How do I check my AI visibility?

15 October 2026 · By John Carlsson

Start with the free official reports: Search Console's Generative AI performance report shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report shows citations in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. For ChatGPT, track referrals tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com in your analytics. For everything else, test your key questions by hand in each tool.

Google: the Generative AI performance report

Google introduced Search generative AI performance reports in Search Console in June 2026. According to the Search Console help page, the Search report shows how your site performs in generative AI features on Google Search, covering AI Overviews and AI Mode. Generative AI data for Discover is in a separate report, and Search Labs experiments are not included. Since 31 August 2026 it has been available for all websites worldwide.

The help page defines impressions as how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature. You can group the data by:

Pages (assigned to the canonical URL)
Countries
Dates (day, week or month, Pacific Time)
Devices

A search type filter separates Web: text-based from Web: multimodal (image searches such as Google Lens and Circle to Search). The newest data may be preliminary, shown as a dotted line, and the normal 1,000 row table limit applies.

Clicks and impressions from AI features are also counted in your normal Performance report. Google's AI features page says they are included in overall search traffic under the Web search type.

If the report is missing, check Settings, then Search generative AI. Google says the report may be hidden if your site is excluded from these features, or if it has not had enough impressions yet.

Bing: AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools

Microsoft announced AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools as a public preview on 10 February 2026. It shows how your content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and selected partner integrations. The metrics include:

Total citations: how often your content is shown as a source in AI answers.
Average cited pages: the daily average of unique pages cited.
Grounding queries: a sample of phrases the AI used when it retrieved your content.
Page-level citation counts and trends over time.

In June 2026 Microsoft added Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare to the report, also in preview. Citation Share shows your citations as a percentage of all citations for the same grounding query.

Microsoft notes that citation counts do not indicate ranking, importance or position within an answer.

ChatGPT: referral tracking

OpenAI does not offer a webmaster report, but its publishers FAQ says ChatGPT automatically adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to referral links. In Google Analytics 4, open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, and look for chatgpt.com as a session source. This only counts people who clicked, not every time you were cited.

Before testing, make sure OAI-SearchBot is allowed in robots.txt. OpenAI's crawler page says sites that opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.

Manual testing in ChatGPT and Perplexity

For tools without a report, test by hand:

Write down 10 to 20 questions your customers actually ask, in their words.
Ask each one in ChatGPT with search on, and in Perplexity.
Open the sources or citations list for each answer and note whether your site appears, which page, and which competitors are cited.
Repeat on the same day each month so you can compare like with like.

Answers change between runs, so treat one result as a snapshot, not a ranking. OpenAI's ChatGPT search help itself says results and citations can be incomplete, outdated or incorrect. For Perplexity, check its crawler documentation: it recommends allowing PerplexityBot in robots.txt so your site can be surfaced and linked in its results.

Checking the page itself

Reports tell you what happened, not why. If a page is not being picked up, the AEO Checker on this site gives a quick review of the page before you retest.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Why can I not see the Generative AI performance report in Search Console?

Google's help page gives two reasons. The report may not appear if your site has not yet had enough impressions in generative AI features, and it may be hidden if you have excluded your site from Search generative AI features in Search Console settings. Check Settings, then Search generative AI, and make sure the property is set to include your site.

Can third-party AI visibility tools see Google's data?

Not Google's internal data. Google's guide to generative AI features says no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems, and advises checking any tool's advice against official guidance. Third-party tools run their own prompts and record what they see. That can be useful, but treat it as a sample, and use Search Console as the source for Google figures.