand colors, and agency name. Your clients receive a branded progress dashboard at a unique shareable link — the link goes through howismy.site, but your branding appears throughout the dashboard and reports. You can track multiple clients, run audits against their business, add progress notes between audits, and show score improvement over time. Custom domain support is on the roadmap.

Agency is priced for resale. An agency charging clients $500 to $2,000/month for AI visibility work can cover the tool cost on a single client engagement.

Use the contact link at the bottom of this page and we'll get back to you promptly.